RELIC LETTER

Rio de Janeiro, 27, 28 e 29 de June de 2002

To His Holiness

POPE JOHN PAUL II

We gathered in the wonderful and respectable city of San Sebastian of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to present in a conference the results of our long researches about the Holy Shroud of Turin. This international event aims at presenting to the world’s Christian community our reports, proofs of our common passion for the study of this fascinating subject, despite the differences of language, origins and faith. We would not dedicate part of our lives to this research if we were not convinced of the fact that this is really the linen cloth that covered the body of Jesus of Nazareth in the sepulchre of Joseph of Arimatéia, the same cloth that was found in the morning of Easter sunday in 33 a.C. according to what the evangelists wrote in the Bible. This conviction is based on the impossibility of the masterpiece realized on the Holy Shroud: scientific tests and studies demonstrated how it cannot be the product of a man’s work. We want to mention here a few of the many extraordinary elements concerning the Holy Shroud that in our opinion represent a real challenge to science:

- The miracle of negative-positive inversion on the Shroud photograph where negative appears as positive.

- The confirmation of the fact that the figure of the Man on the Shroud suffered the flagellation and the tortures described by the four evangelists and died crucified.

- The figure on the cloth, whose dimensions are 4,36m x 1,10m, presents traces of human blood belonging to the AB group. The perfect anatomy enabled to carry out detailed studies and verify the following bodily injuries: the thorn crown, the perforation of hands and feet with nails, signs of whipping, scars on the shoulders caused by the cross, lesion in the fifth intracostal right space caused by the perforation with a lance.

- The results of the C-14 tests, carried out with extreme precision on the basis of scientific calculations and taking into account the different accidents in which the Shroud was involved during the years, clearly demonstrate that the cloth dates back to the First Century.

- The results of many different tests (thermography, immunofluorescence, tridimensionality, electronic microscopy, electrophoresis) clearly show the existence of a still unexplained phenomenon caused by the presence of blood on the cloth.

Without involving faith, religion, politics or other issues, we can therefore state that the studies on the Holy Shroud of Turin clearly demonstrate how this is really the cloth that covered the body of Jesus of Nazareth, besides contributing to enlarge our scientific and cultural knowledge: other proofs supporting this theory are historical analogies, proving scientific possibilities and the impossibility of a miraculous art fraud.

Science continues evolving and in the future new devices and techniques will supply new proofs supporting what we already believe in. Our hope is that this conference can contribute to science and to those who need