Today, Oct. 18, is the feast day of Luke the Evangelist: physician, saint, author of the book of Acts and companion of Paul. It is thanks to Luke, the most literary of the four gospel writers, that we learn about the human aspects of Christ's life -- such as the enduring Nativity scene.
Most saints' bodies end up as relics, dispersed to shrines all over Christendom, but that believed to be Luke's, remarkably, stayed intact. More remarkable still, a genetic analysis of the corpse is published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
According to historical documents, Luke was born in Syria, lived to a ripe old age, died and was buried in Thebes (Greece) around A.D. 150. Almost 200 years later, his body was shuttled to Constantinople (now Istanbul). Moving again sometime before A.D. 1177, the body ended up in Padua, Italy.