Once, policemen had laid hands on me.

They had caught me and tried to pull me out of the cathedral as I was trying to talk to her, and then when they had me outside, slowly they had all backed away. They had sensed I wasn't alive, the way mortals do. They had sensed, and they had muttered about the Veil and the miraculous, and there it had been, my impotence.

Policemen were all over. Policemen everywhere stood on guard to help, to give out the warm tea, to put their pale shivering hands out over the flames in the drums.

Nobody noticed us. Why should they? We were just two men, drab, part of the crowd, our gleaming skin was nothing much in this blinding whiteness of snow amid these ecstatic pilgrims, wandering from valley to valley of song.

The bookstore windows were piled with Bibles, books on Christology. There was a huge pyramid of a lavender-covered book called Veronica and Her Cloth by Ewa Kuryluk, and another stack of Holy Faces, Secret Places by Ian Wilson.

People sold pamphlets on the street, or even gave them away. I could hear accents from all parts of the country—from Texas, and Florida and Georgia and California.

Bibles, Bibles, Bibles, being sold and given away.

A group of nuns gave out holy pictures of St. Veronica. But the hottest items were the color photographs of the Veil itself, snapped in the church by photographers and then reprinted by the thousands.

"Amazing grace, amazing grace...." sang one group in unison, rocking back and forth as they held their places in line.

"Gloria, in excelsus deum!" burst from a long-bearded man with his arms outstretched.

As we drew nearer the church, we could see little clusters and crowds engaged inseminars everywhere. In the midst of one, a young man spoke, rapid, sincere:

"In the fourteenth century, she was officially recognized as a saint, Veronica, and it was believed that the Veil was lost during the Fourth Crusade when the Venetians stormed Hagia Sophia." He stopped to push his glasses back on his nose. "Of course the Vatican will take its time to rule on this, as it always does, but seventy-three icons have already been derived from the original icon, and this before the eyes of countless witnesses who are prepared to testify before the Holy See."

In another place, there were several dark-clad men, priests perhaps, I couldn't tell, and around them rings of those listening, eyes squinting against the snow.

"I'm not saying the Jesuits cannot come," said one of the men. "I just said that they aren't coming in here and taking over. Dora has asked that the Franciscans be the custodians of the Veil, if and when it leaves the cathedral."

And behind us, two women rapidly concurred that tests had already been done, the age of the cloth was beyond dispute.

"They don't even grow that kind of flax anymore in the world; you couldn't find a new piece of such fabric, the fabric itself in its newness and cleanness is a miracle."