The Shroud Codex (33 page)

The pope leaned forward in his chair and began tapping the
top of his desk rhythmically with the fingers of his right hand. Silently, he prayed for patience, and guidance from above.

After a moment or two, the pope picked up his phone and instructed that Fathers Morelli and Bartholomew be brought into the room.

Almost instantly, Father Morelli was pushing into the room a wheelchair containing Father Bartholomew. The priest from New York looked almost exactly the way he had looked the day Dr. Castle first met him. Sitting comfortably in the wheelchair, Father Bartholomew was dressed once again in a flowing white robe that together with his long hair and beard gave the impression that he was Jesus Christ reincarnate.

Father Morelli wheeled Father Bartholomew to center stage, positioning the wheelchair between the Italian doctors on the priest’s right and Dr. Castle on the left. Going to the back of the room, Father Morelli brought forward a side chair that he moved so he could sit slightly behind and to the right of Father Bartholomew. By the positioning of the chairs, Castle got the impression the deck was stacked, the Vatican on one side and him on the other.

“Your Holiness, excuse me if I cannot get up to kiss your ring,” Father Bartholomew said humbly.

“That won’t be necessary,” the pope said, unable to completely disguise the irritation he felt at seeing Father Bartholomew in person for the first time. In truth, the pope felt considerable sympathy for the priest. He knew Father Bartholomew was suffering and that his wounds had to be extremely painful. Nor was he convinced that Bartholomew was insane. Conceivably, Father Bartholomew was confronting the Church and the world with a new reality that everyone would have to pay attention to, whether they liked it or not. Still, Father Bartholomew was causing the Church
a worldwide commotion and the pope worried that Father Bartholomew’s crisis would be bad for the Church. “I assume you know everyone in the room.”

Looking around, Father Bartholomew acknowledged that he did. “It’s been my good fortune to have had the professional assistance of each of these distinguished doctors,” Bartholomew said deferentially.

“Father Bartholomew, please excuse me if I get directly to the point,” the pope said, displaying less patience than he had planned to show in this meeting. “I agree with these gentlemen that you are suffering a psychological illness from which you may never recover.”

“I understand that, Holy Father,” Father Bartholomew said deferentially.

“Quite frankly, I don’t know what to do with you,” the pope said, expressing openly how perplexed he felt. “Even if you came back from the dead with a photograph of Jesus Christ taken in Heaven, I doubt I could ever declare as a matter of Catholic dogma that the Shroud of Turin is anything more than an artifact worthy of veneration. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, Your Holiness, I do.”

“The minute I would declare the Shroud of Turin to be the authentic burial cloth of Christ, it would be just our luck to have some scholar unearth a lost Leonardo da Vinci notebook in which he recorded the methods he used to create the Shroud.”

Saying nothing, Father Morelli appreciated the dilemma. While years of study had led a once-skeptical Morelli to conclude the Shroud was authentic, he did not think it was possible to establish beyond any possible doubt that the Shroud was Christ’s burial cloth. In the final analysis, Morelli agreed with the pope. One would probably always need a leap of faith to see the Shroud
as authentic, just as one always needed that leap to believe in the existence of God.

“As all you gentlemen know, my papacy has been predicted to be the last,” Pope John-Paul Peter I said with a steady resolve in his eyes. “Who knows? Maybe the prediction is right. But I will not gamble my future or the future of the Catholic Church on the Shroud of Turin. The moment I would make that proclamation, I would simply empower those like Professor Gabrielli, who is resolved to demonstrate how easily the Shroud could be some clever medieval artist’s idea of a joke.”

Everyone in the room sat silently, digesting the importance of what the pope was saying.

“Furthermore, I don’t fully appreciate how you have raised the stakes,” the pope said pointedly to Father Bartholomew. “Do you understand that?”

“I’m not sure I do,” Bartholomew answered, showing his confusion at the pope’s statement.

“It’s pretty easy if you think about it for a moment,” the pope said, fighting to keep his irritation from being obvious in his voice. “If we end up exposing you as a fraud or a nutcase, I’ve still got a problem. There are millions of people out there who believe in you and they’re ready to turn on me if I don’t. Do you understand me now?”

