Dossier sindrone 9
Except for the discovery of the trace of the coin, in July '96, by Nello Balossino and Pierluigi Baima Bollone, the current one, for the studies on the Cloth, could be called a moment of reflection.
The reason is that there is no material and what is around cannot give sufficient guarantees
explains Baima Bollone.
A group of American scholars, such as Jamper and Jechson and others, study image processing with particular methods such as the polarization of lights
says Nello Balossino, trying to give an overview of the scientific work in progress in the world.
Then there are the Spaniards who study the Shroud in relation to the Oviedo shroud. And finally the French. In Italy there are basically two currents, mostly engaged in the study of image formation. One, headed by Doctor Delfino Pesce, who works to prove that the Cloth is a fake, trying to obtain, through a series of experiments on bas-relief, images as similar as possible to the Shroud image. A second, which is inspired by Dr. Sebastiano Rodante, who has always worked on the study of the image.
But the new frontier of Shroud research seems to be another.
I think the future does not concern the search for new information, we already have a lot of them even if they could still spring from it. All efforts should now focus on the conservation of the Telo.
says Balossino.
We do not know what has happened to the Shroud over the centuries and therefore what lies ahead for the future. So it becomes a priority over everything to work to ensure future generations the certainty of being able to benefit from this image. This study involves many disciplines because it is not an easy problem to solve. Much remains to be done on the dating side with methods other than that of C14, for example by working on a dating linked to the study of the cellulose of the fabric. We must not underestimate the research that can be carried out with the help of information technology. Up to now, information technology has made use of the official photographs which are those of Enrie from '31, since then there have been major evolutions in photography. So it would be very useful to take the Shroud image with the new methods of acquiring high-resolution numerical images. From this material more detailed three-dimensional images could be obtained than the one obtained of Enrie, and the image of the whole body could be studied in a more specific way.
The occasion could be the pre-exhibition of '98 and the exhibition of 2000.
Conservation is certainly the main objective.
confirms Don Ghiberti.
And this is a field you can work on immediately. However, the scientific world must be careful not to over-emphasize the requests. In fact, there is a certain tendency, especially in America, to take a cue from conservation to propose global research. It is not feasible. A global research program needs to be studied, while a conservation program can be set up immediately, it has to be, and in part things are moving in that direction. If the two types of commitment are homogeneous, they must however be methodologically distinct. I do not exclude any type of research, on the contrary, the C14 will also be done again, with the necessary attention not to fall back into the mistakes of 1988 and involving him in an organic plan that also includes other exams. All, however, after the two scheduled expositions. As for the C14: the examination was excluded by Cardinal Saldarini, therefore it cannot be done as long as he is the custodian.
Exactly a year and a week after the beginning of the pre-exhibition of '98, the curse of fire returns to threaten the Shroud.
It is the night between Friday 11 and Saturday 12 April. In the Salone degli Svizzeri, on the first floor of the Royal Palace, connected to the Cathedral and the Guarini chapel, home of the Shroud, the dinner in honor of the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has just ended. It is 11.15 pm. More or less at the same time, hell breaks out in the Guarini chapel. Between 23.30 and 24.00, when, in a few minutes, the firefighters are on site, the chapel is already a ball of fire in the Turin sky and in the heart of that hell there is the case with inside the Shroud.
From 1694 the silver box that holds the Shroud was placed in the altar of the Guarini chapel. Two years ago, at the beginning of the restoration work on the chapel, it had been moved behind the main altar of the Cathedral, in a safety glass case composed of three superimposed sheets of multilayer glass, thick from a minimum of 15 to a maximum 38 millimeters each, 3.42 meters long and 2.38 meters wide. It will be his salvation: that displacement and that bulletproof but not anti-personnel crystal.
The silver case melts at a temperature of about 700 degrees, the fabric burns at about 220 and the legibility of the traces that form the Shroud image, according to available studies, would be compromised at a temperature of 200 degrees. The same effect, called "chimney", which destroyed the chapel, determined by the current of air that was created in the area of the fire, where the shrine of the Shroud was kept, instead created an air gap preventing the increase of temperature that would have destroyed the Linen.
His name is Mario Trematore, he is a surveyor of the Turin fire brigade, 44 years old. It is he who, together with his team, smashed the bulletproof glass casing with a club and extracted the silver case of the Shroud bringing it to safety.
"There is no difference between hell and a fire like this"
Trematore will say, the firefighters realize it as soon as they arrive.
"Guarini's dome crumbled in the flames, like the roof of the Royal Palace"
but the Shroud was still intact.
"I thought of the Shroud, and I said to myself: it represents a billion people; if the dome goes up in smoke, it burns a piece of history, but if the Sheet burns, a world symbol is also destroyed".
The crystal case has a mechanical locking system, but it does not work. All you can do is try to insulate the case with water and foam, cool it and attack it. Pick it out with a club and take out the silver box.
