Sint-Pantaleon

In Kerniel, a village near Borgloon, the church of Saint Pantaleon is dedicated to Pantaleon of Nicomedia. A place of worship already stood here; when it was closed during the troubled years of 1796 to 1801, its furnishings were nonetheless preserved. The present neoclassical church was raised in 1832, though part of the interior was lost to a fire in 1966.

The single-nave brick building has a west tower flanked by two chapels. The tower rises in two tiers to a constricted octagonal spire; at its base, limestone corner blocks were reused from old grave crosses. Above the portal, a niche shelters a statue of the Sacred Heart.

Inside, the church preserves among other treasures a wooden Saint Sebastian from the sixteenth century, a Saint Anthony the Abbot from the seventeenth and a rood loft from 1747. Remarkably, in 2014 a skull relic was discovered in the altar of the Virgin: analysis dated it to between 680 and 880 and linked it to the cult of Saint Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins.