Free Republic

Pope Benedict XVI confirmed his intention to visit the Shroud of Turin when it goes on public display in Turin's cathedral April 10-May 23, 2010. Cardinal Severino Poletto of Turin, papal custodian of the Shroud of Turin, visited the pope July 26 in Les Combes, Italy, where the pope was spending part of his vacation. The Alpine village is about 85 miles from Turin. The cardinal gave the pope the latest news concerning preparations for next year's public exposition of the shroud and the pope "confirmed his intention to go to Turin for the occasion," said the Vatican spokesman, Jesuit...

Jesus' Shroud? Recent Findings Renew Authenticity Debate Bijal P. Trivedi National Geographic Channel April 9, 2004 The Shroud of Turin—believed by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus and one of the most venerated relics of the Christian church—was declared a fake in 1988 by three independent scientific institutions. Yet interest in the cloth has remained intense, and new science suggests the shroud deserves another look. Read the full story The Shroud of Turin, an approximately 14 by 3 foot cloth, is bloodstained and imprinted with a faint image of a tortured man's face, hands, and body. Many Christians...

IT'S been called the longest-running hoax in history - an 800-year-old religious riddle that's taken in popes, scientists and believers from all faiths.The Turin Shroud has been either worshipped as divine proof that Christ was resurrected from the grave or dismissed as a fraud created by medieval forgers.But new evidence suggests the shroud might be genuine after all. HAUNTING: The face on the shroudAs Mel Gibson's film The Passion Of The Christ rekindles interest in Jesus, stitching on the shroud which could have been created only during the messiah's lifetime has been uncovered.At the same time, tests from 1988 that...

Shroud of Turin history presented in UpstateRetired surgeon relays his nearly 40 years of research on the Shroud of TurinBy SHEILA OJENDYK GREENVILLE — Dr. William E. Rabil has no doubt that the Shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ. Rabil, a retired general surgeon from Winston-Salem, N.C., began studying the shroud in the late 1950s and has been lecturing about it for nearly 40 years. He made two slide presentations to parishioners at St. Mary Church on March 6. Rabil began with a brief history of the shroud. After the crucifixion, the shroud was originally hidden...

Science by Press Release (Again). Another Editorial Response by Barrie Schwortz A permanent archive pdf file of this editorial can now be found at this link: Science by Press Release (Again) Once again we are being bombarded by media claims about the Shroud of Turin, although this time admittedly from a pro-authenticity position by researcher Barbara Frale. However, the same rules must be applied to these claims as those applied to the recent claims by anti-authenticity researcher Luigi Garlaschelli. Frale claims she has "discovered" inscriptions on the Shroud that prove it is authentic. However, she is basing her conclusions...

COLORADO SPRINGS — A physics professor here has resurrected the mystery of the Shroud of Turin, the fabled burial cloth of Christ that 20 years ago scientists declared a fake. Millions of faithful believe the shroud's bloodstained image of a battered, crucified man is the miraculous image of Jesus, formed as he rose from the dead. Scientists at three laboratories using radiocarbon dating in 1988 and 1989 determined the shroud was a medieval forgery, though they could not explain how the image was created. Now, John Jackson, a physics lecturer at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, has done...

The Turin Shroud is to go on public display for the first time in a decade, sources at the Vatican have indicated, coinciding with a new set of tests on its age. The linen has only been put on display five times in the last century The Vatican keeps the 14ft by 4ft piece of linen, believed by some to be the death shroud of Jesus, in an aluminium case built by an Italian aerospace company to shut out all light, air and humidity. The case is filled with Argon gas in order to prevent bacteria from eating the...

"The sorrow in my heart is so great that it almost crushes me. Stay here and keep watch."– Mark 14: 34 "You look at it and you cannot escape it: His body was horribly, horribly wounded. I choked up," said one visitor to the millennium Shroud of Turin exhibit. Another viewer summed up his experience, "I realized that this image is a message that was left for us. The resurrection truly happened. The man they tried to extinguish, lives. And we will too, no matter what the world tries to do to us, we will rise again with Him." Experts...

Fr. Mitch Pacwa welcomes Dr. Zugibe to his program this evening. Dr. Zugibe, former Medical Examiner for Rockland County (NY), has done extensive studies on the Shroud of Turin. He also delivered the following lecture, A Forensic Way of the Cross

On Monday, September 23, 2002 at 10:30 a.m. at “Centro Russia Ecumenica” (Ecumenical Russia Center) at Vicolo del Farinone, 30 in Rome a press conference took place in order to comment on the interventions carried out on the Shroud in June and July 2002. There were: Prof. Eng. Giulio Fanti, Professor of Mechanical and Thermal Measurements at the University of Padua and coordinator of “ATLAS” project of Shroud study; Prof. William Meacham, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Hong Kong; Prof. Heinrich Pfeiffer S.J., Professor of Christian Art History at Gregoriana University of Rome and member of the Papal...

