Interesting. I'm a devout Catholic, and frankly, the Shroud matters not if it's real or fake. It would be a wonderful gift of God if this is indeed the real McCoy, but this theory is thought-provoking at best.
The "novelization" of this theory, however, sounds a little too much like "DaVinci Code II"...
"Anthropologist William Meacham, a Research Fellow at the Centre of Asian Studies at the University of Hong Kong, added, "I would like to know how this unscientific idea could possibly get such major coverage, when it so clearly and obviously does not fit the known facts about the Shroud image." "
Of course the answer is that it fits the trendy set's agenda. They love the idea of everythng Church related being fake.