It is a battle against time that lasts almost two hours. Under the petrified and desperate eyes of Cardinal Saldarini, Pontifical Custos of the Shroud, in the midst of the fire that a few meters away you eat Guarini's masterpiece and outside, on the square of the cathedral, over three thousand people: most are speechless, some cries, many pray.
The reliquary resists the bombardment of water and this bodes well for his safety.
Even the collapses threaten the Shroud and the men who work to break through the glass case. There is the danger that the choir of the Cathedral itself will yield: it would be the end of the Telo.
"To keep the flames away"
continues to tell Trematore,
"we leaned stairs against the pillars of the dome, so as to go up with the spears and throw water as high as possible. boulder rain on my head"
It is 1.30 am when the firefighters, in an improvised joyful procession, cross the cathedral with the silver box, intact, on their shoulders, and emerge out of hell on the square. The Shroud is safe.
April 22, 1997, a date that will enter the history of the Shroud. The context is what is called a great official occasion: the delivery, at Palazzo Lascaris, seat of the Piedmontese Regional Council, of a recognition, bestowed by the Turin Church and by the Piedmont Region itself, to the firefighters and the police for the work lent a few days earlier in the Duomo, during the fire. All the city and regional civil authorities were present. Cardinal Giovanni Saldarini, in the muffled silence of the official, begins to speak and for those present, who were expecting the usual ritual speech, it is a cold shower. "I am convinced: the Shroud is the sheet in which the Lord Jesus was wrapped after his death on the cross to save humanity." A few seconds and everyone realizes what is happening: for the first time a Cardinal of Turin, that is to say a Pontifical Custodian of the Holy Shroud, declares that he believes the Shroud to be actually the sheet that wrapped Christ. Thanking the saviors of the Shroud from the fire in the Duomo Saldarini speaks of "That gift that God has given us, leaving this Turin the sheet in which the Lord Jesus was wrapped after his death on the cross."
To the press, which assaults him at the end of the ceremony, the cardinal feels obliged to specify:
"The Shroud is a unique object in the world. Christ. The way in which the image was formed, then, has no scientific explanations yet, just as the fact that the sheet, once photographed, appears to us as a negative, has not yet found any explanations. However, I believe that there are many more reasons to argue for authenticity than there are to say the opposite. There are too many details that unite it with the Gospel account. Have I never said such a thing before? Evidently today I will have let it slip what I think."
I believe that a more open and more correct conduct than that held by the Turin Curia cannot be hoped for
says Baima Bollone, retracing the relations between the Curia of Turin and the scientific world.
Cardinal Pellegrino had been a university professor, it is he who initiated what today we can consider really excellent relations. His successor, Ballestrero, using a consultant from the Polytechnic of Turin, Luigi Gonella, turned to the academic world and concluded that only science can discuss with science, whatever the result. The current keeper of the Shroud has university professors close to him
and beyond his convictions about the Cloth he has a great collaborative capacity with scientists. As for the scientific world, Baima Bollone says
I would distinguish between the academic world and the scientific world. The conduct of the academic world has always been linear. Outside the academic world, in the scientific world in general, there has been some misbehavior in the past and there is also now. I refer, in particular, to withdrawals made without authorization
but it is only the most striking case of the many that could be recalled. And towards the Polytechnic of Turin, which has always been, through its illustrious professors, a protagonist in the most important researches on the Shroud, Baima Bollone is severe.
I believe that academically and technically our Polytechnic is the best laboratory and certainly a glory of Turin. The same cannot be said of the current components that I do not think we have done anything useful for the Shroud except to complicate the personal relationships between the researchers. I can say that Professor Gonella - I have his letters in hand - put undue pressure on me because I would deliver the material I acquired_ the samples from the long night at the bedside of the Shroud _ to others. In fact, the importance of my withdrawals was evident, so that the discoveries I made could be made by others. Others from the non-national academic world, the Americans. _ Fr Ghiberti framed the climate of those moments _ When in 1978 it was decided that, after the exposition, there would be the possibility for scientists to have the Cloth available for make the samples necessary for the proposed research, a certain tension was created, which however emerged only a few months later, between the American group and the Italian one. The Turin group at that moment imagined that it was decisive in deciding what to do, but the authorities also listened a lot to scholars from across the Alps and above all to those from overseas. All that was asked was granted, with the C14 removed. Rust and bitterness lasted for quite a while ._ All that was asked was granted, with the C14 removed. Rust and bitterness lasted for quite a while ._ All that was asked was granted, with the C14 removed. Rust and bitterness lasted for quite a while ._
