MONTCLAIR, N.J. — Throughout his adult life, Joseph Santoro has spent about $250,000 on relics from various saints, the Holy Family, and from the Crucifixion of Jesus. He doesn’t, however, want to be called a “collector.”
Whenever he acquires an item, Santoro said he doesn’t like to say he bought it. He prefers the term “rescued.”
“You do have to give some sort of money to rescue these relics,” he said, “but I don’t like using the words ‘purchase’ or ‘buy.’ ”
Santoro is the external program coordinator at the National Centre for Padre Pio in Barto, Pennsylvania. More than 500 of the sacred relics that he has gone on to acquire were displayed at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Oratory in Montclair, New Jersey.
Relics came from martyrs, “blessed” candidates for sainthood, and actual saints, including one of Padre Pio’s gloves. There was also a fragment of a veil worn by Mary, Mother of Jesus, and also from the Passion, including a sliver from Jesus’ cross and a fragment from the crown of thorns.
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The April 5 event was the center’s second collaboration with OLMC. The first was last year and attracted more than 5,000 people.
Father Giandomenico Flora, rector of OLMC, called this year’s event a “blessing from God” because of the rare volume of relics. He said the exhibit was held to help people deepen their faith during Lent and to commemorate the Jubilee Year.
“It’s a chance to ask the saints for their intercession, but it’s also an opportunity to feel inspired by their lives,” Father Flora said. “The saints were ordinary people who did extraordinary things for the world.”
The relics, he added, remind people that everyone has the potential to be holy.
Santoro, who joined Father Flora at OLMC on April 3 to preview the exhibit, said he became enthralled with relics as a teen growing up in Brooklyn during the 1990s. His family belonged to St. Francis of Paola Parish in Williamsburg, which is now part of Divine Mercy Parish.
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Santoro recalled how a friend gave him a relic of St. Mother Frances Cabrini and how he eventually learned that such items are sometimes sought by people with intentions not aligned with the Church. Some of them, he said, are quite nefarious.
Rescuing and safeguarding relics thus became Santoro’s life’s work.
Along with his duties at the National Centre for Padre Pio, he is also a U.S. delegate of the International Crusade for Holy Relics (ICHR) in Fátima, Portugal.
“The desecration of the blessed host, holy relics, and religious icons are a thing that’s really happening,” Santoro said. “A lot of these relics go into the hands of very bad people, and they are used in acts of Satanism and black magic, especially throughout South America.”
Some people also buy and sell relics for profit, which the Church does not approve.
Santoro said he regularly encounters cynicism from people who suspect him of doing just that.
He said he tells critics that many people who handle relics don’t properly revere them. “But,” he added, “I do.”
According to him, relics are “conduits directly from heaven that remind us, ‘Hi, God is still here.’ ”
It takes about a year to plan an event like those at OLMC that attract thousands of people from throughout the northeast United States. Because attendees can stand in line for hours while waiting to see the relics, Santoro relies on administrative help from Father Flora and various committees at OLMC.
All the efforts are worth it, Santoro said, because of the power relics have to help people experience renewals of faith. That brings him a tremendous sense of purpose.
“And that, my friend, is a feeling that comes directly from heaven,” Santoro said.
