The Shroud of Turin is Absolutely Authentic.

The Shroud of Turin is a genuine relic, as well as the Holy House of Nazareth in Loreto.

Studies purporting to demonstrate that the Shroud is not genuine continue to appear in the media and in journals. As recently as 2018 the Journal of Forensic Sciences published the results of a study conducted on the pattern of blood flow on the Shroud. They concluded the stains were the result of multiple poses; rivulets on the back of the left hand were made by a person whose arms were at a 45 degree angle, not a vertical position, “while the stains at the back—of a supposed postmortem bleeding from the same wound for a supine corpse—are totally unrealistic.” The scientists presented this paper at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. [Link.] 

 

The NBC News website publicized the findings with this spectacular headline: “Forensic research (once again) suggests the Shroud of Turin is fake.” [Link.]

Fortunately the Lord Himself has revealed the truth through the private revelations contained in Maria Valtorta’s Notebooks.

Speaking of Italy, Jesus said to Maria: “Can you say that I have not loved this land, where I have brought the relics of my life and my death; the house in Nazareth where I was conceived in an embrace of luminous ardor between the Divine Spirit and the Virgin, and the Shroud where the sweat of my Death imprinted the sign of my pain, suffered for humanity?” [July 22 1943.]

“O Italy, Italy, to which I have given so much and which has forgotten Me and forgotten my benefits! And from that Piedmont, where there is a witness to God not inferior to that of the Mosaic Tabernacle – for, if there were two tablets in it written by God’s prophet, here there is the story of my Passion written with the ink of divine Blood on the linen which mercy offered to cloak my nakedness as the Immolated One. . . ” [October 23, 1943; Turin is the capital of the Piedmont region in Italy; Turin’s Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist is the resting place of the Holy Shroud.]

The agonies of Christ on the cross were numerous, and one of the cruelest was the agony of His hands. Were they pierced at the wrist or at the palm? Actually it was both. The right hand was nailed through the wrist, while on the left hand the nail went through the palm. On the Holy Shroud only the wound on the right hand is visible, since the right hand overlays the left hand.

 

 

On December 29, 1943 the Lord explained the reason for this difference to Maria Valtorta, as explained in her Notebooks. First, holes were made into the wood of the transverse beam where the hands were to be nailed. The executioners intended to pierce the Lord “. . . by the wrist joints, immediately above the carpus, to make the attachment more secure.” This is where they pierced his right hand. But when they extended his left arm, it would not reach the hole on that side. Therefore the executioners forcibly stretched his left arm to try make it reach the pre-made hole, but it would still not reach it. The Lord told Maria, “. . . after having stretched my arm to the point of producing the tearing of my tendons, they decided to hammer the nail into the center of my palm, between the bones of the metacarpus.” 

 

Once the cross was raised, and the weight of His body was shifted downward and forward, the nail on the left palm cut greatly towards the thumb, expanding the wound on that hand more than the one on his right wrist. “And it was also the most tormenting, both because it was on the side of the heart and because the nail, on entering, broke the nerves and tendons in the hand, causing an atrocious agony which spread to my head.” 

 

A few artists and sculptors have, “out of a sense of art,” depicted Jesus with his right hand open and the left hand partially closed. They have, “. . . without so desiring, borne witness to a physical truth of my martyred Body, for the left hand really closed into a fist, both in agony and because of the breaking of the cut nerves. . .” “My agonies on the cross were numerous . . . but this agony of the hands was one of the cruelest.”

 

Maria Valtorta’s description is remarkably consistent with those of other mystics. Venerable Mary of Agreda, Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, and St. Bridget of Sweden all report that the Lord’s left arm was violently extended to make it reach the hole in the wood of the Cross. Yet, Valtorta had never read books concerning “revelations” as she stated in her Autobiography.

 

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