New research appears to show that the Shroud of Turin, a centuries-old linen cloth that many believe bears the image of the crucified Jesus Christ, is stained with the blood of a torture victim.
Italian researchers have claimed that the famous cloth, venerated by people all over the world as a miraculous relic that once wrapped Christ’s crucified body, contains “nanoparticles” of blood typical of someone who has undergone violent trauma, the Catholic Herald reported.
One of the researchers, Elvio Carlino, who works at the Institute of Crystallography in Bari, Italy, says the particles reflect “great suffering.”
Professor Giulio Fanti of the University of Padua notes that the particles have a “peculiar structure, size and distribution.” He also found that the blood contains high levels of creatinine and ferritin, which are typically seen in patients who have experienced violent forms of suffering, such as torture.
“Hence, the presence of these biological nanoparticles found during our experiments point to a violent death for the man wrapped in the Turin Shroud,” Professor Fanti concluded.
The researchers’ complete findings, which employ newly developed methods in the field of electron microscopy, were recently published by the Public Library of Science in an article titled, “New Biological Evidence from Atomic Resolution Studies on the Turin Shroud.”
Carlino noted that this was the first study of “the nanoscale properties of a pristine fiber taken from the Turin Shroud.”
(H/T: Catholic Herald)