The Holy Face of Jesus Christ as appeared on the Holy Eucharist

On 5-5-2001

Testimony of the parish priest
Fr. Johnson Karoor

For the benefit of the believers I would like to describe how a human face - believed to be the face of Jesus Christ has appeared in the Holy Eucharist placed in the Monstrance for adoration on the Altar of St. Mary's Malankara Catholic Church at Chirattakonam, Archdiocese of Trivandrum.

On the 28th April 2001, we held the novena prayer to St. Jude in the parish church at Chirattakonam as usual. At about 8:49 a.m. I exposed the Holy Eucharist in the monstrance and we started the adoration. During the adoration I saw three dots on the holy Eucharist. I stopped reciting the prayers and as if from some sort of an inner inspiration I just stood looking at the Eucharist. As the novena prayer was over I gave the faithful Eucharistic benediction. Then I invited the attention of the Faithful to the monstrance and they testified that they saw three dots on the Eucharist. I asked the faithful to remain in prayer and I kept the Holy Eucharist in the tabernacle.

I celebrated the Holy Mass on Monday, the 30^th April and on the next day I left for Trivandrum. After returning from Trivandrum on Saturday Morning 5^th May 2001, 1 opened the church for the liturgical service. I vested myself and opened the tabernacle. Immediately I noticed the figure of a human face in yellow color in the Eucharist. I was at a loss what to do. I just stood there for a few seconds. I asked the faithful to kneel down and pray. I thought it was something which I alone experienced. I kept the holy Eucharist in the monstrance and asked the mass server whether he saw something in the Eucharist. "I see a figure", he said. I saw the faithful looking intently at the monstrance observing the figure. We started the adoration. During the adoration we saw the figure becoming clearer. I didn't have the strength to speak anything to the faithful. I stood aside for sometime. I couldn't control my tears.

We had the practice of reading the scripture and reflecting on it during the adoration. The passage that I got that day as I opened the Bible was John 20: 24-29 - Jesus appearing to St. Thomas and asking him to see his wounds. Though I read the passage, I could not give a homily. I just said a few words and concluded. As I had to go for Mass to the next parish at Kokkodu, I called a photographer and asked him to take a photo of the holy Eucharist with the human face on it. After sometime we took another photo, then a third one. In two hours the photo were developed and printed. In all the three photos there was a clear difference in terms of the clarity of the figure. The figure was slowly becoming clearer and clearer. Since then many people are coming to the church and adoring the holy Eucharist, which has been kept in the Monstrance on the Altar in, the sanctuary of the Church.

Clarification given by
His Grace Archbishop Cyril Mar Baselios,
on the Eucharistic event
in the St. Mary's Malankara Catholic Church, Chirattakonam

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Jesus Christ,

As we are all witnessing this extra-ordinary sign manifested in the Holy Eucharist, placed in the Monstrance on our Altar for adoration, I feel I should give you some guidance to understand better this unique sign.

The Catholic Church believes and teaches that Our Lord Jesus Christ is really present in the Holy Eucharist. Ever since the Institution of the Holy Eucharist by Our Lord in his Last Supper, the Church has been holding on to this Faith in the Eucharist and practicing it in the liturgical Eucharistic celebration. The Catholic Church believes that the presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist is real but sacramental. Thus his presence is through the species of Bread and Wine whose substance is converted to his Body and Blood, this we believe on the basis of Jesus' own words and action during his Last Supper. Hence we believe that Our Lord Jesus Christ is really present in the Holy Eucharist. In fact it is not a new Faith in the Church, but it is a faith that has been held and practiced right from the beginning of the Church, and this Eucharistic Faith occupied a central place in the life of the Catholic Church.

Since the presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist is sacramental, though real, it is not possible for our senses to experience it. But it is possible for the Lord, if he so wills; to make himself sensibly present to us through some signs that are perceptible to our senses. Many examples of this truth are quoted in the Gospels in relation to his apparitions to the disciples after his resurrection, who had yet to be confirmed in the Risen Lord. But it is to be noted that the faith of the Church in the presence of Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist is not based on any extraordinary signs that might be manifested in God's own providential care for His people, nor on condition that such signs would be given to us. On the contrary, our faith in the Eucharistic presence of Our Lord is based on his own words during his Last Supper.

