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Here is a link where you will see the face of Jesus on "The Shroud of Turin". It is so clear. But sadly, It is also an alarming link, as it tells what bad shape the Shroud is in right now. (Sorry if I PING anyone twice or more. I'm trying to ping anyone I think will be interested).

http://www.shroud.com/restored.htm#dreisbach

I found the link because someone tried to debunk the Shroud of Turin. That naysayer led to many more positive links than negative ones regarding the Shroud! There are always naysayers in life, but "good" can come from even their negativity. :o)

HOWEVER, there is VERY "recent" and "not very good" news on how "The Shroud of Turin" is being taken care of!!

I don't believe it's "intentional".... just horribly "misguided". It is however "heartbreaking" and even "SHOCKING". I think those who understand "preservation and restoration methods" will be as shocked as I am.

For those Christians who are interested in this "HOLY GARMENT" pay particular attention to "Comments on the Shroud "Restoration" by William Meacham". The other scientists in this link are equally alarmed regarding it's care. Meacham has links where you can go view clips of the Shroud being examined.

Look here: http://www.hku.hk/hkprehis/shrdvid2.htm CLICK ON THE PICTURES AFTER THEY LOAD (you will need DSL or CABLE) (The first picture shows them scraping away burns, when they should have cut them away and saved the clippings. The second video shows "bare hands" sewing. All the while mixing their DNA with that on the Shroud and spreading DNA everywhere. The Third video shows bright lights on, while a Priest talks. Lighting can be very damaging to old linen. And I guess this recent "restoration" took a month. They say the Shroud looks darker :o(

They vaccumed up stuff, were scraping material...and well, I guess you'll need to read the link. I'm pretty upset myself after reading this. We need to "pray" that the Shroud is taken care of better than this. Like I said, .. the caretakers were just terribly misguided. But we need for it to be cared for better than this! I was so disheartened while studying the links and watching the video's!!!

I'm extremely worried about the preservation of this Sacred Garment. Many PRAYERS are needed!!

LASTLY,.. LET ME ADD,.. I THINK THIS IS A TIME FOR ALL "CHRISTIANS" TO COME TOGETHER!!! It is NOT a time to blame the Catholic Church for their care of the Shroud, or anything like that. There is so much EVIL going on, that we TRULY MUST UNITE. (If that isn't OBVIOUS I honestly don't know what is). GAY MARRIAGES, BREASTS BEING EXPOSED, BABIES BEING MURDERED.. so please, lets keep this debate civil.. I implore everyone!

That so MANY Christians have UNITED AGAINST EVIL and for this movie "THE Passion of The Christ" is wonderful!! Let us continue in that vein! But also let us pray for this HOLY GARMENT!!

The Scientist on the above link state that this was all done to try to "preserve" the Shroud. The Church just treated it "Like an Antique Table Linen" (though a terribly misguided and un-educated decision, in all the Scientists opinions, I REPEAT it was NOT done in malice.. the Catholic Church would NOT do that! I'm NOT Catholic, but even I know that!!). The Scientists are not pleased as you will see. The intelligentsia in the Scientific Community are just sick over this!!

I must say, after reading this article, having a close friend with a PHD in Archeology, and having a deep interest in this field, watching documentary's and being hugely interested in all this (but admittedly having limited knowledge).. I am deeply concerned with the treatment the Shroud is getting. After all,.. IMO, this is the Burial Cloth of Jesus Christ!!

The Catholic Church must allow EXPERTS from the Scientific Community to have more input into the FUTURE of the Shroud. I am not saying we want OTHERS TO TOUCH IT OR TO TAKE CARE OF IT.. just to DECIDE HOW IT "IS" DONE!!

To lose this Garment, after it surviving for all these hundreds of decades would be a HUGE tragedy!! Here is the link again:

http://www.shroud.com/restored.htm#dreisbach

It is apparent there was a VAST Scientific community of Scholars that were "IN PLACE" available, waiting, and there to advise the Church on this "well in advance" and have been for MANY YEARS! In fact, they had all met just prior to this RECENT restoration!!

Sadly, they church went ahead with this "ill advised" restoration anyway (They mis-interpreted the advice of a deceased scientist). We do need to write to the Vatican and voice our displeasure to them! We can't sit silent when it is of such great importance! (Is there anything MORE important to Christians?) I'm so hurt and dis-heartened!

Anyway.....

For those who didn't believe the Shroud was real, BESIDES reading the links above, here's something else to read.

Here's an excerpt from the CRC on the work the STURP team:

"Professor Morano, of the electronic Microscope Centre of Vercelli and of the Institute of Pathological Anatomy of Turin, is the first to have studied the ultrastructural aspects of a thread of the Shroud by means of an electronic scanning microscope. Progress on the classical electronic transmitting microscope has been considerable. This quite recent technique consists in exploring the sample by means of an electronic beam focused on a very limited point and scanning it according to a trajectory like that used for a television picture.

