The new relics of St. John the Baptist

The remains (8 pieces of bone, including fragments of skull and face bone and a tooth) were uncovered on July 28 (2010) during the excavation of a fourth-century monastery on St. Ivan Island near Sozopol, off Bulgaria's Black Sea coast. They were in a sealed reliquary (18 x 14) buried next to a tiny urn inscribed with St. John's name and his birth date. This is a typical 5th century reliquary shrine, which most probably was brought to Sozopol directly from the Holy Land. Since it was the time (452) of the discovery of St. John the Baptist's tomb and relics in Nablus: http://expertmus.livejournal.com/53029.html
According to excavation leader Prof. Kazimir Popkonstantinov the Greek inscription on the tiny sandstone box («God, save your servant Thomas. To St John. June 24») would have been placed under the altar on Sveti Ivan is a very strong proof that the relics of John the Baptist are genuine. It's important to bear in mind that the date, celebrated by Christians as John's nativity, was absent in the oldest Syriac Menologion (412 A.D.) and appeared for the first time in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum (the end of the 5th century) as Russian archaeological expert from Andrey Rublev's Museum has now suggested: http://expertmus.livejournal.com/56083.html
Now the relics of St. John the Baptist found recently in Bulgaria had been handed to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. They are working miracles by the opinion of Bulgarian diaspora minister Bozhidar Dimitrov: «People in Sozopol say that a Russian woman, turned deaf and dumb after Chechen strikes in Moscow started talking again after venerating the relics».

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