If you can go to Siena, you can see the head of St. Cathar of Siena.

There's a church in Rome where you can see the foot of Mary Magdalene.

What is going on here? Welcome to the Catholic Podcast. I'm your host Joe Heshmire and I'm joined today by my co-host

Chloe Langer. We've been doing that case throughout the Easter season on the physicality of Catholicism, looking at physical things like the empty

tomb, like the shroud of Turin. And today we're going to talk about one of the most

physical, almost grisly aspects of Catholicism namely relics.

So Chloe, thanks for coming on.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Can you explain what a relic is, what the word means,

and then maybe explain the difference between first, second, and third

class relics? Yeah sure. I love etymology. The word relic comes from the Latin

word relinquo which literally means like I leave behind or I abandon.

So a relic is a piece of the body of a saint or something that was used by the saint

while that they were alive or an object that's been touched to a saint, to a relic of theirs.

So there's three classes of relics.

So the first class relic is a part of a saint's body.

This is something that you would seem like placed in an altar stone

at a church.

The second class relic is a piece of the saint's clothing or maybe something that they used throughout their life here on earth

And a third class relic is something that's been touched to a first class relic. So when you get something in the mail from a shrine that says,

we're sending you like a

relic of St Jude it's something that's been touched to his relic. So how important

...