The Shroud Codex (16 page)

Then, turning to Father Morelli, Castle gave further instructions. “Tonight I suggest you return to the rectory at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and get some sleep. The archbishop would probably appreciate a report from you in person, given all that has happened since Sunday.”

“You’re right,” Father Morelli said. “I’ll make sure Anne gets a hotel room and we will coordinate to be at your office tomorrow morning.”

Thursday morning

Dr. Stephen Castle’s office, New York City

Day 15

When he entered the conference room, Castle found the group had assembled. At the end of the room by the windows looking out on Central Park, Archbishop Duncan was talking pleasantly with a priest he had not met before. Castle guessed this was probably Father Middagh, whom the pope had mentioned on the telephone.

The archbishop was elegantly dressed in a black wool cassock trimmed in crimson silk. The cassock was bound at his waist by a purple sash that matched his purple skullcap. Around his neck was an elegant pectoral cross, suspended by a cord of entwined threads of green silk and gold. On the ring finger of his right hand, he wore a large gold ring that bore an image of Jesus. That image looked remarkably like the face of the man in the Shroud.

Standing there by the Central Park windows, the archbishop was a commanding presence. Duncan was in his mid-sixties, about ten years older than Castle, but clean-shaven. Looking at
Duncan’s trim physique, Castle felt jealous. Castle had to force himself to exercise to stay fit, especially in his all-too-sedentary profession of psychiatry. The archbishop, Castle surmised, was probably thin by nature, to the point of appearing gaunt, and taller than Castle, at nearly six feet two.

Anne was seated at the table alone, waiting for the meeting to begin. She was wearing a nicely tailored beige suit that complemented her deep brown eyes perfectly and showed off the curves of her well-formed figure. Her blond hair was pulled back in a bun, giving her the more mature look Castle would expect of a professional woman in her early forties. Standing as the others came around to meet her, she introduced herself as Anne Cassidy, Father Bartholomew’s half sister from Toronto.

“She’s here today as a member of the family,” Castle explained privately to Archbishop Duncan, taking him aside from the group.

“I didn’t know Father Bartholomew had a half sister,” Duncan said, surprised.

“I didn’t know either,” Castle said, somewhat embarrassed at Anne’s sudden and unexpected intrusion into the case. “And from what Anne Cassidy told me yesterday at the hospital, I expect Father Bartholomew will be equally surprised to find out he has a half sister. From what I understand, the two of them have never met before, not until now. I plan to find out more about Anne Cassidy and I will report back to you later.”

“Thank you,” Duncan said. “The thing I appreciate most about a good mystery is solving it.”

“I know exactly what you are saying,” Castle said. “I feel the same way. Right now, Anne is here with my permission.”

“Thank you for explaining that,” Duncan said. “I understand.”

As the meeting was about to begin, Archbishop Duncan sat
at the head of the conference table, with his back to the window. Castle took the other end of the table.

To Castle’s right was Father J. J. Middagh, an expert on the Shroud of Turin. Sitting to the archbishop’s left, Father Middagh was the living embodiment of the happy friar. Middagh wore a looser, more obviously worn cassock than the archbishop, one that covered but did not completely hide his ample paunch. Nearly bald, Middagh had a round red face and small wire-framed scholarly glasses gave him the appearance of being a well-fed bookworm who needed only a stein of lager beer and a thick tome to sustain him until dinner. In front of him was his laptop computer and a stack of books Middagh had brought along to buttress his presentation. As the meeting was getting ready to start, Middagh fiddled with a portable projector he had attached to his laptop for a presentation on a pulldown screen discreetly built into bookshelves that lined the far wall of the conference room.

Across the table from Middagh and to the right of the archbishop were Father Morelli and Anne. Morelli appeared to be wearing the same black suit and Roman collar that he wore the first time he meet Castle in the treatment room next door to explain his mission from the Vatican. He had his briefcase on the table and a stack of papers out for ready reference.

Archbishop Duncan started the discussion. “Pope John-Paul Peter I asked Father Middagh to join us here today because he is one of the top scholars on the Shroud of Turin. I have known Father Middagh for years and because he is a modest man, I will announce for him that his book on the Shroud will be published next week. Isn’t that right, Father Middagh?”