That of the Shroud-scientific world relationship is the "disputed" and "contended" history of the Shroud that continues. If until yesterday the Shroud was an instrument of the "political" power of the House of Savoy, and before that it had been the subject of disputes between the bishops Pietro d'Arcis and Enrico di Poitiers on the one hand and the Charny family on the other, between Margherita di Charny and the Collegiate Church of Lirey, today, that times have changed, that power no longer identifies itself with a real home, today that "power" - and the concept of power itself, as the ambition for power - has pulverized and changed physiognomy, today that power is also being able to appear, emerge from the crowd, "pierce" the black wall of anonymity, now that even science has its role on the scenario of power, which represents, in short, a power, the Shroud from an instrument in the hands of political power has become an instrument of conquest of power for a certain scientific (and journalistic-editorial) world. _The Shroud serves as a stimulus for many, for many as a pedestal_ says Don Ghiberti. A pedestal around which a lobby has been established, that of the Shroud scholars, with within it all the usual corollary of factions, currents of thought, groups that fight to discredit, of exhausting and sometimes useless searches, of scientific scoops, or passed off as such, of samples taken without authorization, retained, disappeared, disputed between researchers. A lobby that has the power to mount news campaigns,
_In studying the Cloth, scientists unfortunately find themselves very conditioned by an emotional factor, which I see almost everywhere, and which translates, in behavior, into a favorable or radically contrary disposition to the value of the Shroud, even before the so-called authenticity. There are some scholars who I think I can say are viscerally opposed - some say that this climate was present among those who were preparing to carry out the studies of 88 - these, of course, working on the Shroud, will proceed partially. Then there are those, and they are the majority, who have exaggerated affection. Exaggerated because it is not affection for the image or rather what the image expresses, but rather becomes a question of faith, so much so that for some of them maintaining a positive attitude towards the Cloth means giving proof of being good Christians, expressing doubts and questions about whether it is actually the sheet that wrapped Christ's body immediately means being bad Christians. Unfortunately this way of thinking is present and is also very widespread. And even this category of scholars will proceed, studying the Shroud, in a partial way._ Perhaps what we would need at this point is a stop.
The Holy Scriptures are steeped in a very serious accusation: idolatry. The man is accused of idolatry. It is therefore possible that Providence is asking us to be satisfied with what we know. It certainly reminds us to stop on what is essential on the towel, that is, on the message that the image conveys. Even if it costs a lot from the emotional point of view to renounce having the ultimate certainty, that is, the fact that the Shroud has wrapped the corpse of Jesus or not, a question to which perhaps we could never answer with certainty - science, however, excludes in in any case, a "normal" burial due to the absence of corruption - the humility of renunciation of exasperated research must be found.
says Don Ghiberti.
The German researcher Eberhard Lindner, argues that by studying how the Shroud image was formed one day we will come to scientifically demonstrate the resurrection.
Personally faced with certain beliefs I find myself very uncomfortable.
Don Ghiberti is a personal friend of Linder, he will meet him a few hours later in his house on the Turin hill, where the German scholar, passing through the city, will join him. _I am convinced that the discourse of the resurrection of Christ must be kept on another level with respect to the Shroud imprint. Faced with a scientific explanation of the resurrection, that is, of the discovery of a natural process that would be at the basis of the resurrection of Christ - perhaps a process bordering on what we would define exceptionality.
It is the gift and the burden together that the Shroud has given to the Turin Church and to every believer who approaches it: the spirit of the "crisis". It is easy to accept the historicity of Christianity as long as there is no material, physical proof of it present among us, because it is a historicity that still remains for an axiomatic part, in short, ultimately, a question of "faith". Faith has in itself areas of shadow, free areas to which God has no access, they are the shield that protects the frailty of man who would otherwise find himself face to face with God. When the "proven proof" of historicity should exist, and as if that were not enough, if it were here, alive among us, an entity that spans the centuries, which is part of the history of men ... well, Vittorio Messori, passionate scholar of the Holy Scriptures, writer and journalist, author of the now famous Hypothesis on Jesus, recently declared "At the end of the day there is a fundamental contradiction. If that is not the Sacred Linen (Editor's note, the sheet that actually wrapped Christ's corpse) then we must assume that it is proof of a crime. horrible crime. It is the proof that a man was subjected to the tortures suffered by Jesus. It would be unbelievable. " We add: incredible for the coincidence with the description of the torture and death of Jesus told in the Gospels, but still 'alone' and nothing more than the proof of a banal crime, one of that infinite series of crimes that they committed and continue to make the history of man. But if that were the case then "it would be incredible, at that point, the exhibition." The trick to which the Church has always resorted to get out of this inconsistency was to define the Shroud as an "icon" of the Passion of Christ. If, on the other hand, the Shroud was really the funerary shroud of that Christ that the Church has celebrated for two thousand years as the son of God, who died and rose so that men may have eternal life, then Messori is severe
"it is not clear why the Church does not finance a research in the archives of the East to find documents that prove the existence and movements of the Shroud in past centuries"
the dark ages, so to speak.
"The archives are just waiting to be visited. It would be enough to avoid organizing conferences that often serve no purpose in order to find sufficient and necessary funds."
