Pious Felony

Other than worldly power and cold hard cash, there are few more enduring enthusiasms in the Church of Rome than the fetish for anatomical specimens. This little kink seems to have turned the head of a pious gentleman in the Czech Republic, who took exception last week to the public exhibition of a saintly skull. Having apparently prayed to God for an opportunity to rescue the relic, he was granted his wish and managed to encase the consecrated cranium in concrete, but was headed off before he could sink it in the river. The saint in question is the patron of those ridiculed for their piety, and also of difficult marriages; although since she was one of the vast mob of persons canonised by the de facto patron saint of sex abusers, John Paul II, she presumably grants her favours more to those who perpetuate the difficulty than to those who attempt escape.