“Yes, Your Holiness, I guess I do,” Bartholomew said tentatively. “There is just one thing, however, if you will permit me.”

“What’s that?” the pope answered.

“The Shroud of Turin is the authentic burial cloth of Jesus Christ and I have returned to life to prove that,” Bartholomew insisted. “I’m not a fraud and I’m not crazy.”

“I wish you would stop sounding like you’re the one who’s been crucified and resurrected, not Jesus Christ,” the pope said,
fighting back frustration. “Maybe we should start seeing if we can update Michelangelo by painting your face in the Sistine Chapel’s scene of the Last Judgment, so you can be sitting there next to Jesus Christ on Judgment Day. Look at you! Don’t you think it’s arrogant to make yourself out to be the Second Coming of Jesus Christ?”

“Actually, Your Holiness, you don’t need to paint my picture in the Sistine Chapel,” Bartholomew said, doing his best to answer the pope with humility. “But Jesus Christ and I were both resurrected and I think I can prove it to you, if you’ll just give me a chance.”

“How’s that?” the pope asked.

“I’ve never seen the Shroud in person, and I would like to do so,” Bartholomew said.

“I’m sure that can be arranged,” the pope said calmly. “But why would I do so?”

“I believe that if I can see the Shroud of Turin in person, I can prove to you it is the authentic burial cloth of Jesus Christ. I also believe I can prove to you that Jesus encoded in the Shroud an important message for all time that it is my responsibility to decode. If I fail on either of those points to persuade you, then I will admit to the world that you are right and I am psychologically disturbed. If I fail, I will readily agree to undergo the years of psychoanalysis the doctors here think I need to be healed of my delusions.”

The pope resumed tapping his desk with the fingers of his right hand. “The problem with your proposal is that it is one-sided.”

“How’s that?” Bartholomew asked.

“You control the outcome and it’s up to you to say whether you will undergo psychoanalysis. How do I know you won’t just see the Shroud and say that it proves you were right?”

“Excuse me, Your Holiness, but I don’t think you fully understood my proposal.”

“So, what did I miss?”

“What I said was that I wanted to see the Shroud of Turin in person and that if I failed to convince you the Shroud is authentic, then I will submit to psychoanalysis. It will be entirely up to you. If we see the Shroud of Turin together, in person, and you come away unconvinced, then that’s it. I will make a public statement that I have been misleading people and I will withdraw from public view into medical treatment.”

The pope stood up from his desk and leaned forward, with both his arms extended in front of him so the palms of his hands rested on the top of the desk. He looked Bartholomew squarely in the eye. “You’re a physicist, Bartholomew, and I have been told you are a genius,” the pope said with resolve. “But I warn you not to tempt God. As smart as you think you are, God is smarter.”

“I know that,” Bartholomew said, “and I don’t plan to tempt God or to disappoint you in what I propose to do.”

“And there’s one point on which I will concede you’re a lot like Jesus Christ.”

“What’s that, Your Holiness?”

“You are a troublemaker who is causing the Roman Catholic Church great consternation, just as Jesus Christ caused consternation for the ancient Romans trying to govern Israel.”

“And maybe like Jesus Christ, I will change the world,” Bartholomew said, defending himself. “My mission here is not to cause trouble but to affirm Jesus Christ in his passion, death, and resurrection.”

The pope turned to Father Morelli. “Any reason you think we shouldn’t accept Father Bartholomew’s proposal, Father Morelli?” the pope asked. From the beginning of this affair with Father Bartholomew, the pope had relied upon Morelli’s advice. Besides, the
pope knew there was no one who had spent more time with Father Bartholomew since this all began than Morelli had. The pope relied upon Morelli’s judgment and trusted his loyalty to the Vatican. Morelli would never recommend anything that might hurt the papacy.

“I don’t see why not,” Morelli said simply. “I’m sure we can arrange to bring Father Bartholomew to Turin to see the Shroud, and I don’t see what we have to lose. Either something happens that convinces you the Shroud is real and that Father Bartholomew does have a mission from God, or Father Bartholomew has offered you a way to put an end to all this drama.”

The pope sat down and looked carefully at everybody in the room, one at a time. Praying silently for wisdom and guidance, he had made his decision.