Now an examination, carried out in this three-dimensional perspective, on a thread of linen a hundred years old shows flattened and completely smooth fibres, whereas the fibres from a thread of the Shroud show a cylindrical and dirty ("sporco") aspect, encrusted with every sort of foreign body: spores, pollen grains.... exactly like the fibres of a two thousand year old cloth shrouding an Egyptian mummy in the Egyptian Museum of Turin. A further decisive proof of the Shroud's authenticity."

Also from the CRC: THE DATING OF THE IMAGE BY MEANS OF PALEOGRAPHY THE IMAGE DATED TO WITHIN TWO YEARS

Our historical investigation finds striking confirmation through paleography, which dates the image to within two years. Our late lamented friend, Father Filas, sent us the complete file of this discovery, which, to his credit, he brought to completion though not having initiated it himself. This fact needs to be recalled, for it all began with a consensus of American scientists, vouched for by the preliminary work of the STURP team at Albuquerque in 1977 and by Jumper's communication to the Congress of Turin in 1978. But it all ended in such a persecution of Father Filas starting from the meeting at Los Alamos in 1979, that to this day his file is as good as banned worldwide.

Why? For one reason only, which is totally alien to science: because we have here a dating of the image, and not just of the cloth, dating it to almost the actual year of the Event itself. It is the stamp or seal of Pontius Pilate, giving a date to which no scientist can raise any objection.

PILATE'S LEPTON It is the three-dimensional analysis which gave birth to this hypothesis, but even a look at an ordinary photograph will clearly reveal a kind of disc placed over each eyelid, dark on the positive and light on the negative. An enlargement of this imprint, on the right eyelid, enabled Father Filas to recognize the imprint of a coin struck under Pontius Pilate: the same size, same cut, the same effigy, the astrologer's staff, the same inscription recognizable, from four quite legible letters, as a certain coin duly catalogued for the years 16, 17 and 18 of Tiberius Caesar, which would be the years 29, 30 and 31 of our era.

AN ANOMALY THAT DOES NOT DECEIVE
Confirmed by three-dimensional analysis, the discovery was found to be definitively corroborated by its very fruitfulness, for it led to some unexpected progress in numismatic science. Four Greek letters, Y CAI, are in fact all that are needed to reconstruct the inscription TIBEPIO [Y KAI] CAPOC, "of Tiberius Caesar". But there is an anomaly: on the Holy Shroud a Latin C replaces the initial Greek K of KAICAPOC, which figures on all the coin collections known up to 1980.

Thereafter, to those who accused Father Filas of letting his imagination run away with him or of taking his desires for reality, he answered that, not being a numismatist, he had so little desire to see a coin of Pilate's that "before I accidentally stumbled on this, he wrote to me, I would not have known a Pilate coin from a hole in the wall".

He was obliged, therefore, to consult the numismatic specialists, and it was then that his discovery proved to be so little the work of his imagination that it was responsible for a positive progress in the study of numismatics itself. It revealed that the anomaly observed on the Holy Shroud and already recognized as being of common usage in inscriptions but hitherto unknown in numismatics, existed identically on other collection coins struck under Pontius Pilate, which no one had noticed before.

We have here a document dated within a year or two by the express Will of Him Who caused this Image to be imprinted on the cloth.

For one would have expected to see shards of broken pottery used for covering the eyes, as was the Jewish custom, but it would not have been possible to read a date from them.

Whereas the little coin proclaims: it is "under Pontius Pilate" that this Man suffered.

(The first picture shows them scraping away burns, when they should have cut them away and saved the clippings.

That's the first impression "bad news". The second impression information that makes it "not so bad" is that the scrapings (which is actually the correct way to remove the carbonized area with minimal damage to the unburnt area) WERE collected, bottled and labeled as to the specific areas they were taken from... somewhat limiting the scientific loss of not being able to examine the materials in situ.

The bare hands sewing is also not so bad of an error when one considers almost 2000 years of other hands, dirty, oily, grubby hands, handling the shroud. At least the seamstresses hands had been washed!

The bright lights ARE almost unforgivable since it was not for a scientific reason... But remember that the shroud in its history has been exposed for DAYS to bright sunlight, marched around a city under siege in dust and other pollutants, survived THREE major fires and been hung in buildings lit by candles, oil lamps and gas lights. I think a couple of weeks of electric light (very little UV) would not do too much damage. The darker appearance opinion is based on the before and after photographs... which used different light, different film, and different photographers and developing techniques. Colorimeter testing showed that there was no difference.

The politics of the restoration COULD and SHOULD have been better handled. The reason for removing the in situ charring was ridiculous... charring does not continue or spread after the fire is out!

All in all, what's done is done. We cannot put it back. Complaining to the Vatican cannot change that. Just urge them to include the Shroud Community in decision.