“Yes, I have been working on what’s going to turn out to be a two-volume treatise for more than a decade,” Middagh confirmed. “My working title,
Behold the Face of Jesus,
says it all.
I am convinced the Shroud of Turin is the authentic burial cloth of Jesus Christ. I have brought with me some digital images that I used in the book.”

“Father Middagh is a Benedictine priest and he works from a monastery located in White Plains, New York,” Duncan explained. “By training, Father Middagh is a Ph.D. chemist who has taught chemistry at the university level. With that introduction, Dr. Castle, could you give us a brief update on Father Bartholomew’s condition?”

“Yes,” Castle said as he opened his medical file. “Father Bartholomew rested comfortably last night. He still has not recovered consciousness, yet I expect he will do so soon. From the CT scan and MRI tests that I had run yesterday, Father Bartholomew’s wounds appear to be recovering remarkably fast, just as we saw with the stigmata on his wrists. We will know more in a few hours.”

“Thank you,” Archbishop Duncan said seriously. “Our prayers are with you, Dr. Castle, and with Father Bartholomew.” Smoothly, Duncan shifted his attention to the subject of the meeting. “Dr. Castle, the pope has asked Father Middagh to join us as a resource to you on the Shroud. I suspect you can ask Father Middagh any question about the Shroud that you like. Where would you like to begin?”

“I want to start with the radioactive carbon-14 dating of the Shroud,” Castle said immediately. He wanted to know if there was any proof the Shroud was a medieval fake. That would help him sort out whether there was any possibility Father Bartholomew was manifesting the authentic Jesus Christ, or just some medieval artist’s idea of what Jesus looked like. “If I am correct, three separate carbon-dating tests have shown the Shroud was made somewhere around 1260 to 1390
A.D.
If those results are correct, that would make the Shroud a medieval fake—maybe one of the best
forgeries ever done in the history of art forgeries, but a medieval fake just the same.”

“You are right about the carbon-14 tests,” Middagh said. “But there was an important study published posthumously in 2005 by Raymond Rogers, who was a chemist and thermal analyst at Los Alamos. That study gives us reason to doubt the reliability of the carbon-14 tests. Ray Rogers was the director of chemical research for the Shroud of Turin Research Project in 1978. He was a personal friend of mine for many years. A year before he died, he submitted a paper to a peer-reviewed scientific journal; it was published after he died. Rogers basically argued that the cloth samples taken from the Shroud to be used in the radiocarbon testing were not representative of the main part of the Shroud, on which the image resides. Rogers argued that the 1988 samples came from a part of the Shroud that had been expertly rewoven sometime in the Middle Ages to repair damage to the Shroud.”

“Was Rogers’s analysis scientifically convincing?” Castle asked.

“Not everyone in the Shroud research community was persuaded, especially since Rogers dropped his opposition to the Shroud just before he died of cancer,” Middagh answered honestly. “I had quite a few conversations with Rogers before he died and I am convinced he underwent a change of heart that was more than some sort of a religious conversion after he knew he was sick. Those who were on the Shroud of Turin Research Project in 1978 remember Rogers as one of the original skeptics. Then, when the original carbon-14 tests were conducted, Ray was very outspoken that the tests proved the Shroud dated from the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. At the time of the carbon-dating tests, Roger openly announced he was confident the Shroud had been fabricated somewhere around 1260 to 1390
A.D.
”

“What changed his mind?” Castle asked.

“As I said, Rogers became convinced that the sample was not representative. In the past few years there has been a considerable scientific debate about how the cloth sample was taken from the Shroud for the carbon-dating tests. Pope John Paul II’s decision to cut a piece of the Shroud for radiocarbon testing was very controversial. If the Shroud is the burial cloth of Christ, then cutting away a piece of the Shroud to destroy it in the burning process required by the carbon-14 test is almost a sacrilege. It’s like destroying the only known artifact that may have had contact with the Savior. So the Church demanded the sample be cut from a corner of the Shroud that was already badly damaged.”

