On “Sindone News” N. 18, September 2004 (for requests, please contact comsindo@torino.chiesacattolica.it) there is the advice that the publication of  “Sindon” booklets ended. Moreover the “Holy Shroud Guild” and the American Shroud of Turin Association AMSTAR, together with the “Centro Internazionale di Sindonologia”, announce the 3° International Dallas conference on the Shroud to be held at the Adolfus Hotel, 1321 Commerce Street, Dallas, Texas  75202, USA, from 8 to 11 September 2005. For more information, please contact: AMSTAR, P.O. Box 878, Kaufman, Texas  75142, USA, phone: 001-972-9325141, fax: 001-972-9327742, e-mail: amstarorg@yahoo.com
 

From July 23, 2004 is available for sale the DVD "Shroud". This DVD, of the duration of 160 minutes, shows in 5 languages (Italian, English, French, German and Spanish) the latest images of the Shroud, taken in 2002 following the intervention. The DVD contains also various sections concerning history, scientific examinations, art and faith, the official images of the Exhibitions of the Holy Shroud and a guided tour of the Museum of the Holy Shroud in Turin. If you are interested in the purchase, please contact the secretary of the Museum of the Holy Shroud of Turin sindone@tin.it -Via San Domenico 28 - 10122 Torino – Italia, tel. 0114365832.

Dr. Fred Zugibe, a forensic pathologist of Rockland County, N.Y. (U.S.A.) who had studied the crucifixion and the Shroud for over 52 years, takes issues with Anna Katharina Emmerick and Mel Gibson (Spirit Daily, April 22, 2004).

On April 13, 2004 the Journal of Optics A: Pure and Applied Optics published the article of Giulio Fanti and Roberto Maggiolo "The double superficiality of the frontal image of the Turin Shroud" (J. Opt. A: Pure Appl. Opt. 6, 2004, pp. 491-503).

Raymond Rogers, a retired physical chemist and former leader of the explosives research and development group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, proposes that the samples used to date the Shroud in 1988 were flawed and the experiment should be repeated. His conclusion is based on a recent chemical analysis of the shroud and previous observations made during a 1978 examination. (Bijal P. Trivedi,  National Geographic Channel, April 9, 2004).

Mel Gibson’s choice to represent the crucifixion nails stuck in the palm of the hand does not follow the theory supported by many scholars and coinciding, among other things, with the wounds we can find on the image of the man of the Shroud. The soft parts of the palm, in fact, difficultly could have hardly supported the convict’s weight, as it would have been possible, instead, sticking them into the wrists. (Andrea Tornielli, La Passione dai Vangeli al film di Mel Gibson, ed. PIEMME, April 2004, p. 114).

It is really a pity that Mel Gibson has not known or at least resorted to the image story of the Shroud of Turin. It is a true fifth Gospel of Jesus’ passion and death. The event of the Calvary, as it happened, is more dramatic than the director’s even ferocious fiction. The scourging was inflicted with cold determination with more than one hundred blows on the Man, who was naked. The crown of thorns was not a small circle around the head but a helmet of thorns that covered its entire surface, causing the sticking into the scalp of at least fifty or so thorns. The Man of the Shroud did not carry the entire cross on his shoulders, but only the patibulum, that is, the horizontal beam. In fact, the vertical pole, the ‘stipes’, was always stuck on the execution place. The transport of the patibulum provoked lesions in the areas above the right blade-bone and on the left blade-bone. The consequences of the falls are also visible on the Shroud through the presence of fragments of earthy material mixed with brownish residuals of blood on the tip of the excoriated nose, on the left knee and on a heel. But among the parts of the body, it is the Man of the Shroud’s face which has endured most traumas, more serious than those realized through the film make up on Jim Caviezel’s face. That face was hit by a stick, whose trace is easily found on his right cheek and on his crushed and crooked nose. Numerous wounds lacerated-contused on the cheek-bones and eyebrows, and clots everywhere. The nail wounds are in the wrists and not in the palms. Along the left forearm there are three flows according to his body position: he was crucified while lying on the ground, then he was raised on the ‘stipes’. His thumbs are not visible because the nails damaged the median nerve. The great wound of the chest, between the fifth and sixth rib of the right side, with the pouring out of blood and serum and Jesus’ “loud cry” at the moment of the death, make us think that he died because of haemopericardium, that is, the breaking of the heart by a stroke and the pouring out of all the blood in the bag of the pericardium. (Orazio Petrosillo, L’Eco di san Gabriele n. 4, April 2004, p. 25).