A lock of hair from the late Pope John Paul II will be kept permanently at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Caine Road, after the Vatican approved a request from the Hong Kong Diocese, Catholic officials said yesterday.
Speaking earlier this month when the relic arrived in Hong Kong, Bishop John Tong Hon said millions of mainland worshippers could visit the city to pray in the presence of the lock of hair. Its arrival symbolically completed the pope's lifelong wish to visit China, he said.
John Paul repeatedly said he wanted to visit China, but never made the trip. He died in 2005.
Encased in a special container for relics, the lock of hair is now in place inside the church, near the remains of five deceased Hong Kong bishops.
The relic came months after Sino-Vatican ties soured, with the Vatican excommunicating mainland bishops ordained by the Chinese state-run church without papal approval. It took just one month for the Vatican - the governing body of all Catholic churches around the world - to approve Bishop Tong's application for the lock of hair, according to the diocese.
'It may be because we are a Chinese city and Hong Kong people are familiar with the [late] pope,' Vicar General Dominic Chan Chi-ming said yesterday of the swift approval.
Father Thomas Law Kwok-fai expects the relic to attract frequent visits by mainland worshippers, which can strengthen their connection with Rome. It was not necessary to inform Beijing of the matter, he said, as the arrangement was 'purely religious'.