Corporal Mortification

The Italian Journalist Andrea Tornielle, in his new book, Santo Subito, reveals the late Holy Father's habitual use of the cilice to keep him conscious of the Cross . Blessed Mother Teresa also used and promoted the use of the cilice and the discipline. Here we have the most prominent extraordinary persons of our sensual age, revered for their extraordinary holiness and compassion, mortifying the flesh in the traditional Catholic manner under the counsel of their confessors. This makes it clear that the Da Vinci Code mentality needs to reassess its stigma of corporal mortification as some obscurantist practice of an inhuman superstitious occult sect.

http://blog.ilgiornale.it/tornielli/2009/11/21/santo-subito-quel-segreto-di-papa-wojtyla/

http://www.cilice.co.uk/ (cilice catalogue)