ITALY: Starting Out on a Journey of No Return

On their knees in Naples' Gothic cathedral, faithful worshipers waited devoutly for the city's periodic miracle to occur: in early May, as on his feast day in September, the hardened blood of San Gennaro is said to liquefy inside the sealed glass vial in which it has been preserved since the saint's 4th century martyrdom. This May, however, to the dismay and alarm of the worshipers, the blood of Naples' patron saint refused to move on schedule. According to tradition, this failure occurs only when disaster is imminent. That disaster might have been the earthquake that struck Northern Italy...

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