It is against this background that we have to accept and understand this great Eucharistic sign to which we, all those who are here, are witnesses. All of us see it personally and clearly. In the light of our faith that Our Lord Jesus Christ and no one else is present in the Eucharist, the figure of the human face we see here in the Eucharist, we conclude, must be the face of Our Lord Jesus Christ. On our part we hold on to our Eucharistic faith firmly and with deep conviction. In case someone would try to explain away this phenomena on any other reasonable grounds, we do not condemn the effort. But if we cannot find any human means active in the event, it would be reasonable and wise to believe that Our Lord has given us a special sacramental sign through a special intervention.

For us believers what we have seen is something, which we always believed. Our real attention should now be focused on the question why Our Lord gives us this unique and extraordinary sign. We must prayerfully reflect 'on the meaning of this sacred symbol. If Our Lord is speaking to us by giving us a sign, it certainly needs a response from us. While we all together pray and search for an answer, let us offer our thanksgiving to Our Lord and adore him devotedly for his gracious care and love for us.

Address:
St. Mary's Malankara Catholic Church
Chiraftakonarn, Thalachira P.O.
Koffarakara, Kollarn Dist. - 691 546
Kerala, South India
Phone: 0474-402780

The Controversial Shroud of Turin

click on pics for a larger image

Go to Here for even more analysis on this cloth

The most controversial relic in Christendom, the Shroud of Turin - the linen cloth that covered Jesus when he was entombed and resurrected, made its first documented appearance some years after the suppression of the Knights Templar. The biggest discovery didn't come until the age of cameras when a "negative" of a picture taken of the shroud provided incredible details never before seen by just looking at the cloth. The dispute over the authenticity of this oddly stained cloth dates from its first public exposition when, in the 1350s, Henry, Bishop of Troyes, wrote:

Many theologians and other persons have stated that this could not be the real

Shroud of Our Lord having the Saviour’s likeness thus imprinted upon it, since the holy

Gospel made no mention of such imprint, while, if it had been true, it was quite unlikely

that the holy Evangelists would have omitted to record it, or that the fact should have

remained hidden until the present time.1

The earliest reference to what could be the Shroud dates from 1203, when Robert de Clan, a French crusader, described an object that he had seen exhibited in the Church of My Lady Saint Mary of Blachernae at Constantinople ‘... where was kept the sydoine in which Our Lord had been wrapped, which stood up straight every Friday so that the figure of Our Lord could be plainly seen there’. The translation of the key word ‘figure’ has caused considerable debate. Is it the modern French ‘face’ or in the English sense, the ‘full figure’ or body? Provocatively de Clari continued ‘no one, either Greek or French, ever knew what became of this sydoine after the city was taken’.

There are historians who claim that folded and framed, the Shroud may have been the
object exhibited as the Mandylion, the imprint of the face of Jesus on a cloth which, legend
tells us, Jesus sent to King Abgar of Edessa. Linking the Shroud of Turin and the Mandylion
is the consistent and powerful literary tradition that neither image was ‘made by the hand of
man. Is it simply coincidence that the known and provable history of the Mandylion completes
, with one short gap, the earlier missing history of the Turin Shroud? Were they one and the
same?

SUCCESSIVE OWNERS OF THE SHROUD

The first known owner of the Shroud in France in the 1350s was Geoffrey de Charney, who died in 1356; the name of Jacques de Molay’s fellow martyr was Geoffroi de Chamey. If the Shroud had been brought to France from Constantinople by the Knights Templar, who had so recently been suppressed on charges of heresy, it is understandable why the de Chameys were reluctant to declare its origins. In The Shroud and the Grail, Noel Currer-Briggs, founder member of the Association of Genealogists and Record Agents and a Fellow of the Society of Genealogists, produces proof that Geoffrey de Charney was the nephew of Jacques de Molay’s companion in death, Geoffroi de Charney, Templar Master of Normandy. He also shows that this family are intimately linked by ties of blood and marriage with the families of Brienne, de Joinville and Burgundy. Could it be that Rex Deus ensured the preservation of the Shroud in the certain knowledge that, sooner or later, it would play an important part in disclosing that Jesus came to reveal the pathway to initiation and not to make any form of redemptive sacrifice?

