The Shroud Codex (29 page)

“Yes, he is,” Castle said. “But what if it turns out all this is a fraud, or that Father Bartholomew is just mentally ill? Will you report that?”

Ferrar thought for a minute. “It would be a lot less interesting story,” he finally said. “I guess I would report it, but who would care? People want to believe in God. They want to believe in miracles.”

“I know,” Castle said, moving in for the kill. “I would even go so far as to say people need to believe. But that is not my question. My question is about you. Do you want to believe? Is that why you’re doing the story? Is it because you want the Shroud to be the burial cloth of Christ and you want Father Bartholomew to be a miracle man?”

Again, Ferrar thought before he answered. “I see where you’re headed. You’re a smart guy and I don’t want to fall into your trap. Let me answer you this way: To tell you the truth, I’m not really sure about the Shroud, or about Bartholomew. But what I know is this—I’m covering the story because there is a good chance it’s all true. Otherwise, I wouldn’t waste my time.”

“And from my point of view, it’s just the opposite,” Castle countered. “I took on Father Bartholomew as a patient because there’s a good chance it’s all false. Otherwise, I wouldn’t waste my time.”

Thursday morning

Bologna, Italy

Day 22

The eight passengers—Dr. Castle and Anne Cassidy, Fathers Morelli and Middagh, Fernando Ferrar and his three-man crew—fit comfortably in the eight-seat, two-engine Citation XLS the Vatican had chartered for the forty-seven-minute flight from Rome to Bologna.

Two limos picked up the passengers at the airport and transported them to the University of Bologna, where chemistry professor Marco Gabrielli was preparing for the press conference of his life.

When Castle and Anne walked into the auditorium-style conference room with its tiers of raised seats, Gabrielli was backstage, carefully going over his notes one last time. Castle counted some fifty correspondents who were present, including Reuters from Great Britain, the Associated Press from the United States, and Agence France-Presse. Italian journalists sat in the front row behind name cards reserved for
Corriere della Sera
in Milan,
La
Repubblica
from Rome, and
La Stampa
from Turin, among others. Video cameras from RAI in Italy and TV5 in France were prominent among the European television crews set up in the back row of the stylish facility. Quietly, the American video crew set up their camera among the others in the back of the room, as Fernando Ferrar positioned himself alone, in the center of the auditorium. Fathers Morelli and Middagh sat in the row behind Dr. Castle and Anne Cassidy, off to the side of the auditorium.

Each auditorium seat came equipped with earphones. A dial built into the desk allowed the occupant to select one of four languages: Italian, French, English, and German. Behind a glass panel off to the side of the room, opposite where Dr. Castle and the others sat, were four translators ready to do a simultaneous broadcast to the conference participants.

At precisely 11:30
A.M.
local time, Dr. Gabrielli stepped to the podium, flanked by two assistants in lab coats. Behind each assistant was an easel with the display boards covered by a white cloth. He looked dapper in his finely tailored beige cashmere sport coat and black turtleneck sweater. For once, his freshly cut and nicely combed black hair was a good match for his closely trimmed Van Dyke beard. From the way he was dressed and groomed, Castle judged Gabrielli was at the top of his game. The impression was reinforced the minute Gabrielli stepped to the podium. As he surveyed the audience, Gabrielli’s trademark wry smile and his darting green eyes gave the impression that he was indeed the cat who had caught the mouse.

“Good morning,” Gabrielli began confidently. “Welcome to the University of Bologna. I am Dr. Marco Gabrielli, senior professor of chemistry here. My complete academic resumé will be provided to you in the press packets we will hand out at the end of the session. We will take questions at the end of my short presentation.”

Looking out at the audience, Gabrielli was pleased to see Dr. Castle in attendance. Almost imperceptibly, Gabrielli nodded recognition to his friend and associate in the audience.

“My expertise at the University of Bologna has in recent years been extended to exposing frauds in a wide range of paranormal phenomena, including supposed miracles involving a variety of statues of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and various saints that have been claimed to be crying tears of blood, to an exposition of the chemistry by which religious mystics have been able to self-produce the illusion of the stigmata, the nail wounds of Christ’s crucifixion appearing typically on their wrists.”

