Visitors to "Voices of Light: The Passion of Joan of Arc" will have an up close and personal way to connect with the peasant girl who led a French army to victory before being captured and burned at the stake and later canonized by the Catholic Church.

They can touch a stone from the castle where she was held captive.

The Cathedral of St. Paul's Heritage Foundation is sponsoring the perfomance, which premieres Friday, April 15th at 8 p.m. and features the Oratorio Society of Minnesota Chorus and Orchestra putting music to the silent film "The Passion of Joan of Arc."

A screen measuring 18 feet high x 24 feet wide has been specially designed for this performance.­­­

Thanks to Cathedral archivist Celeste Raspanti, we know another way the audience can connect with the Maid of Orleans -- a stone behind the high altar in the Shrine of St. Therese of Lisieux.

Raspanti wrote: "In 1916 Archbishop John Ireland obtained a stone from Dr. George Kunz, who had obtained 229 blocks of stone taken from the Rouen castle where Joan of Arc was imprisoned in 1431. Ireland's intention was to install the stone in what he called the "French Altar," dedicated to St. Remy, one of the great patrons of France.

The inscription on the stone reads:

THIS STONE FROM

THE CASTLE OF ROUEN,

FRANCE, WHERE JOAN

OF ARC WAS PRISONER

A.D. 1431

Later in 1920, Archbishop Austin Dowling changed the designation of "French Altar" to the Shrine of Saint John the Baptist, the patron of French Canadians, the first white people in Pig's Eye, later, Saint Paul, Minnesota."