Panaji: The Archaeological Survey of India has begun the restore the four-century old silver casket that houses the relics of Saint Francis Xavier at the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Old Goa.
The casket, which was last tended to in 1698, has been braving the elements within the basilica, which is part of the UNESCO declared heritage complex. Old Goa was once the capital of the Portuguese maritime empire and an important trade center.
The restoration began on December 9.
Back in 2018 a team of three specialists was dispatched from “Opificio delle Pietre Dure e Laboratori di Restauro di Firenze” (A restoration laboratory in Florence, Italy), to study the artefacts from May 27 to June 3, 201. They had called for attending to the casket mas a top priority or it would fall apart within the next 10 years.
“The ASI Chemical Branch from Aurangabad, who are specialists in conservation, have taken the initiative under the mandate from ASI Dehradun to commence the work to conserve and restore the Mastrillian Casket. The negotiations began long back, ever since ASI Delhi ordered that the treatment be done by their specialists in India. The work will be done at the Basilica itself under strict security and will commence from December 10,” Father Patricio Fernandes, the Rector of the Basilica of Bom Jesus, said.
It was in 1624 that for the first time the mortal remains of the saint were taken away from public view and ensconced in a silver casket and kept atop a specially constructed mausoleum within the Old Goa basilica.
Father Marcello Mastrilli, an Italian Jesuit priest who was miraculously revived from near death on two occasions, and who believed it was through St Francis Xavier he was saved, had commissioned the work on the silver casket as a thanksgiving to the saint in 1633.
Father Mastrilli, however, did not live to see the casket being completed after he was killed in Nagasaki in Japan barely months prior to it being readied.
The mortal remains of Francis Xavier draw tourists and devotees from around the world to Old Goa. Once in a decade the relics are lowered from the high altar at the mausoleum and placed in a glass casket for public viewing as part of an exposition.
Church authorities had earlier insisted that the restoration be done by experts from Italy, who had offered to do the restoration for free, but the Archaeological Survey declined permission, instead saying that they would do it themselves with the help of in-house experts.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/asi-to-begin-restoration-of-st-francis-xavier-s-400-year-old-casket-in-goa/story-gRCBD5kSylvDpYIqITVgCK.html