At Mass in Valencia, pope uses what tradition says is Holy Grail

Published: 2006-07-10

VALENCIA, Spain (CNS) -- King Arthur and his knights and Indiana Jones looked for it, and most recently Dan Brown's sleuth, Robert Langdon, hunted it down in "The Da Vinci Code." But these legendary and fictional characters might have saved a lot of trouble in their hunt for the Holy Grail by just going to Valencia. The host city of Pope Benedict XVI's third pastoral journey abroad July 8-9 is home to what tradition says is the cup Jesus used during the Last Supper. The custodian of the "Santo Caliz," or Holy Grail, said the age of the stone chalice and documents tracing its history back to 1071 make it "absolutely likely that this beautiful cup was in the hands of the Lord" during the Last Supper. Msgr. Jaime Sancho Andreu, head of the Valencia Archdiocese's liturgy commission and curator of the Holy Grail, wrote a full-page article in the July 5 edition of the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, describing the chalice, its history and the likelihood of its being authentic, although at least one Vatican art official challenged the notion.

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