One of the more tragic realities associated with relics is that although much good has come through them, abuses have occurred. The Church has officially forbidden the buying and selling of relics, but this has not stopped people from stealing little tidbits of relics. While the holiness of relics is supposed to suggest the goodness of God present in the bodies of saints, there are stories associated with relics that are a bit bizarre.

After St. Teresa of Ávila died, her body was cut up and distributed to those who admired her. Her confessor retained her left pinkie for himself. This finger, oddly enough, eventually ended up in the possession of the head of state in Spain, Generalissimo Francisco Franco. He placed Teresa's pinkie on his bedside table and kept it there until his death in 1975.

St. Jerome, in a letter to Riparius on relics: “We do not worship, we do not adore, for fear that we should bow down to the creature rather than to the Creator, but we veneratethe relics of the martyrs in order to better adore him whose martyrs they are.”