Relics of the Little Flower return

“ROSES there for the blessing of the relics. Anyone for the roses?”

The street seller at the door of Whitefriar Street Church wasn’t doing much business despite her entreaties. Not that the faithful who came to visit the relics of St Therese were too mean to buy the Little Flower a little bloom, but they’d gone to the bother of preparing their own.

Snipped from garden bushes, carefully wrapped in tinfoil, clutched throughout the novena, they were then carried lovingly to the altar where the reliquary carrying the young saint’s bones was making a return visit after eight years’ absence.