Having given more than one press conference in his career, Gabrielli planned to cut to the chase.

“Today I am here to announce that I have successfully reproduced the Shroud of Turin using only materials and methods known to be available to medieval forgers who were working in the period between 1260 and 1390
A.D.
, the dates the carbon-14 tests done on the Shroud have established for its date of creation.”

At Gabrielli’s instruction, his first assistant removed the cloth from the first easel, exposing a life-size photograph of the frontal image of the crucified man depicted in the Shroud of Turin. “This, as you see, is the original Shroud of Turin. This image is a life-size photographic negative that shows the crucified man’s features in white highlights.”

At his instruction, the second assistant removed the cloth from the second easel, showing for the first time Gabrielli’s life-size reproduction of the Shroud on a modern strip of linen made, under Gabrielli’s direction, to match the Shroud of Turin’s exact weave pattern and size. When the image was exposed, even the jaded members of the press seemed to let out an audible gasp. The first impression of everyone in the room was that Gabrielli had done
it. His reproduction was startling in how much it looked exactly like the original, down to the beard and mustache of the crucified man, the scourge marks visible on the body, and the nail wounds seen in the man’s wrists and feet.

“I’d like you to meet my model,” Gabrielli said, motioning to the back door of the auditorium.

Out stepped a handsome, bearded man in his early thirties, wearing a long, flowing white robe designed to enhance the effect.

“This is one of my senior graduate students,” the professor said. “Roberto d’Agostini.”

Everyone in the room was instantly impressed by how much d’Agostini looked like an icon of Jesus Christ that had stepped right out of the Shroud itself. Even Castle was impressed. D’Agostini had the same square face and beard with a forked opening in the middle, the same long hair that drooped to his shoulders and trailed into a ponytail that stretched down his back to his waist. He had the same long, elegant fingers as the man in the Shroud of Turin. Even their ages seemed similar. D’Agostini appeared to be in his early thirties and Christ, according to tradition, was thirty-three years old when he was crucified.

But truthfully Castle wasn’t sure whether d’Agostini or Father Bartholomew had done a better job in making themselves look like the man in a Shroud, so he guessed it was a toss-up. If d’Agostini looked somewhat younger than the man in the Shroud of Turin, Father Bartholomew in his early forties looked somewhat older. That was the only significant difference Castle could discern.

“While I can assure you that Signore d’Agostini’s beard and mustache are authentic, there was no reason for him to appear nude today,” Gabrielli said. “The wounds you see in my shroud were painted on his body, based on a detailed analysis of the
wounds we see in the Shroud of Turin. We transferred the body image to the linen cloth of the Shroud duplicate by a series of carefully designed rubbing methods and exposure to ambient light.”

D’Agostini gathered up his robe and took a chair to the side of Dr. Gabrielli. Sitting quietly, he looked every bit as composed and serene as did the man in the Shroud.

“While the press packet will give you a more complete description of my methodology, let me simply say that I used red ochre and vermilion paints, common coloring materials available to medieval artists. I followed, among others, the scientific conclusions of Dr. Walter McCrone, the American chemist and leading expert in microscopy who was a member of the team of scientists allowed by the Vatican to examine the Shroud over a five-day period as part of the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project. To produce the image on my Shroud, we treated the Shroud with a light-sensitive coating made from a proprietary mixture of egg albumin and various plant extracts. The primary paint I used was an iron oxide formula commonly known as red ochre, which I supplemented for detailed painting with a mercuric sulfide mixture known in the Middle Ages as vermilion. I produced the final result by exposing the finished product to various heat treatments in a specially designed industrial ceramic furnace. I would remind believers that the Shroud of Turin does not show substantial traces of iron oxide or mercuric sulfide today because the paint pigments on the original Shroud faded away over the centuries.”

The video cameras at the back zoomed in for close-ups of both shrouds, as the reporters at their desks furiously made notes.

