A parting gift from Benedict XVI:
The Shroud of Turin presented on TV
with an 'app' that will enable close
study of the state of research on what
could be Jesus's burial cloth
It is most opportune to recall Benedict XVI's reflection on the Shroud because today was a special day for those in Europe who could watch a special telecast about the Shroud which had been authorized for this Holy Saturday by Benedict XVI.
In one of his final acts before his resignation, Benedict XVI authorised this special “ostensione” – or solemn devotional exposition – of the Shroud.
The presentation was preceded by a brief video message from Pope Francis. Here is the official Vatican translation of the message:
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
I join all of you gathered before the Holy Shroud, and I thank the Lord who, through modern technology, offers us this possibility.
Even if it takes place in this way, we do not merely “look”, but rather we venerate by a prayerful gaze. I would go further: we are in fact looked upon ourselves. This face has eyes that are closed, it is the face of one who is dead, and yet mysteriously he is watching us, and in silence he speaks to us.
How is this possible? How is it that the faithful, like you, pause before this icon of a man scourged and crucified? It is because the Man of the Shroud invites us to contemplate Jesus of Nazareth. This image, impressed upon the cloth, speaks to our heart and moves us to climb the hill of Calvary, to look upon the wood of the Cross, and to immerse ourselves in the eloquent silence of love.
Let us therefore allow ourselves to be reached by this look, which is directed not to our eyes but to our heart. In silence, let us listen to what he has to say to us from beyond death itself.
By means of the Holy Shroud, the unique and supreme Word of God comes to us: Love made man, incarnate in our history; the merciful love of God who has taken upon himself all the evil of the world to free us from its power.
This disfigured face resembles all those faces of men and women marred by a life which does not respect their dignity, by war and violence which afflict the weakest… And yet, at the same time, the face in the Shroud conveys a great peace; this tortured body expresses a sovereign majesty.
It is as if it let a restrained but powerful energy within it shine through, as if to say: have faith, do not lose hope; the power of the love of God, the power of the Risen One overcomes all things.
So, looking upon the Man of the Shroud, I make my own the prayer which Saint Francis of Assisi prayed before the Crucifix:
"Most High, glorious God, enlighten the shadows of my heart, and grant me a right faith, a certain hope and perfect charity, sense and understanding, Lord, so that I may accomplish your holy and true command. Amen."
Turin shroud makes rare appearance on TV
amid claims that it is not a forgery
by Lizzy Davies in Rome
March 29, 2013
The Shroud of Turin was to be shown on television for the first time in 40 years on Easter Saturday as a new claim that the four-meter-long linen cloth dates from ancient times proves its enduring ability to fascinate and perplex.
In what the Vatican described as his parting gift to the Roman Catholic Church before he resigned, Benedict XVI signed off on a special 90-minute broadcast of the Shroud from Turin Cathedral and introduced in a brief preamble by his successor, Pope Francis.
"It will be a message of intense spiritual scope, charged with positivity, which will help hope never to be lost," said the archbishop of Turin, Cesare Nosiglia.
Timed to mark the 40th anniversary of the shroud's last appearance on TV – ordered by Pope Paul VI in 1973 – the unusual programme on Italian state broadcaster RAI comes as the new Pope, the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, prepares for his first Easter as head of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics.
It also comes amid new claims that the piece of fabric, which many Catholics believe Jesus was buried in, does indeed date from around his lifetime. Previous tests apparently confirmed the shroud to be a clever medieval forgery.
Giulio Fanti, associate professor of mechanical and thermal measurement at Padua University, claims tests had shown that the cloth, which bears the image of a man's face and body, dates from between 280BC and 220AD.
Fanti claims that the carbon-14 dating used in a landmark study in 1988 was "not statistically reliable". That study claimed that the shroud actually dated from the Middle Ages. But the mystery of the cloth has lingered ever since.
The Vatican does not have a position on its authenticity. When he was still cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the previous Pope wrote that the shroud was "a truly mysterious image, which no human artistry was capable of producing".
Fanti's results are detailed in a new book,
Il Mistero della Sindone(The Mystery of the Shroud), written by him and journalist Saverio Gaeta.
Although it is rarely displayed,
Catholics and historians keen for a closer look at the shroud will be able to study it at their leisure with the help of a new app launched on Friday. Users of smartphones and tablets will be able to download the multilingual application for free and examine detailed images of the shroud courtesy of high-definition technology.
The Shroud is a 'snapshot'
of the Resurrection, author says
Interview with Saverio Gaeta
Translated from
March 30, 2013
The subject of the Shroud of Turin ('La Santa Sindone' - the Holy Shroud - as it is called in Italian) has been debated for decades but it has never gone out of mode.
Such that Saverio Gaeta, the Vatican correspondent for
Famiglia Cristiana [Italy's most widely circulated weekly magazine], has just devoted to the Shroud for the third time in his career a book of 240 pages,
Il mistero della Sindone, in which he presents the latest developments in scientific research on the Shroud, based on the work of Professor Giulio Fanti, professor of mechanical and thermal measures at the Engineering Faculty of the University of Padua, and his team, who claim they have definitively refuted the carbon dating of the Shroud done in 1988 that says it dates only to the Middle Ages.
