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About 10,000 people, many hoping for a cure for their blind eyes, their crippled legs, their sundry other ailments, gathered on Troy Hill in front of St. Anthony's Chapel on June 13, 1890.
Drawn by word of the healing powers of Father Suitbertus Mollinger, they had come from all over the country to honor the feast day of St. Anthony.
Today, across the street from the chapel, above the gift shop where little plaster saints line the shelves, old canes and crutches hang on a wall of the chapel museum, testimony to the cures of yesteryear.
The faithful still flock to St. Anthony's Chapel, though not quite in the same numbers as a century ago. Today the chapel and its thousands of relics attract about 7,000 visitors a year to Pittsburgh's plateau neighborhood of narrow streets and tightly packed houses.
More are expected with the recent release of "Thy Saints' Keeper," a 41-minute videotape exploring the chapel's history and significance. After cameos in "The Bride Wore Black," "Hoffa,"
"Innocent Blood" and WQED's "Holy Pittsburgh," St. Anthony's Chapel finally gets a starring role. The tape has aired on the Eternal Word Television Network, bringing requests for copies from around the country.
Though it's been a long time since miracles occurred at St. Anthony's Chapel, some might say the chapel itself is a miracle - a miracle of survival in an age when 19th-century church buildings are sometimes defeated by age and diminishing congregations.
But this is no ordinary church. Built by Mollinger in 1880, the original part of the chapel houses about 5,000 relics of saints. Packed with skulls, teeth and pieces of bone wrapped in silk, the chapel might be considered Pittsburgh's most macabre tourist attraction. It's undoubtedly its most dazzling, a glittering jewel box of more than 500 reliquaries shaped like monstrances, chalices, frames and miniature cathedrals. It is also, for many, one of the city's most sacred places.
Last Tuesday evening, a standing-room-only crowd filled St. Anthony's Chapel for the Thirteen Tuesdays novena before St.
Anthony's feast day. "You better start coming earlier," an older woman in black coat and blue babushka admonished her male companion. "There's no seats!" The usher found them two in the last row.
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