Will Judean Desert find shed light on Shroud of Turin? By ETGAR LEFKOVITS Updated May 29, 2008 7:28 Can a 6,000-year-old shroud uncovered in the Judean Desert in 1993 help illuminate the centuries-old debate over the Shroud of Turin? The Shroud of Turin Slideshow: Pictures of the week That is the question posed by Olga Negnevitsky, a conservator at the Israel Museum who was involved in the conservation of the lesser-known shroud for the Antiquities Authority after it was discovered inside a small cave near Jericho. The idea to use the older shroud to learn more about the famous one...

The Holy Face of Manoppello (L) with direct sunlight from behind the image, and (R) with direct sunlight in front, Jan 10, 2014. Credit: Alan Holdren/CNA. Rome, Italy, Jan 26, 2014 / 04:04 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Shrine to the Holy Face of Christ tucked into Italy's Appennine mountains is starting to catch the attention of the world, particularly that of American Catholics.   “We have a lot of Italians, of course, and many Germans but now we're seeing more and more pilgrims from the U.S.,” said Sister Blandina Paschalis Schloemer, a Trappist nun and daily pilgrim that lives within...

Rome, Feb. 11, 2005 (CNA) - Forensic scientists in Italy are working on a different kind of investigation—one that dates back 2000 years. In an astounding announcement, the scientists think they may have re-created an image of Jesus Christ when He was a 12-year old boy.Using the Shroud of Turin, a centuries-old linen cloth, which many believe bears the face of the crucified Christ, the investigators first created a computer-modeled, composite picture of the Christ’s face.Dr. Carlo Bui, one of the scientists said that, “the face of the man on the shroud is the face of a suffering man. He...

The Shroud of Turin was made by medieval artist Giotto, it was claimed yesterday. The 14ft length of fabric, said to be the burial cloth of Christ, bears a faint image of a man and appears to be stained by blood. However carbon-dating tests have suggested it was produced between 1260 and 1390. Now Italian art expert Luciano Buso has suggested that the original cloth deteriorated and Giotto was asked to make a copy. After months of careful examination of photographs of the Shroud - the relic is kept locked away and not available to be viewed unless on special...

ROME – A Vatican researcher claims a nearly invisible text on the Shroud of Turin proves the authenticity of the artifact revered as Jesus' burial cloth. The claim made in a new book by historian Barbara Frale drew immediate skepticism from some scientists, who maintain the shroud is a medieval forgery. Frale, a researcher at the Vatican archives, said Friday that she used computers to enhance images of faintly written words in Greek, Latin and Aramaic scattered across the shroud. She asserts the words include the name "Jesus Nazarene" in Greek, proving the text could not be of medieval origin...

Turin (AsiaNews) – Towards the end of his visit to Turin, Benedict XVI went in the afternoon to the city’s cathedral to silently venerate the Shroud, which is currently on special display (10 April-23 May). The event’s theme is Passio Christi – Passio hominis.After standing for a few minutes in silence in front of the Shroud, the Pontiff addressed his meditation to a group of cloistered nuns from some of the monasteries of the diocese. Here is his meditation in full.Dear friends,This is a much-awaited moment for me. In another occasion, I found myself before the Holy Shroud, but...

The Shroud of Turin is very likely not the product of Medieval fakery, say Italian researchers who used modern technology to test the holy cloth’s authenticity. Over five years of work, the scientists blasted modern linen with ultraviolet light and examined X-rays of the fabric, attempting to replicate the stunning Christ-like image exhibited in the Shroud. The findings, released in November by Italy’s National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Development, showed they “achieved a very superficial, Shroud-like coloration of linen yarns,” according to a report on msnbc.com. It fell way short of the characteristics of the real Shroud,...

A FRENCH magazine has said it had carried out experiments that proved the Shroud of Turin, believed by some Christians to be their religion's holiest relic, was a fraud. "A mediaeval technique helped us to make a Shroud," Science & Vie (Science and Life) said in its July issue. The Shroud is claimed by its defenders to be the cloth in which the body of Jesus Christ was wrapped after his crucifixion. It bears the faint image of a blood-covered man with holes in his hand and wounds in his body and head, the apparent result of being crucified, stabbed...

The Shroud of Turin is much older than the medieval date that modern science has affixed to it and could be old enough to have been the burial wrapping of Jesus, a new analysis concludes. Since 1988, most scientists have confidently concluded that it was the work of a medieval artist, because carbon dating had placed the production of the fabric between 1260 and 1390. In an article this month in the journal Thermochimica Acta, Dr. Raymond N. Rogers, a chemist retired from Los Alamos National Laboratory, said the carbon dating test was valid but that the piece tested was...

Relics and the Incorruptibles Exodus 13:19 "And Moses took Joseph's bones with him: because he had adjured the children of Israel, saying: God shall visit you, carry out my bones from hence with you." 4 Kings 13:20-21 "And Eliseus died, and they buried him. And the rovers from Moab came into the land the same year. And some that were burying a man, saw the rovers, and cast the body into the sepulchre of Eliseus. And when it had touched the bones of Eliseus, the man came to life and stood upon his feet." Matthew 9:20-22 "And behold a woman...