The last member of the de Chamey line, the 72-year-old Marguerite de Charney, was childless when, in 1453, Duke Louis of Savoy ceded to her the Castle of Varanbon and the revenues of the estate of Miribel in return for certain ‘valuable services’, which included Marguerite’s gift to the duke of the Shroud. Geoffrey II de Chamey and Marguerite’s second husband, Humbert de Villersexel, had both been created knights of the Order of the Collar of Savoy by earlier dukes 2 Marguerite de Chamey had found a noble and trusted family to ensure the preservation of this remarkable relic, as the House of Savoy were Rex Deus.

By the 15th century, Church authorities had begun to refer to the relic as Jesus’ ‘burial shroud’. The theologian Francesco della Rovere wrote, in 1464, ‘This is now preserved with great devotion by the Dukes of Savoy, and it is coloured with the blood of Christ’.6 Within five years della Rovere became Pope Sixtus IV. His treatise on The Blood of Christ, published in 1468, was the first time that the Shroud was recognized as genuine by the papacy and the relic was even given its own feast day, 4 May.

Some time in the early 1500s, the Shroud suffered a degree of damage which appears to have been made by a red-hot poker being thrust through the folded cloth. Ian Wilson claims that ‘it seems very likely that they are the scars of some primitive “trial by fire” ceremony. .

In 1532 the cloth was damaged still further by a fire in the building which caught one edge of it and scorched all 48 folds before it could be extinguished. Fourteen large triangular-shaped patches and eight smaller ones, made from altar cloth, were sewn over the worst of the damage, and it was backed with a simple piece of holland cloth.

In 1578 the Duke of Savoy had the Shroud brought to Turin, where it has rested ever since. In the final decade of the 17th century a magnificent Baroque cathedral, dedicated to St John the Baptist, was commissioned from the architect Guarino Guarini. The relic took up its new abode on 1 June 1694, being carried into the building and locked behind a grille in the place of honour above the high altar and only exposed publicly at very special events such as important weddings in the House of Savoy, papal visits or great Church occasions.

THE RELIC ITSELF

The Shroud of Turin measures 14ft 3m (4.36m) long by 3ft 7in (1.lm) wide and consists of one single piece of cloth with the addition of a full length strip 3 .5in (8.5cm) wide joined by a single seam on the left-hand side. Imprinted in an almost pure sepia monochrome, like a stained shadow on the cloth, is the faint outline of the front and back of a bearded, long-haired man laid out as if dead.” The image is subtle and, except when viewed from a distance, very difficult to discern. Despite the poor quality of the image there is sufficient detail in the blood-like stains to convince the devout for many centuries that this is the burial cloth of Jesus.

The Shroud was photographed during the 1898 exposition by an amateur photographer, Secondo Pia. In those early days of photography nothing was ever certain until the plates had been developed and Secondo admitted to considerable relief when he first saw the image appear. His relief soon turned to wonder, for he was not looking, as he had expected, at a negative version of the shadowy figure he had seen on the cloth, but at an unmistakable and highly detailed photographic likeness, the light and shade of which gave the figure an almost three-dimensional quality, with the blood flows from the head, hands, feet and side showing up with magical realism. The overall impression was of a tall, impressively built man with a strikingly life-like face. The photographs caused a worldwide sensation and sparked in-depth investigations that have continued ever since. The Shroud was photographed professionally in 1931 and this time the results were even more remarkable, for considerable advances had been made in photographic techniques. Since then it has been photographed twice more, in 1969 and 1973.

The first photographs stimulated the curiosity of the medical profession, particularly that of forensic pathologists and anatomists. Yves Delage, Professor of Comparative Anatomy at the Sorbonne in Paris, was the first to announce his findings publicly. On 21 April 1902 he gave a lecture entitled ‘The image of Christ visible on the Holy Shroud of Turin’. Not surprisingly he had an unusually large and attentive audience. The professor explained that, from a medical point of view, the wounds and anatomical data recorded on the Shroud were so accurate that it seemed impossible that they could be the work of an artist. He continued by explaining how difficult and utterly pointless it would have been for an artist to depict such a figure in a negative manner and that, furthermore, as there was no trace of any known pigment on the cloth, he was convinced that the image found upon it must be that of Jesus, created by some physio-chemical process that had taken place in the tomb.