“In conclusion,” Gabrielli said, “please realize that this is only my first effort. My goal today was simply to demonstrate to you that materials and techniques commonly available to medieval
artists were more than sufficient for a skilled and brilliant forger to have produced the Shroud of Turin in his studio. I think you will agree that the shroud duplicate that you see before you has fundamentally the same characteristics you see in the original Shroud of Turin. My goal is to dispel the myth that the Shroud of Turin displays unexplainable features that could not be produced by human hands. I believe you will agree with me that the shroud duplicate I have produced in the last few weeks goes a long way to proving that the Shroud of Turin is no more authentic than religious statues claimed to bleed real blood.”

When Gabrielli finished, a flurry of reporters raised their hands to be the first to ask a question.

In politically astute deference to his countrymen, Gabrielli chose an Italian press reporter from the first row to ask the first question. Gabrielli asked the reporter to identify himself before he asked his question.

“I’m Silvio Brunetta from
La Repubblica
in Rome,” he said as he stood up. “How do you expect the Vatican to react to your shroud?”

Gabrielli chuckled. “Truthfully, I don’t expect any reaction,” he said. “The Vatican has always been cautious not to confirm the Shroud of Turin as the actual burial cloth of Christ. The group that I do expect to go berserk are the scientific members of the Shroud of Turin community around the world who have a vested interest in defending their decades of research trying to prove the Shroud is real, despite the carbon-14 evidence to the contrary.”

A second questioner introduced himself. “I’m Vittorio Graviano with
Corriere della Sera
in Milan. I see on your shroud that you even duplicated the burn holes and water damage we see on the original Shroud. Can you tell us how you added these effects?”

“Certainly,” Gabrielli answered. “As I said, I wanted my shroud to look as much as possible like the original Shroud. So, after we placed the image of Signore d’Agostini on the cloth, we scorched the cloth and soaked it with water, to duplicate as much as possible the patterns of damage you see on the original. To finalize the results, I added blood and blood serum to the image, in the exact areas we see bloodstains on the original. To be authentic, I used human blood.”

From there, Gabrielli was peppered with questions for half an hour. No, he answered, he was not an atheist. “I’m a Roman Catholic,” he asserted. “Just not a very devout one.”

He stated that he did not hate the Vatican and that he did not want to hurt Christianity. “My goal is not political,” he argued. “I’m a professional chemist who teaches here at one of Italy and Europe’s oldest and most prestigious universities. I expose fraud. My goal is to prevent gullible people worldwide from being deceived even today by a forger who had a plan to get rich in the thirteenth or fourteenth century.”

Gabrielli stated that his goal was not to get rich by his efforts.

Asked whether he produced the shroud because of the recent fame of Father Paul Bartholomew in the United States, Gabrielli admitted that the attention generated by the American priest was his inspiration. “Yes,” he said. “And I understand that Father Bartholomew has been brought to Rome by the Vatican and I am looking forward to meeting him. Maybe after that I can give you a report on how I believe Father Bartholomew is producing the illusion of his stigmata.”

That Father Bartholomew had been brought from the United States to Italy by the Vatican was news to all in the room, except of course for Dr. Castle and the contingent that had traveled with them from New York.

Fernando Ferrar spoke up.

“I’m Fernando Ferrar, a television reporter from New York,” he said, introducing himself. “I can confirm that Father Bartholomew is in Rome. My news crew and I traveled with him on the Vatican-chartered airplane that left JFK Airport for Rome this Tuesday evening.”

Heads in the audience turned, as various reporters decided they would interview Ferrar as well as Gabrielli before they rushed out to file their stories.

“My question, Professor Gabrielli, is this.” Ferrar continued: “Just because you can duplicate the Shroud of Turin does not mean the original isn’t authentic.”

“What do you mean?” Gabrielli asked, puzzled at the supposed question.

“Maybe somebody could duplicate Leonardo da Vinci’s
Mona Lisa,
but that doesn’t prove Leonardo didn’t paint the original.”

“What’s your point?” Gabrielli shot back.

“My point is simple.” Ferrar pressed on. “It’s a lot easier to duplicate something than to create it in the first place. I don’t see that you produced the ‘positive’ from which your negative image with the white highlighting was taken. How did a medieval painter think to create a negative that would not have been recognized as such until Secondo Pia first photographed the Shroud for the 1898 exposition?”