“Okay, Father Bartholomew. I’m going to grant your request,” the pope said, resolved to go forward. “Father Morelli will make the necessary arrangements.”

Hearing that his request had been granted, Father Bartholomew solemnly made the sign of the cross, slowly touching his forehead first, then his stomach, and finally his left shoulder and his right shoulder. Grateful that he was given permission to see the Shroud of Turin in person, Bartholomew felt confident he was going to achieve the mission for which he had returned.

“Now, gentlemen,” the pope said with finality, “if you will please excuse me, I have some work to do.”

Tuesday

Vatican Library, Rome, Italy

Day 27

The Turin Cathedral requested until Friday of that week to prepare the Shroud for private viewing. The pope decided to use the time as an opportunity for Dr. Castle and the others to have a meeting at the Vatican Library with Dottoressa Francesca Coretti, a Vatican Library senior staff researcher who had been studying the history of the Shroud for decades. Her particular area of academic specialty involved researching religious icons and Church traditions since the time of Christ in the first century. Her goal was to find icons of Christ that looked like the face of the man in the Shroud of Turin and Church traditions involving a burial cloth of Christ that might document the existence of the Shroud of Turin from before the 1260–1390
A.D.
dates established by the carbon-14 testing for the creation of the Shroud.

Pope John-Paul Peter I was confident Dr. Bucholtz’s presentation had made an impact on Dr. Castle, but there was yet another dimension to the Shroud the pope wanted Castle to understand.
The Shroud had held the attention of believers for centuries. Millions around the world revered it as the authentic burial cloth of Jesus Christ. While Castle, as an atheist, tended to discount the importance of religious experience, the pope knew that as a psychiatrist Castle could not dismiss the deep emotional impact the Shroud had made in hundreds of millions of lives through the past centuries. Still, there was a mystery of lost knowledge about the Shroud, and the pope wanted to see if he could make that a subject for Dr. Stephen Castle’s contemplation.

At the pope’s suggestion, Father Morelli had invited Professor Gabrielli and Fernando Ferrar, along with his video crew, to attend the interview with Francesca Coretti, as well as to attend the private viewing of the Shroud in Turin arranged for Friday.

“If you’re concerned with millions putting pressure on the Church over the Shroud, why do you invite our biggest critic and the New York television news to attend?” Father Morelli had asked the pope, objecting to opening these two private audiences to the public by inviting the world press and a critic of the Shroud with a growing international reputation.

“The truth is that Fernando Ferrar and Professor Gabrielli counterbalance one another,” Pope John-Paul Peter I answered.

Morelli did not immediately get the point. “How’s that, Holy Father?”

“Gabrielli will do his best to prove that whatever happens is just more evidence the Shroud of Turin is a fraud,” the pope said, “and Ferrar will be doing just the opposite. Ferrar’s interest is in promoting Father Bartholomew’s alleged miracle as authentic. Besides, if I exclude either one of them, the other accuses me of bias. If I exclude them both, the world accuses me of conspiracy. Let them both attend and we’ll leave the results up to God.”

Morelli saw the wisdom of the pope’s argument and he made the necessary arrangements without further discussion.

Welcoming the group to one of the Vatican Library’s many conference rooms, Francesca Coretti looked very much the part. Castle judged her to be about fifteen years younger than him, in her late forties. She was attractively thin and strikingly dressed, with her knee-length gray dress complementing her elegant shoulder-length black hair and her jet-black eyes. The straight lines of her nose and chin were nicely set off with the round large lenses of her scholarly looking gold-frame eyeglasses. Coretti had received her doctorate in medieval art history from the University of Milan. She was one of the most highly regarded staff professionals at the Vatican Library, trusted by the pope for her painstaking investigations and honest judgments.

In keeping with the décor of the Vatican Library, the conference room Dottoressa Coretti selected provided a colorful background with a ceiling decorated with magnificently hand-painted frescoes that illuminated scenes of papal history.

Surveying the room, Ferrar’s camera crew picked up a corner from which they thought they could cover the meeting. To capture the flow of the meeting, one of the crew broke out the mobile camera, deciding to roam the room during the meeting to get different perspectives on the discussion and close-ups as needed. Ferrar had in mind using this footage as part of a TV documentary he planned to put together when he got back to New York.