Baptist's Relics Deliver Jump in Church Attendance in Bulgaria

In Bulgaria, clerics and government officials have high religious—and economic—hopes for a recent discovery: fragments of what some believe to be the remains of John the Baptist. 

By Joe Parkinson  SOZOPOL, Bulgaria—Archaeologists and clerics here say they have unearthed bones belonging to John the Baptist, an itinerant preacher revered by many Christians as the last of the Old Testament prophets. Bulgaria's government is looking to the discovery for salvation—of a financial sort.

The remains, including a skull fragment and a tooth, were uncovered last month during the excavation of a fourth-century monastery on St. Ivan Island, off Bulgaria's Black Sea coast. They were in a sealed reliquary buried next to a tiny urn inscribed with St. John's name and his birth date.

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