Few Catholic artifacts are as mysterious and as fraught with controversy as the foreskin of Jesus Christ, the only part of the Messiah left on Earth after his Divine Ascension.

After being lost for almost 1500 years, Christ's foreskin (known as the Holy Prepuce) was discovered in the small Roman town of Calcata, disproving a theory by 17th century theologian Leo Allatius that it ascended into heaven to become the rings of Saturn. The Holy Foreskin was immediately attributed with numerous divine miracles, including perfumed mists and freak storms. It supposedly had divine attributes: rubbing it upon the eyelids of the blind could make them see.

But in 1900, another holy foreskin showed up, this time in France. At this point, even the Catholic Church was starting to be a little bit ashamed of their little slice of Jesus and it was decreed that anyone who even spoke of the Holy Foreskin would be excommunicated and burn in hell forever.

Yet that didn't stop people from obsessing about it and in 1983, it mysteriously disappeared. Now David Farley of Slate wonders what happened: was it really stolen by sacrilegious thieves? Or were black-masked ninjas on a cleaning mission from the Vatican itself responsible for spiriting away the decaying sheath of Christ's dick in the middle of the night? We may never know what really happened to Jesus' foreskin.

Fore Shame [Slate]