The shroud of Turin is stained with the blood of a torture victim, a study has suggested.
Researchers in Italy said the linen cloth, which is believed to have been wrapped around Christ’s body after he was crucified, contains “nanoparticles” of blood that are typical of someone who has experienced violent trauma.
Elvio Carlino, a researcher at the Institute of Crystallography in Bari, Italy, said the particles suggest “great suffering”.
Professor Giulio Fanti, of the University of Padua, added that the particles have a “peculiar structure, size and distribution” and the blood contains high levels of creatinine and ferritin, typically found in patients who have suffered traumas such as torture.
“Hence, the presence of these biological nanoparticles found during our experiments point to a violent death for the man wrapped in the Turin Shroud,” Professor Fanti said.
The particles “cannot be artefacts made over the centuries on the fabric of the Shroud”, he added.
The findings appear in an article titled “New Biological Evidence from Atomic Resolution Studies on the Turin Shroud” published in the American scientific journal PLOS ONE.
The researchers used methods recently developed in the field of electron microscopy to analyse the Shroud. Mr Carlino said this was the first study of “the nanoscale properties of a pristine fibre taken from the Turin Shroud.” The 14ft-long piece of cloth is currently displayed at St John the Baptist Cathedral in Turin. The Church has not declared it authentic, but Benedict XVI described it as an “icon written in blood”.
Investigator says 500 boys were abused at choir schools
More than 500 boys suffered abuse at the hands of dozens of teachers and priests at the school that trains the prestigious boys choir of the Regensburg Cathedral in Germany, an independent investigator has said.
Ulrich Weber, the lawyer leading the investigation of claims of abuse at the choir and two associated boarding schools, said former students of the Domspatzen choir reported physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the school and said life there was like “a prison, hell and a concentration camp”.
A “culture of silence” among Church leaders and members allowed such abuse to continue for decades, Mr Weber said at a press conference.
The investigation, commissioned by the Diocese of Regensburg, found that at least 547 former members of the Regensburg Domspatzen boys choir in Germany were subjected to some form of abuse between 1945 and the early 1990s, according to Vatican Radio. Of those victims, 67 were victims of sexual violence, the radio said.
Mgr Georg Ratzinger, the older brother of the Pope Emeritus who had led the choir from 1964 to 1994, said he had had no idea that any molestation was taking place.
Statues destroyed by ISIS replaced
A Catholic charity has sent 15 statues of the Virgin Mary to the Middle East to replace ones destroyed by ISIS.
L’Œuvre d’Orient, a French association that helps persecuted Christians, sent the statues from Lourdes to Ankawa, a largely Christian suburb of the city of Erbil. According to the Aleteia website, once they arrive they will be carried in procession through the town by Chaldean and Syriac Catholics, before being blessed and sent to parishes.
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