“I understand,” Castle said.

“Fellow Shroud researcher Barrie Schwortz recorded a video of Rogers just before he died, when Rogers knew he was close to losing his battle with cancer,” Middagh said. “Schwortz is important because he was the official photographer on the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project. In the video, Rogers described how he became convinced the corner samples used for the radiocarbon tests came from a part of the Shroud that had been expertly repaired by the French Poor Clair nuns in to repair the damage from several fires the Shroud was in after it showed up in France in 1357. In one particularly threatening fire in 1532, the Shroud was nearly destroyed.”

Middagh projected an image onto the screen that showed full-body views of the Shroud.

“You can see here the triangular patches that line each side of the body image along the length of the Shroud. The Shroud is a linen cloth that measures a little over fourteen feet in length. As you can see here, the body of the crucified man was laid with his back on the cloth. Then burial cloth was lifted over his head to cover his front side. That’s why the image appears to have the two heads touching in the middle. The image appears that way when the cloth is once again stretched out full length.”

“I understand,” Castle said, letting Middagh know he was following the description.

“In a full-length view of the Shroud, there are sixteen triangular patches in total, eight on each side of the body,” Middagh continued. “It’s well documented that the medieval French Catholic nuns sewed those patches on this pattern of burn holes that runs the length of the Shroud. They did so to preserve the Shroud from disintegrating. The two rows of triangular patch repairs running up the length of the Shroud were too big for the type of ‘invisible weaving’ that professional weavers in the Middle Ages had perfected. Invisible reweaving repairs only worked on smaller damaged areas. Rogers came to the conclusion that the corner of the Shroud from which the radiocarbon samples were taken in 1988 had been altered in ‘invisible weaving’ repairs done in the Middle Ages. The repairs in this one corner were done so well that the reweaving was not evident to the naked eye, as were the eight triangular patches.”

“If I hear what you’re telling me,” Castle said, wanting to make sure he got it right, “you believe that Rogers had a change of heart based on these scientific concerns?”

“Yes, I do,” Middagh said. “If you are asking me if Rogers changed his mind because he knew he was going to die and he didn’t want to face his Creator having denied the Shroud, just
in case the Shroud was authentic, that’s not what I believe happened. Rogers began changing his mind when two nonscientists, Joseph Marino and Sue Benford, got textile experts to examine microscopic evidence that cotton had been woven into the linen fibers of that corner where the carbon-dating samples were taken, in a series of repairs made to the Shroud. After the repairs were made, the repair areas were dyed so the cotton would match the linen to fool the eye into not seeing the reweaving repair. Rogers concluded that someone using materials that were not used in making the original Shroud did the reweaving with great skill. Looking back at the 1978 photos of the Shroud, Rogers realized the area chosen for the carbon-14 samples was different from the rest of the Shroud in that the sample area did not fluoresce the same, for instance, under the ultraviolet tests.”

“So how did Rogers prove the 1988 carbon-14 sample was different from the main body of the Shroud?” Castle asked. “What was the methodology?”

Middagh answered slowly, trying to make sure he explained what Rogers had done so everyone in the room would understand. “In the paper Rogers published posthumously, he argued the 1978 STURP tests showed that the chemistry of the linen fibers taken from the main part of the Shroud differed from the 1988 radiocarbon samples in that the 1978 samples showed no sign of cotton having been interwoven with the original linen. In other words, the main body of the Shroud is completely made up of the original linen, with no cotton included in the weaving at all. Since linen is dye-resistant and cotton is not, the dye saturating the cotton was apparent to the eye under microscopic analysis, once interwoven cotton and linen fibers were compared. That there was dyed cotton in the 1988 sample proved to Rogers that the corner used to cut out the radiocarbon samples included the medieval reweaving. In other words, in the repairs made through
the 1500s, sixteenth-century cotton was interwoven into first-century linen. That was the hypothesis that raised the possibility that the result of the carbon dating was wrong. The medieval cotton fibers interwoven into the sample could well have accounted for the carbon-14 test result that dated the Shroud somewhere around 1260 to 1390
A.D.
”