Ber here - it is MY opinion , having a degree in physics and having been heavily involved in nuclear physics as well, that when God resurrected Jesus; a great burst of electomagnetic radiation emanated from all parts of his body, through the cloth, which made the imprint on the cloth that no one could really see until a photographic negative was taken of it in 1898. Electromagenetic radiation is just like light coming from a light bulb, the microwave energy that cooks your hot dog or delivers signals to your cellphone; differing only in frequency, wavelength, source and of course energy level. Electromagnetic radiation is a photon of energy traveling the speed of light in a sine wave through space with no mass. The X-Ray your dentist uses to search for cavities which marks the photographic plate is a good example of electromagnetic radiation in the form of x-rays, created by a beam of electrons striking a tungsten surface. Notice that your dentist looks at a negative to discern the cavity. It is strange God didn't allow such details to be seen and witnessed before the advent of the camera. But then, many things are being revealed by Him today that were unknown yesterday.

Delage’s lecture caused an uproar and Marcelin Berthelot, the secretary of the Academy, refused to publish the text of it in full. With the publication of the second set of photographs, the Shroud’s authenticity began to gain far wider acceptance among the medical profession. Research by Dr Pierre Barbet of St Joseph’s Hospital in Paris led to the conclusion that the wounds depicted on it were genuinely those of a crucified man.
These results were confirmed by the Cologne radiologist Professor Hermann Moedder and Dr JudicaCordiglia, the professor of forensic medicine of the University of Milan. In the United States further study was made on the bloodstains by Dr Anthony Sava of Brooklyn. Most of the present-day medical opinion rests on research carried out by Dr Robert Bucklin of Michigan who now resides in California.

From Ber again - It should be noted that the latest DNA analysis of the bloodstains found on the shroud of Turin also came up with only 24 chromosones (23 from Mary and a y to make him a him) which coincides with the blood testing done of the dried blood found on the mercy seat of the ark of the convenant, which was found 25' under the crucifixion post. Remember the earthquake that occurred as Jesus was near the end; it opened up a crack in the rock beneath the crucifixion post and when the Roman soldier speared Jesus in the side; his blood and bodily fluids fell down the 25' crack and landed on the ark of the convenant that had been placed there almost 600 years beforehand. It appears the immaculate conception holds more truth that the Rex Deus theory that Mary was impregnated by the high priest Gabriel at the Temple School before being handed over to Joseph for marriage. God makes these things known in due time.

A life-size model of the head portrayed on the Shroud was made by the British photographer Leo Vala, who produced a three-dimensional image. The distinguished ethnologist, Professor Canton S. Coon of Harvard, who studied these photographs, described the face as that ‘of a physical type found in modern times among Sephardic Jews and noble Arabs’ The wounds depicted on the head, according to Dr David Willis, cannot be described except in the context of the crown or cap of thorns described in the Gospels. Marks on the back and front of the body from the shoulders downwards, found in groups of three, have been described by doctors as being physiologically accurate representations of flogging. Bruising which is consistent with carrying the crossbeam of a cross has also been identified. Professor Judica-Cordiglia has classified the damage to the knees of the man in the image as being the result of repeated falls.

THE EVIDENCE OF CRUCIFIXION

The wounds deriving from the crucifixion itself have naturally attracted considerable attention. The flow of blood originating from the wound in the left wrist indicates that at the time of bleeding the arm must have been raised at an angle between 55 and 65 degrees from the vertical. This is consistent with crucifixion, as in order to maintain his breathing the victim would have flexed his elbows to raise his body and so bring relief to his labouring lungs. Contrary to many medieval depictions of the crucifixion, the nail wounds on the Shroud are on the wrist and not the hand. This above all is a further indication of authenticity, as nailing through the hands would not have supported the weight of the body. According to Dr Pierre Barbet, who studied the wounds in the 1930's, the soldiers who had nailed the victim to the cross were experienced men who knew their anatomy. Barbet had experimented in reproducing the wounds by nailing a recently amputated arm at the same point as that on the Shroud image. The nail passed through a gap in the bones of the wrist known as ‘the space of destot’.

