SEEC (the Shroud Educational Endeavors Corporation)’s first International Scientific Shroud Conference since COVID had just started when the New York Post published a story on a new “study” debunking the Shroud of Turin. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
The conference was held at the new Augustine Institute Center in St. Louis, with scientists from around the world gathered to present new research, evidence, and studies on the Shroud of Turin. I was greatly honored to be invited to speak on my environmental and climate research providing supporting evidence to the Gospels with connections to Jesus’ shroud and sudarium. At the conference, I joined key Shroud scientists from the STURP team that studied the Shroud in 1978. We quickly realized that this story was another erroneous attention-grabbing, money-making claim.
Sadly, certain media groups continue to run headlines to incite attention, because reporting the truth or the complete picture to debunk this “study” doesn’t make money, get more subscribers, or earn promotions.
This recent study was done by a Brazilian designer, Cicero Morares, who produces 3D digital models on computers. He uses free software to see how cloth would drape over shapes and detects all contact points between the cloth and the created shape. His computer-made shape was flat—a low-relief sculpture. Morares digitally created the top part of a human shape and saw the cloth making full contact.
The study was published in the journal Archaeometry, showing how cloth and other fabrics form impressions on a human body compared to a sculpture. Morares claims that his results demonstrate that the contact pattern generated by the low-relief model is more compatible with the Shroud’s image, compared to a three-dimensional model of a human figure. Therefore, Morares suspects that a medieval artist made a sculpture of a human body from wood, stone, or metal and pigmented only the areas of contact.
This far-from-complete evaluation created headlines such as “Brazilian 3-D expert, Cicero Morares, says that he can prove the Shroud never wrapped a real human body let alone the body Jesus Christ using state-of-the-art digital” and “Turin Shroud imprint might not be from human body, says groundbreaking new study.”
So what do the final results of this study prove?
The fact is that this study is erroneous and doesn’t come close to addressing all the known facts about the Shroud of Turin. Thus, the study doesn’t really prove anything. But what it implies is rewarding for a few, and detrimental to the education and enlightenment of the world.
One main factor ignored is that the Shroud’s image has a correlation as regards image density. In other words, lights and darks of the image on the Shroud are in direct correlation to the body’s distance from the cloth. The closer the body was to the cloth, such as at the nose, the darker and more enhanced its image is on the Shroud. It is my understanding that the computer model Morares studied has an image like the Shroud’s, but created only at the contact points. The Shroud of Turin has an image, although fainter, even when the body is not touching the cloth, such as several millimeters away.
Morares also stated that a medieval artist would have used a pigment at the contact points. This raises the question—what pigment? The Shroud of Turin is the most studied artifact in the world, and no pigment made by humankind has been found on it. Yes, some remnants totaling to an amount of pigment that could paint one strand of hair were found, but this is attributed to artists hired by the Savoy family to paint copies of the Shroud. These painted copies were then venerated by having them touch the actual Shroud. The royal House of Savoy in Italy had ownership of the Shroud from 1578 to 1983, when the Shroud was transferred to the Holy See.
The Shroud of Turin is approximately 14 feet by 3.5 feet and shows the full frontal and dorsal images of a crucified man. Forensic scientists who studied the real Shroud estimated that the body image was about 5 feet, 11 inches tall and weight about 170 pounds. The image on the Shroud is that of an anatomically correct human body.
But a historical fact about medieval times states that there was no knowledge of correct anatomical proportions for the human body. Thus, no medieval artist had the knowledge to carve wood, stone, or metal into a perfectly anatomically correct figure. This knowledge came about hundreds of years later, during the Renaissance period.
The study does not address the bodily fluid around the blood of the spear wound—bodily fluid that is invisible to the naked eye but visible under ultraviolet (UV) light. What medieval artist would have modern medical knowledge to paint invisible bodily fluid, anticipating the future discovery and scientific use of UV light?
Now here is the most erroneous deletion: When the image from the Shroud of Turin is placed in a VP-8 analyzer, we receive a full-detailed three-dimensional image. No artwork of any kind made by humankind does that; only two-dimensional information is provided. Morares’s image, printed out from his 3-D computer model, fails to present the three-dimensional data from a VP-8 analyzer.
The Shroud of Turin has not been debunked. It is Morares’s study that has been debunked, by a plethora of international scientists. Sadly, that fact will never make the headlines.
As the Northeast regional leader for SAGE (Shroud Apostolate Group English) under Othonia, started by Fr. Pascual from the Pontifical Institute of Science and Faith in Rome, I have been assigned (see here) to share the truth about Jesus’ burial Shroud. Taking on the Morares study is just one way to do so.