Our Friend Paul Badde and the Volto Sancto (Rest in Peace, my friend)

We spent many happy times together at the Holy Face but also in Rome, where he often took us to his favorite places and gave talks to our groups. This is a picture of us toward the beginning of our friendship in 2011.

Below is a nice summary and memory of our friend’s life and work. We miss you, Paul!

Catholic author Alan Holdren is remembering German journalist Paul Badde, whose adventurous reporting and childlike wonder helped bring global attention to one of Christianity’s most mysterious relics: the Holy Face of Manoppello.

In a reflection for Angelus News on Badde’s Nov. 10 death, Holdren recalled how the longtime correspondent for German newspapers Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Welt lived with a constant sense of awe that captured those around him.

“As a natural-born journalist, he had an innate sense for what interested people, and he followed his nose until he got the story,” Holdren wrote. “That’s what is so stirring about Paul’s death earlier this month: he spent the last decades of his life searching for Christ’s face. Now, I hope he has found it.”

A journalist in a race against time

Holdren first met Badde in Rome in 2010, years after a stroke left the journalist working with urgency to finish what he considered his life’s greatest assignment: telling the story of the Holy Face. Holdren said Badde’s book, “The Face of God,” played a decisive role in inspiring Pope Benedict XVI’s 2006 pilgrimage to the shrine.

Badde seemed certain the veil offered a uniquely intimate encounter with the face of Christ.

“Paul called the Holy Face of Manoppello ‘the story of my life,’ by which he meant it was the biggest story he had ever come across: Christ’s face emblazoned on a transparent byssus cloth veil which perfectly matches the visage in the Shroud of Turin, tucked behind the altar in a backwoods basilica,” Holdren wrote. “Totally accessible, as Christ should be. Transparent from some angles and in some lighting, but from others, there he is: ‘Jesus Christ!’”

He invited everyone he met to see it with him, Holdren said.

Mentor, pilgrim, apostle of the ‘santo volto’

For years, Badde guided pilgrims to Manoppello, Italy, in person and reached many more through his books, articles, and documentaries. Holdren said those who walked with him remember a man who prayed constantly, carried multiple rosaries in his pockets, and never hesitated to press a palm-sized relic of the Holy Land into a friend’s hands.

The rosary was his anchor. Even after multiple strokes, Holdren explained, Badde prayed it daily — often walking through St. Peter’s Basilica, weaving past altars and tombs as he recited each mystery aloud.

“Without Paul’s mentorship and friendship, I wouldn’t have been so close to the sacraments and ultimately closer to Christ in this life,” Holdren said. “He had been through hard times. He was incredibly shrewd as a journalist. Yet, he had a childlike trust in God and his hand in his story. He believed in God’s infinite mercy and trusted in his love and forgiveness, and he found a way to share that with me and countless others.”

‘Stones and pearls’

After a near-fatal stroke in 2016 left Badde in a coma, Holdren prayed at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico for his friend’s recovery, asking Our Lady to “bring him back” so he could finish the work he had begun.

Badde eventually recovered and went on to complete “Steinen und Perlen” (“Stones and Pearls”), a 20-part documentary series tracing each mystery of the rosary through the Holy Land, Holdren said.

“His life was guided by Mary’s hand,” Holdren wrote. After his recovery, Badde wore a small oval pin of Our Lady of Guadalupe on his lapel — and “he was not without it for years.”

Holdren remembers Badde describing the Annunciation as a “heart chamber of the Christian faith,” the Incarnation as “the Big Bang of Christian revelation,” and the Visitation as “the first Eucharistic procession.”

The hidden icon on Monte Mario

Badde’s final major project centered on “The Advocata,” an ancient Marian icon housed in a Dominican convent on Rome’s Monte Mario hill. Holdren said Badde believed the icon predated the Council of Ephesus and may have been written by St. Luke.

Holdren described Badde’s early-morning pilgrimages to the convent, where the sisters would graciously turn the icon toward Badde and his guests so they could gaze into the Holy Virgin’s eyes. He called the convent “beyond the reach of most tourists,” Holdren said, and delighted in bringing people there anyway.

Badde completed a book on “The Advocata” shortly before his last stroke in March.

“He couldn’t take everyone to ‘The Advocata’ in person,” Holdren said, “but he always found that his writing could take the world along for the ride.”

A life steeped in Providence

Holdren said his years in Rome were marked by Badde’s friendship and spiritual example. Their daily routine included 8 a.m. Mass at St. Anne’s parish in the Vatican and a Rosary pilgrimage through St. Peter’s Basilica.

Holdren recounted: “We started from St. Anne’s Church and jumped security with Paul’s special card — the ‘tessera magica,’ he called it. It was all timed out perfectly. Imagine passing the ‘Pieta’, Pope John Paul II’s tomb, the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, John XXIII, St. Peter, Bernini’s ‘Holy Spirit’ above the Altar of the Chair, Rafael’s ‘Transfiguration,’ Pius X, and back out the door. Every day.”

Buried beside the Holy Face he spent his life revealing

Badde died in Manoppello and was buried in the cemetery beside the shrine that houses the Holy Face. At his request, Holdren said, earth from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem was scattered over his coffin.

Reflecting on his friend’s legacy, Holdren wrote that Badde’s impact on him and countless other souls “has been unquantifiable.”

“He brought us along for the ride, but toward the only destination that matters,” Holdren concluded. “My prayer is that he now has all the answers he searched for on earth as, God willing, he passes eternity face-to-face with Jesus Christ.”