The most unexpected proof that derived from Barbet’s work was the contraction of the thumb as the nail was being driven through the wrist; the passage of the nail had stimulated the median nerve, causing the muscles of the thumb to contract. When he consulted the image on the Shroud he discovered that no thumbs were visible on either hand. He deduced that the nailing of the victim had produced exactly the same effect as his experiment. He then posed the question ‘Could a forger have imagined this?’ Barbet used the same techniques on amputated feet, again emulating the position shown on the Shroud. The nail passed easily between the second and third metatarsal bones, so that the body would have been supported by a single nail impaling the feet. The nailing of the wrists and feet, with the dependant body weight, made the victims secure and incapable of freeing themselves.

A clear wound is visible on the left-hand side of the image between the fifth and sixth rib which, due to mirror image reversal, would have been on the right side of the victim. The blood flow from the wound, which must have been inflicted when the body was erect, is broken by some clear areas which are believed to show the mixture of a clear fluid with the blood24 which, according to the German radiologist Professor Moedder, emanated from the pleural sac. Dr Anthony Sava noted that there is often an accumulation of fluid in the pleural cavity as a response to injury. He is of the opinion that the scourging which is indicated by the marks on the back, shoulders and front of the body were the most probable cause of the accumulation of fluid in the pleural cavity and this trauma-induced pleurisy was the principal cause of death, which was only exacerbated by the crucifixion. The consensus that arises from the medical experts who have examined the photographic evidence of the Shroud is that the cloth was, beyond all reasonable doubt, in contact with a victim of crucifixion.

Jewish custom and the Gospels show that the body of Jesus would have been laid out full-length in the tomb prepared by Joseph of Arimathea. The position of the body with the hands crossed over the pelvic area is identical to that discovered by Father de Vaux of the Ecole Biblique in his excavation of Essene burials at Qumran. It is ironic that this connection of Jesus with Essene practices was inadvertently confirmed by de Vaux, whose principal aim in his handling of the Dead Sea Scrolls seems to have been to deny all contact between them and Jesus. Contrary to Jewish practice, it is plainly obvious from all the evidence on the Shroud that the body depicted on it was not washed according to custom and law, but had been anointed with copious quantities of expensive ointment and hurriedly wrapped in the burial cloth.

THE FORENSIC TESTS

In June 1969 a commission of specialists studied the Shroud so that they might recommend suitable tests in order to establish its nature and provenance. The commission was convened in secret, but the news leaked out and the cardinal and the custodians of the Shroud were accused of acting ‘like thieves in the night’ The commission reported on 17 June, noting that the Shroud was in an excellent state of preservation, and recommended tests which would require minimal samples of the cloth. The arrangement for taking samples was kept secret and was conducted on 24 November 1973, after a two-day exposition for the television cameras.

Seventeen samples of thread were removed from different areas on the Shroud, with great care being taken to avoid the slightest possibility of contamination. An expert from the Ghent Institute of Textile Technology, Professor Gilbert Raes, had joined the team and for his benefit, two samples, one of 1/2 x 1 3/4in (13 x 40mm) and the other of 1/3 x 1 3/4in (10 x 40mm), were taken from one side of the cloth. To add to these the professor had been given two individual threads to examine. One of 12 mm in length was taken from the weft and the second of 13 mm from the warp. The overall style of weave of the cloth was that of a three-to-one herringbone twill, which was used at the time of Jesus but was found more commonly in silk than linen. Examination of cloth fibres under polarized light satisfied him that it was linen. Microscopic examination disclosed unmistakable traces of cotton, which led Raes to conclude that the material had been woven on a loom that had also produced cotton fabric. Analysis of the cotton revealed that it was of a species known as gossypium hebaceum which is native to the eastern Mediterranean. This was extremely significant and, according to Raes, indicated that the fabric had been manufactured in the Middle East.

The Swiss criminologist, Dr Max Frei, took samples of some of the particles adhering to the cloth and was able to identify small particles of mineral, fragments of hair and fibres deriving from plants, bacterial spores, spores from mosses and fungi, and pollen grains from flowering plants. Some of the pollens were halophytes from desert varieties of tamarix, suaeda and artemisia, which are to be found almost exclusively growing around the shores of the Dead Sea. Frei stated simply:

These plants are of great diagnostic value for our geographical studies as identical desert plants are missing in all the other countries where the Shroud is believed to have been exposed in the open air. Consequently, a forgery, produced somewhere in France during the Middle Ages, in a country lacking these typical halophytes could not contain such characteristic pollen grains from the deserts of Palestine.

