Near the Vatican
The answers to the questions asked by our reader can be found in the Museum of Purgatory, created over 70 years ago in Rome with the blessing of the Pope. This small museum displays exhibits that testify to the existence of the other world and the torment to which sinners are subjected there.
The museum, consisting of two parts, is located 10 minutes walk from the Vatican, on an old street that runs parallel to the Tiber. One part of this storehouse of miracles is a small room in the side chapel of the Church of the Sacred Heart of the Martyr (we will talk about the second part later). The entrance is always open to visitors. There are, however, few exhibits. In the glazed display cases along the walls, you can see objects related to the souls suffering in purgatory.
I must say that in early Christianity there was no such thing as purgatory. There was only hell and heaven. The concept of purgatory appeared only in the late Middle Ages. It is generally accepted that the souls of people who are not sinful enough to immediately find themselves in hell, but not so righteous as to ascend to heaven, go there. Purgatory is a sad place where souls have to endure torment and repentance for the misdeeds committed by their “bearers” in earthly life for some time before being forgiven and ascending to heaven. However, the period of stay of souls in purgatory can be significantly reduced if relatives and friends who remain on earth pray for them.
Praying for the dead is the spiritual duty of all people. However, we often neglect it. And then it happens that those who have departed into another world appear before us in a visible form (that is, in the form of ghosts) and ask us to fulfill their duty. Indeed, for the departed, prayers are the necessary help of the living.
Ghost tracks
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Especially often the spirits appeared before their brothers left on the ground in the 15th-19th centuries. The ghosts showed the wounds received during the torture in purgatory, and left some kind of sign or mark so that the living did not forget to offer prayers for the dead. Most often, the spirit touched an object on which its fingers or palms were imprinted. Things with such a “seal” were the kind of miracles (along with stigmata, bleeding icons, the apparitions of the Virgin Mary, etc.) that were especially revered in the Catholic world.
In the side-chapel of the Church of the Sacred Heart of the Martyr, objects with such strange marks are exhibited. So, in one of the windows there is an apron with burnt fingerprints. This is a sign left by the spirit of the novice Clara Skelers, who died in 1637 from the plague and appeared to the nun of her monastery in order to plead for intercession before the Lord. Next door is the prayer book of Maria Zaganti, a resident of the Italian town of Parrochia, in front of whom on the night of March 5, 1871, the late father appeared. The ghost opened a book lying on the table - apparently in the place that contained a prayer that was especially important to him. The pages are burned in places where the hands of a ghost touch.
A part of the table top with traces of a cross and a palm is kept in a special display case. With these signs, the late abbot from Mantua, Father Panzini, supported his request for prayers. He appeared to the abbess of the monastery of St. Francis, the Reverend Mother Isabella Fornari on November 1, 1731.
Basement nightmares
However, the most interesting is the other half of the museum, where visitors rarely get. Many of them are not even aware of its existence. The premises of the second part of the museum are located in the basement of the church, and in order to get there, you have to pass three metal doors, usually locked. It was this basement room, or rather its exhibits, that gave some journalists reason to call the museum in the Church of the Sacred Heart of the Martyr "the museum of the devil."
“The objects that you see here are undoubted evidence of the wiles of the unclean,” says Ismaro Benedicti's father, the museum curator, about these exhibits. - They are accepted by the Church as concrete evidence of the existence of hell and the devil. We do not publish them and do not even advertise their presence, but we keep them in order to show what the enemy of the human race is capable of”.
“Most of these things, as well as those in the upper room, were transferred to the Vatican in 1933 by the founder of the museum, Father Vittore Joe,” Father Ismaro continues. - The temple in which he was the abbot burned down during a terrible fire. In the flames, Father Vittore saw the terrible face of Satan. And when the fire was extinguished, on the surviving wall, a vague image of a woman formed from stains of soot. Her expression was full of despair and anguish. All Rome flocked to see the amazing image, and one noble lady even ordered 30 dinners to be served for the salvation of the soul of the unfortunate martyr in purgatory. As the rumor goes, after that the noble lady was miraculously healed of a serious illness.
Father Vittore ordered to transfer the image to canvas. It became the first exhibit of the future museum. After that fire, Father Vittore began looking around the world for material traces of such phenomena.
He found over 300 of them. Some of them are hundreds of years old."
To guide you on the right path
Among the exhibits at the bottom is a stone believed to have the face of Satan carved on it. His expression is constantly changing, and his eyes follow the visitors relentlessly. Another exhibit is the skirt of Louise de Seneschal from the town of Chanvrier in France, a woman who in 1875 met the devil on a deserted path and died of horror. The skirt is burned in the place where Satan's hand touched it. Nearby is an old icon of an unusual theme: it depicts sinners tormented in hell. The image of the devil on the icon oozes liquid sulfur from time to time.
It is not easy to get into the lower room even for clergymen and high-ranking officials, not to mention ordinary tourists.
“The admission of visitors to this part of the museum was stopped back in the 50s, when one of the cardinals expressed dissatisfaction with its exhibits,” says Father Ismaro. “In addition, unfortunate incidents have happened to visitors here more than once, for example, someone had bouts of dizziness, someone saw dark figures passing through the wall. Perhaps behind this there are indeed the intrigues of the unclean, but this once again proves that our exhibits are not fakes. To pacify the intrigues of an evil spirit, consecrated crosses and icons are hung on all showcases here …"
It is easy to guess that the Museum of Purgatory does not cause much delight among the majority of believers. In the 1990s, they tried to liquidate it again. But nevertheless, the opinion prevailed that the museum was needed in order to instruct unbelievers on the true path by the example of sinners, to show them what torments they doomed themselves for their unbelief, and most importantly, to confirm the existence of purgatory, hell and Satan with the help of material evidence, which means as opposed to them, paradise and God.
Igor Vetrov. Secrets of the XX century magazine