In the year 1506, a pilgrim brought the Holy Face to Manoppello and handed it over to Giacomo Antonio Leonelli (a physician and astrologer) in front of the “Mother Church” of San Nicola. He kept it in his home, guarding it jealously in a niche in his bedroom for about 100 years (which still exists today).
Later, a soldier named Pancrazio Petrucci, who had married a certain Marzia, a descendant of the Leonelli family, forcibly took the Sacred Image. Falling into disgrace and ending up in prison, he asked his wife to take the Sacred Image to Dr. Donato Antonio De Fabritiis in Manoppello, pleading on behalf of her husband to buy it for whatever price he deemed appropriate. It was purchased for the sum of 4 ducats in 1618. He kept the Sacred Image in his home, venerating it until 1638, when he gifted it to the Capuchin friars.
In 1620, the Capuchin convent dedicated to Archangel Michael was built. In 1811, the friars were forced to leave the convent due to the suppression of religious orders, and the Holy Face was entrusted to the Poor Clares. However, in May 1816, the friars returned to the sanctuary. In 1866, the friars had to abandon the convent again due to a second suppression, but they returned permanently in 1869, initiating the development of the devotion to the Holy Face.
As can be seen, the Poor Clares took care of the Holy Face for eight years at the church of SS Annunziata adjacent to their convent located on Corso Santarelli in the historic center of Manoppello, which is considered the second home of the Holy Face.
The Camino del Volto Santo is born by retracing the long journey that brought the image of the Face of Christ from Jerusalem to Rome and then to Manoppello, along the ancient consular road Tiburtina-Valeria that connects Rome to Abruzzo. A route that runs alongside the ancient consular road Tiburtina-Valeria, leading to the municipality of Manoppello (PE) and the Basilica of the Holy Face.
According to the authoritative scholar Father P. Heinrich Pfeiffer, “The Holy Face made its journey from Jerusalem to Ephesus, from Ephesus to Camulia in Cappadocia, from Camulia to Constantinople, from Constantinople to the Chapel of the Holy of Holies in the Lateran Palace, from here to the Chapel of Veronica in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, and finally to the Sanctuary of Manoppello.” Various hypotheses have been formulated about the last leg of Veronica’s veil from Rome to Manoppello, but to date, the documented version is the one told in the “Relatione Historica” by Brother Donato da Bomba in 1640, which recounts how the Veil was gifted in 1506 by an unknown traveler to Dr. Giacomo Antonio Leonelli, a notable of Manoppello, who was standing in front of the Church of San Nicola. The Leonelli family kept the relic for a long time, but later sold it to Antonio de Fabritiis, who thought to provide a more suitable arrangement for the Veil by entrusting it to the Capuchin friars, who in 1638 placed the relic in their church, where it is still preserved today.