Pollen from the surface of the Shroud includes six species of plant that are exclusively Palestinian in origin. He also states that there is pollen from a significant number of plants from the Anatolian Steppes of Turkey, as well as eight species of Mediterranean plants that are consistent with the Shroud’s admitted exposure in France and Italy.

In March 1977 the United States hosted a scientific conference of research on the Turin Shroud which was attended by clergy from different denominations and a large number of scientists, including Dr Robert Bucklin, the pathologist, and Professor Joseph Gambescia.

The majority of the scientists were from a diverse range of backgrounds, which included the US Atomic Energy Commission, the Pasadena Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Albuquerque Sandia Laboratory and the spectroscopy division of the Los Alamos Laboratory Bishop John Robinson was deeply impressed not only with the calibre of the scientists involved but also with the seriousness with which they approached the question of the authenticity of the relic. He stated:

‘There is no one in this thing who is being either gullible or just dismissive.’ The physicist Dr John Jackson and the aerodynamicist Dr Eric Jumper reported that the image had not been created by direct contact but by some form of emanation from the body and that there was a precise relationship between the intensity of the image and the degree of separation between the body and the cloth.

Dr Jackson then used a 3 x 5in (7.5 x 12.5cm) transparency of the Shroud in a modern Interpretation Systems VP-8 Image Analyzer to display a figure in perfect three-dimensional relief. An ordinary photograph analysed by the same machine simply does not carry sufficient information regarding distance and proportion to create such an accurate image. However, there was one strange anomaly in this image; the eyes displayed a curious unnatural bulge as if something had been laid upon them. Jackson discovered that it was a long-standing Jewish custom to lay coins or a broken potsherd over the eyes of a corpse prior to burial. He realized that a coin laid over the eyes in this way would exactly match these unnatural bulges.

As a result of the American experiments, the hardened sceptic, Dr John Robinson, was moved to claim that with the accumulated evidence already available, the burden of proof had shifted and it was now up to those who doubted the Shroud’s authenticity to prove their case, rather than the reverse. To the distress of those who supported its authenticity, this is apparently what happened.

THE CARBON DATING

After the death of ex-King Umberto of Italy in 1983, the Shroud of Turin passed into the hands of the Vatican, who gave permission for carbon dating as a result of intensive lobbying from a wide spectrum of interested parties. Three laboratories were involved, the University of Arizona in Tucson, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and the Oxford Research Laboratory.

The samples were taken in total secrecy, but the Church did allow representatives from all three laboratories to be present. One 2 3/4in (7cm) sample was cut from one corner and divided into three. Each piece was sealed in appropriate containers, one for each of the laboratories concerned. The whole process was videotaped. The results of the carbon dating were announced by Cardinal Anastasio Ballestrero in Turin on 13 October 1988 and later the same day by Dr Tite of the British Museum Research Laboratory, who had supervised the entire process. The results disclosed that it was 99.9 per cent certain that the Shroud of Turin had its origins in the period from 1000—1500 CE and 95 per cent certain that it dated from somewhere between 1260 and 1390. The world reeled with shock from the announcement that the Shroud of Turin had been scientifically shown to be a fake. The papal hierarchy’s attitude was oddly ambivalent. Professor Luigi Gonella, the scientific adviser to the Vatican, made a strange comment: ‘The tests were not commissioned by the Church and we are not bound by the results.’

Journalists and fantasists had a field day; articles on the dating of the Shroud were soon replaced by multiple allegations of conspiracy concerning the tests. Brother Bruno Bonnet-Eymard, the extreme right-wing luminary of La Contre-Reforme Catholique au XXeme Siecle, accused Dr Michael Tite of switching samples taken from the Shroud with those from a 13th-century cope, and implied that Tite received a professorship for his pains. This eminent Christian claimed that the tests were a deliberate attempt by scientists to undermine Christianity. Professor Werner Buist denounced the scientific community on television, and fell back to a tried and trusted defence by claiming that it was all a masonic anti-Catholic plot.

