Sacred Seed (English Edition)

When Christianity's most sacred and best documented relic is stolen from the cathedral at Oviedo the Vatican calls in PI Alex Bowman to recover the Sudarium Domini, the face cloth claimed by the Catholic Church to have covered Christ's head at the Crucifixion. Bowman confidently anticipates a ransom note will soon follow but it doesn't come. So why would anybody steal a two thousand year old piece of soiled linen cloth with a random pattern of blood stains, except for money? But if the Church is right about the extraordinary biblical origins of the relic, the Sudarium contains Christ's DNA. And Father Dominic Scott, the American Jesuit who runs the Vatican's prestigious Pontifical Academy of Science, knows that ancient DNA can be analysed and even replicated...and in the wrong hands that could threaten the survival of the Catholic Church and the demise of Christianity itself...