Friday 22 January 2010

The Gospel proclaimed in Space


OK! So I read some very interesting things on the news sites that I don't see in either our Catholic News paper or our daily secular news paper, but this one tickles me. In a warm way.. of course.

A Soviet Cosmonaut, Maksim Suraev, on his blog has informed the world that there are holy items on the International space station.

“We have four holy icons on the Russia segment. We also have the Gospels and a big cross,”


Besides that Maksim says that they have a relic of the true cross.

“A priest gave it to me at Baikanur before the launch. Father Job told me a piece of the original cross on which Jesus was crucified is contained in mine. It will be with me the whole expedition and will return with me to Earth,” the cosmonaut wrote.


Wow! Imagine that. A Holy Russian. 20 years ago I would have thought such a thing did not exist. In todays world I would also think that such a thing would not exist among American spacemen. Wrong again Sean. Apparently Holy objects have been carried in space before. Significant is US astronaut Ronald Garan who carried a relic of St Therese of Lisieux on the space shuttle Discovery in 2008.

I read somewhere that there was talk about identifying a patron Saint for Space Travellers. That would be nice. I wonder what ever became of that.

By the way. If you look closely at the photo above you would notice that both the Icon and the Cross are floating in zero gravity.

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