The German authors, Holger Kersten and Elmar Gruber, wrote that the carbon-dating results were rigged by the scientists acting in collusion with the Church. For reasons that are completely unexplained, the video cameras had been switched off after the samples had been taken and were not switched on again until after they had been sealed into their containers. Thus there was ample opportunity for a deliberate breach of protocol and for Tite to have switched the samples as has been alleged by Brother Bonnet-Eymard. They also allege that there are serious discrepancies between the descriptions of the samples that were taken and those made by the scientists in respect of the samples that they had received. Viewed from the perspective of the hidden streams of spirituality, the motivation they ascribe to the Church to explain this alleged conspiracy is particularly interesting, for they assert that the Church wished to discredit the Shroud because it proves that Jesus was still alive when he was taken down from the cross.39

THE CONTROVERSY REOPENS

The validation of the carbon dating by three leading laboratories of international repute should have put an end to the argument over the authenticity of the Shroud once and for all. However, an American scientist made a discovery which appears to discredit the results. Carbon dating techniques are subject to massive distortion by extremely minute amounts of contamination, which is why the samples used for dating the Shroud were cleansed by the most reliable techniques then known. Yet despite all the precautions taken, one significant form of contamination that was unknown at the time arose from the very nature of the doth that was being tested.

Many commentators, including Ian Wilson, have described the holy relic as having ‘a damask-like sheen’.41 This shiny appearance has recently been discovered to arise from a natural growth of microbiological organisms which completely envelop each constituent thread of the cloth. The extent of this contamination, which has been proven to be completely resistant to the cleansing methods used by the three authorized laboratories, is such that what was in fact being tested was slightly less than 40 per cent Shroud material and more than 60 per cent living organism. Recent tests have proved that the cleansing agents used by the laboratories doing the carbon dating were completely ineffective in respect of the microbiological organisms coating the Shroud, but do tend to dissolve part of the cellulose from the flax, thus increasing the distortion created by the microbiological coating. The end result is that there is such a gross distortion of the results that the whole question of the age and authenticity of this controversial relic is still wide open.

The existence of a microbiological coating of living organisms has already been demonstrated on jade and stone carvings from the Mayan civilization in Mesoamerica and on mummy wrappings from ancient Egypt. The initial discoveries that led to this re-evaluation of carbon dating techniques were made by Dr Leoncio A Garza-Valdes from San Antonio, who held the chair of microbiology at the Health Sciences Centre of the University of Texas. He noticed that jade and stone carvings of the Mayans all had a particularly lustrous sheen. He found that the carvings had been coated by millions of bacteria which produce a pinkish pigment and also by some fungi which varied in colour from dark brown to black. This strange mixture combined to form a yellowish ‘plastic coat’ over the entire surface of the carving and the resultant lustrous gloss he called a ‘bioplastic coating’. One of the artifacts he examined was a pectoral formed of several pieces of carved jade held together by strong cotton filaments. Using an electron microscope he discovered that these cotton threads were also covered with fungi and bioplastic coating. A further examination of the coating by an industrial analysis laboratory in San Antonio confirmed his findings and proved that the lustre on the artifacts was organic and not man-made.

He then proceeded to study the textile wrappings on two very different Egyptian mummies, one of a 13-year-old girl which was found during excavations by Sir Flinders Petrie and which now rests in the Manchester Museum in England, the other of an ibis from his own private collection. Both the mummy and the wrappings of the girl were carbon dated by the University of Manchester with disturbing results. The bones were dated to 1510 BCE but the wrappings to 255 CE — a discrepancy of more than 1,700 years. In January 1996 Dr Garza-Valdes discovered that the flax fibres making up the cloth all carried a thick bioplastic coating similar to those he had found on other ancient textiles. Similar tests were performed on the mummified ibis and the presence of a bioplastic coating on the fibres of the bird’s wrapping was also clearly established. When both the ibis mummy and the wrappings were carbon dated the age discrepancy between the wrapping and the bone was 400—700 years.

