DUBLIN (Reuters)

A little-known church hidden among the back streets of Dublin, Ireland, became a haven for young lovers yesterday as they sought spiritual guidance at the final resting place of St. Valentine.

For more than 160 years, priests of the Carmelite Order have been looking after the saint's remains at their city centre priory.

On St. Valentine's Day, a stream of courting couples flock to the Whitefriar Street church to have their engagement rings blessed. Married couples can also renew their wedding vows. The relics of the third century martyr, who worked and died in what is now Italy, ended up in Dublin as a present to a local priest from Pope Gregory XVI.

"When you think of presents you would normally imagine bibles and rosaries as opposed to the actual relics of saints," said Father Patrick Breen, who looks after the remains.

He said that in the 1830s a graveyard in Rome was excavated and in the process St. Valentine's remains were exhumed.

"The man who founded our current church was giving lectures in Rome at the time and had an audience with Pope Gregory," Breen added.

"To mark his great work the pope gave him the remains as a gift, which is rather unusual."

On St. Valentine's Day, the casket with the remains are removed from beneath the side-altar and placed before the high altar for visitors to venerate. The reliquary ­ receptacle for relics ­ contains both the relics and a small vessel tinged with the blood of the martyr.

They are contained in a small wooden box tied with a red silk ribbon and sealed with wax.

While the casket has been opened on a few occasions to verify that the contents are intact, the inner box has never been opened nor the seals broken. A relic can be as small as a scraping of bone or a hair from the head of a saint, up to the entire body.

"We don't claim to have all his remains ­ it was quite common for relics to be split up," said Breen. Although the church gets its fair share of tourists, many Dubliners are unaware of its existence.

One reason for the relative obscurity is that the priory is barely recognisable as such. In penal times, when the Catholic Church suffered from persecution, it was forbidden to gain access to a church through a main thoroughfare. The current entrance was made by blasting a hole through its residential quarters to gain access to the church from street level.

ROME (Reuters)

LOVERS might lose their heads on St Valentine's Day, but on Friday part of the saint's skull found its way back to a central Italian church.

Twenty-four years after it was stolen, policemen returned the bone fragment to its home in the basilica in Terni, some 100-km Police found the revered piece of skull last month in the possession of an antique dealer in the far south of Italy, but waited until St Valentine's Day to return it, displayed on a red cloth inside a wooden box. St Valentine, a third-century martyr and the guardian of amorous couples around the world, worked and died in what is now Italy. The people of Terni believe he was born in their city and claim him as their patron saint.

BOMBAY, India (AP)

HINDU nationalists raided some shops in Bombay yesterday and burned cards and gifts for Valentine's Day, which they believe promotes promiscuity.

"Save Indian culture," shouted activists of the right-wing Shiv Sena party as they snatched cards from the shops in a western Bombay suburb, then burned them in a bonfire.

Small groups of Shiv Sena members held several protests around New Delhi, distributing flyers asking young Indians to celebrate Hindu festivals instead. A heavy police presence in the capital prevented them from targeting shops there.

Shiv Sena is a coalition partner of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government.

In the northern city of Lucknow, notes in Hindi were pasted on gift shops warning: "Valentine's Day is against our culture. It is obscene and against our tradition."

A dozen Shiv Sena activists and members of the Hindu Awakening Forum marched to the state legislature building in Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh state, and set fire to a heap of Valentine's Day cards.

They called on all Indians to pay tribute instead to Indian-born astronaut Kalpana Chawla, who died in the Columbia shuttle disaster.

Still, the threats from Hindu nationalists failed to dampen the overall mood. Defiant young couples bought flowers, exchanged cards and trooped into restaurants and hotels to celebrate the day.

"Ban or no ban, we celebrate Valentine's Day every year. Shiv Sena is doing this for publicity," said Rahul Dutta, an engineering student, in Bombay.

His girlfriend, Tanya Rao, also a student, said: "Valentine's Day is here to stay. What's wrong with giving cards and flowers?"

"How can the Sena stop me from doing what I want? They will protest but they can't stop all celebrations," said Anushka Roy, a 19-year-old college student, shopping in a store filled with pink teddy bears and greeting cards.

Some shop owners had pulled Valentine's Day cards off the shelves to avoid trouble.

"I may make a small profit by selling cards, but if they break the shop windows my losses will run into thousands," said P.M. Shah, who runs a stationery store near the sprawling K.J. Somaiya College campus in Bombay.

Sporadic protests have been held by Hindu nationalists over the last three years in Bombay, India's financial hub, and several cities in northern India. Activists from Hindu hard-line groups such as the Shiv Sena and Bajrang Dal have trashed shops, burned cards and harassed couples holding hands -- even chasing them out of fast-food restaurants.

Police guarded the main market in Lucknow to prevent any confrontations between Hindu nationalists and young people wanting to buy Valentine's Day cards.