In what way has Prof. Fanti's team demonstrated the inexactitudes of the study that claims the Shroud is a cloth that dates back only to the Late Middle Ages?
Through a sturdy statistical analysis of the calculations proposed by the scientists who did the Carbon-14 dating in 1988, they found that the data had been manipulated to correspond to the result they wanted to get. Besides, the sample of the Shroud that was taken for the dating only measured about 2 square centimeters, which was certainly not representative of the entire Shroud.
Are there other aspects that seem questionable about the 1988 investigation?
Yes, for instance, the fact that the Arizona laboratory that carried out the study had two Shroud fragments to test but they only used one. Why?
And what samples did you use in the new research?
Prof. Fanti did not get any new fragments, but he used fibers found in the filters when the Shroud was 'dusted' in 1968 and again in 1988 - the traceability of these samples is documented.
How were these fibers analyzed?
With two new chemical methods based on spectroscopy and a mechanical procedure, which both compared some 20 samples of fabrics from 3000 BC to our time, The average of three comparisons made independently of each other and through both methods, showed that the Shroud dates to the first half of the first century AD, around the years 30-35, namely, around the time of Christ's death.
And how was the image on the cloth produced?
Fanti hypothesized - and to a certain degree, has even demonstrated it - that the image was produced by the so-called 'corona effect', produced by the emission of a great amount of energy from the body of Christ at the moment of the Resurrection.
[Ample work has been by Italian scientists on this hypothesis, including a study by Italy's center for nuclear research, which showed that an image such as that on the Shroud could only be produced by a burst of radiant energy that cannot even be replicated by the most sophisticated instruments available today. I have posted a couple of articles on this thread describing such studies.]
And was this theory verified?
Fanti did it in two ways, both by computer as well as empirically, through a scale model - since it would be impossible to do so for anything the size of the actual Shroud precisely because of the immense amount of energy that it would require.
And how do you know that the image on the Shroud is Christ and not just some dead convict?
Because in the entire history of art, from the 3rd-4th century AD onwards, from the very first frescoes and mosaics purporting to show the face of Jesus, all the depictions show his face exactly as we see it on the Shroud - despite the broken nose, the beard parted in half, and the parting on the long hair. This allows us to say that the face, as it is, was already known even in Rome from the third century onwards even when the Shroud was still in Edessa.
What do the positions of the wounds on the man of the Shroud tell us?
The wounds correspond to the description we are given in the Gospels, even if that information is scant. The Gospels simply say that Christ was flagellated, and Fanti, analyzing the image on the Shroud, counts about 370 scourge wounds. The crown of thorns is not described in the Gospel, and the iconography suggested has always been like a circle around the head, whereas the Shroud shows that it was in the form of a helmet that was forcibly thrust on the cranium. And the wounds on the wrists show that it was not the palms that were nailed to the Cross but the wrists.
Do the bloodstains on the Shroud also prove other passages in the Synoptic Gospels?
Yes, because there are different types of stains depending on whether the wound was inflicted before death (in which case it would arterial blood) or afterwards (it would then be venous), such as those stains near Christ's left rib cage, which the Gospels say was pierced after he died.
Has the DNA of the blood ever been mapped?
No, because the fabric of the Shroud had been handled so often through the centuries - manually up to the 17th century, at least - so it has accumulated a whole variety of DNA - It would be difficult to say which is that of the man in the Shroud. We do know that his blood is type AB.
One gets the impression that those who carried out the 1988 studies were definitely prejudiced against the Shroud...
Yes, that study was perhaps flawed from the start by a decided prejudice already set to postdate the Shroud to the medieval era. The fact is that the result of their investigation is mathematically wrong because of the unjustified substitution of figures which brought the dating to the period between 1260 and 1390.
What then did Prof. Fanti's team do?
The person they asked to do the principal work of dating by mechanical means found out only afterwards that the fiber he was asked to analyze was one from the Shroud. He obviously could not have been told earlier what he was working on, to avoid having any preconception.
[In scientific study, this is called blinding, in which the researcher is not given any background information about the sample he is studying, so as not to influence his work in any way.]
What is the official position of the Church about the Shroud?
On this or any other relic, the Church has always moved cautiously because believing in relics or apparitions is not dogma. In this case, the freedom of the People of God is total. So there is no official position. The Popes have each had their own personal attitudes. John Paul II said that, in his opinion, the Shroud is a relic, even if he never said so in a magisterial way.
What about the fact that the last spiritual legacy left by Papa Ratzinger is the solemn exhibition of the Shroud for today, March 30?
The fact that Benedict XVI made this decision - which is something his successor cannot but share = after he had announced his decision to resign the papacy, means he wanted this special exhibition to remind the world of the passion, death and resurrection of Christ. not just as the cardinal event of Christianity, but also for the life of the Church today.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 31/03/2013 15:49]