Sixteen hundred years ago, if someone wanted to describe a relic of Mary Magdalene and the cave in southern France in which it rests, they would have needed a little vellum and a lot of patience. On Sunday, all it took was the click of a camera phone.

Hundreds of faithful Catholics and even a few from other faiths brought plenty of those to St. Catherine of Siena in Rialto to capture the image of a 6-inch piece of bone believed to have been from Mary Magdalene, among the holiest saints of the church. So goes veneration of saints in the 21st century.

"It got here at 6:30 this morning," the Rev. Stephen Porter, pastor of St. Catherine, said quietly, as if about to impart a secret. "The first thing I did was knelt in front of it and prayed. Then I took a photo of it. My Facebook page was updated with the photo by 7:30."

In all, St. Catherine has about 8,000 parishioners, making it one of the largest of the 97 Catholic churches in the Diocese of San Bernardino. Porter said he noticed significantly more attending Sunday's masses, two in English and two others in Spanish. Visitors he met included Eastern Orthodox and even a couple of protestants.

At the foot of the altar at St. Catherine more than 700 years later, the faithful rubbed their hands at the corner of the glass case holding another glass tube surrounding the bone fragment. Some knelt and prayed. Four gold angel statuettes stood at the corners of the tube, as if guarding the relic. Below the tube, a plaque with the scripted name "Maria Magdalene" was attached.

Irene Briones, of Rialto, rubbed a necklace adorned with a cross and images of several saints against the case.  "It's very sacred," Briones said. "It's like something we should all believe. It's a reaffirmation of my faith."