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March 30th, 2013 
Peter Nolan
However his observations did not go beyond the non-committal approach taken by
the Catholic Church on the question of the shroud’s authenticity. Observers
noted that his use of the word “icon” fell short of the claim by some that
the shroud is a “relic” of the crucifixion.
He likened the look of suffering on the face of the man to the pain and
horrors endured by the victims of modern war and conflict.
“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.”
Since being elected the successor to Benedict XVI earlier this month, the
Argentinean Pope has repeatedly called for the need to protect the weak,
vulnerable and dispossessed in society.
The Pope sent the message as an introduction to a 90-minute broadcast on RAI,
the state television network, from Turin Cathedral, where the shroud is kept
in a special climate-controlled case.
The broadcast on Saturday afternoon commemorated the 40th anniversary of the
last time the shroud was shown for an extended period, live on Italian
television, under Pope Paul VI in 1973.
The Vatican has never pronounced one way or the other whether it believes the
shroud to be genuine.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, when he was still cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, said
that it was “a truly mysterious image, which no human artistry was capable
of producing”.
When he visited the Turin as Pope in May 2010 to see the shroud, he came close
to endorsing its authenticity.
“This is a burial cloth that wrapped the remains of a crucified man in full
correspondence with what the Gospels tell us of Jesus,” he said.
The shroud was “an icon written in blood; the blood of a man who was whipped,
crowned with thorns, crucified and injured on his right side,” Benedict
said.
The linen cloth is believed by many Catholics to have been used to cover the
body of Christ after he was taken down from the cross.
It has been kept in a chapel in Turin Cathedral since the 16th century, after
being brought to the city by the Savoy royal family.
Its mysterious provenance and the debate over its authenticity have spawned a
multitude of outlandish theories, including the suggestion that it was faked
by Leonardo da Vinci using early ’camera obscura’ photographic techniques.
There have also been claims that it was guarded by the Knights Templar during
the 13th and 14th centuries.
Tests conducted in 1988 by scientists in Oxford, Zurich and Arizona, concluded
that the shroud was a forgery and dated from 1260 to 1390.
But last week, a new book claimed that the shroud was not a fake, but in fact dated
to ancient times.
The book, “Il Mistero della Sindone” or The Mystery of the Shroud, was written
by Giulio Fanti, a professor of mechanical and thermal measurement at Padua
University, and Saverio Gaeta, a Catholic journalist.
Prof Fanti used infra-red light and spectroscopy — the measurement of
radiation intensity through wavelengths — to analyse fibres which were taken
from the shroud during a previous study, in 1988, when they were subjected
to carbon-14 dating.
He said the tests carried out in 1988 were “false” because of laboratory
contamination.
His claims backed up research carried out in 2011 by a team of experts from
Enea, the National Agency for New Technologies and Energy, which concluded
that the images on the cloth could not be reproduced artificially, even by
modern scientifics, and were therefore not a medieval fake.
The experts suggested that the iconic image was created by “some form of
electromagnetic energy (such as a flash of light at short wavelength)”.
The implication of their work was that the enigmatic marks on the cloth were
created at the moment of Christ’s resurrection by some sort of intense burst
of energy.
Their findings were hailed by L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official
newspaper, which said science could not explain the marks on the cloth.
“For science, the shroud continues to be an ’impossible object’ — impossible
to falsify,” L’Osservatore Romano said.
The Pope’s comments on the Shroud were part of his first Easter celebrations
as pontiff. On Easter Sunday, in front of tens of thousands of faithful, he
will celebrate mass in St Peter’s Square and deliver the traditional Easter
Sunday Urbi et Orbi blessing — “to the city (of Rome) and the world.”
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