The samples of the Shroud taken for radio carbon dating in 1988 were cut by Professor Giovanni Riggi Numana who showed small fragments of the original samples to Dr Garza-Valdes as well as pieces of Scotch tape with blood samples taken from the back of the head of the image. Riggi removed a thread from one of the original samples which Dr Garza-Valdes placed under the microscope and immediately discerned bioplastic coating completely covering the fibres.46 He is of the opinion that if the carbon dating tests were to be repeated today, in exactly the same manner as they were conducted in 1988, the results would indicate an even later date because the bacteria have multiplied considerably in the last 12 years and will have skewed the date even further. He has been able to culture the bacteria from the Shroud and prove that they are still living and multiplying organisms, therefore the proportion of organism to thread is increasing. This American scientist has not restricted his investigations to the bioplastic coating alone, however, but has also rigorously examined the pieces of Scotch tape and the so-called ‘blood’ samples taken from the back of the head of the image.

There are already conflicting scientific reports in this respect. The Italian scientist Dr Bauma-Bollone reports that these stains were human blood of the AB group. Drs Adler and Heller, examining the same tapes used by Dr McCrone, supported the statements of their Italian colleague, that these were indeed bloodstains. Dr Garza-Valdes examined the sample given to him by Professor Riggi and proved that it contained human blood of the AB group, which has historically been the most common blood group found amongst Jewish people. He was able to state that the bloodstains were ancient because of the degree of degradation in the small amount of blood he had found on his sample. He also examined everything else that could be found on the samples and Scotch tape provided by Riggi. In the sample taken from the occipital area of the image he found several microscopic tubules of wood which, if the Shroud is authentic, could only have come from the part of the cross that Jesus carried to Golgotha. These tubules proved to be of oak.

Dr Garza-Valdes’ research was published early in 1996 in an article which described his work on the Mayan artefacts and the Shroud of Turin, including the results of the DNA testing of the blood samples. The front cover of the journal carried the facial image of Jesus taken from the Shroud over the caption ‘Secrets of the Shroud — Microbiologists discover how the Shroud of Turin hides its true age’. The article concluded that the Shroud of Turin is many centuries older than its carbon date would suggest. Even Dr Harry Gove of Rochester University in America, the prime inventor of the methodology used to carbon date the Shroud, was quoted as saying ‘This is not a crazy idea’. Thanks to the immaculate research by the American microbiologist the validity of the 1988 carbon dating of the Shroud of Turin is now highly questionable.

THE HIDDEN MESSAGE OF THE SHROUD

If we first assess the scientific comment in chronological order we start by considering the words of Professor Yves Delage of Paris, who claimed in 1902 that the wounds and anatomical data recorded on the Shroud are so accurate that it seemed impossible to conceive that they could be the work of an artist. The research by Dr Pierre Barbet concluded that the wounds depicted on the relic were genuinely those of a crucified man and these results were confirmed by Professor 1-Iermann Moedder of Cologne, Dr Judica-Cordiglia, professor of forensic medicine, Dr Anthony Sava of Brooklyn, and Dr Robert Bucklin of California. Then we have to include in our deliberations the views of the ethnologist Professor Coon of Harvard, who described the three-dimensional image derived from the face on the Shroud as ‘of a physical type found in modern times among Sephardic Jews and noble Arabs’. The professional opinion of Dr David Willis and Professor Judica-Cordiglia in respect of the wounds depicted on the Shroud are given further credence by the work of Dr Pierre Barbet, whose experimentation on amputated limbs replicated many of the depicted details which could not possibly have been known by any artist of the medieval era.

The comparative studies of the weave of the cloth indicate that the cotton used derived from the Middle East, not Europe. Dr Max Frei’s analysis of the small particles found on the Shroud indicate that the relic had been exposed to the air in the desert areas near the shores of the Dead Sea. The experiments in technological image processing conducted in 1976 moved Dr John Robinson to state unequivocally that the burden of proof had shifted and that it was now up to those who doubted the Shroud’s authenticity to prove their case rather than the reverse.

We believe that it is now almost certain that the Shroud of Turin is genuine, that it IS the shroud or cloth in which Jesus was wrapped when he was taken down from the cross nearly 2,000 years ago or used to cover him with when he was entombed and resurrected.

The resurrection, in my opinion, is the only means by which such detailed imagery of Jesus could have been transferred to this cloth. There are those in the Rex Deus lineage who claim Jesus was NOT dead when taken down from the cross; and the anointment with oil was to bring him back to health, but it does not account for the details found upon the cloth which could only have come from an intense radiation occurring during the resurrection; and certainly no one would get up and walk away from that ordeal a couple days later.

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