'Christ Dead When Taken From Cross’

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32252, 21 March 1970, Page 15

'Christ Dead When Taken From Cross ’

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) ROME, March 19.

Jesus Christ was definitely dead when he was wrapped in the holy shroud after his crucifixion, the Vatican weekly, “Osseiwatore Della Domenica,” said yesterday.

The newspaper said that experiments at the Roman Catholic University of the Sacred Heart had disproved recent assertions to the contrary by Mr Kurt Berna, a West German Roman Catholic writer, who is president of the Zurich-based International Foundation for the Defence of the Holy Shroud. Mr Berna has been quoted as saying that the stains on the shroud—preserved in a silver chest in Turin—have shown that although Jesus had stopped breathing when taken from the Cross, his heart was still beating. The foundation claimed in January that there was a movement in Vatican circles to destroy the shroud for fear that revelations about circumstances of Christ’s death might jeopardise basic tenets of the Roman Catholic faith. The Vatican weekly said that Mr Bema’s assertion that the Centurion's lance did not pierce Christ’s heart, but only went through the lung, had been disproved in the experiments carried out with Xray equipment and a thin steel blade used to simulate the circumstances.

In any case, Christ’s death did not depend on the lancewound, given by the centurion as a coup de grace, for Christ had already been dead for two hours, it said.

Eye-witnesses to the crucifixion, including St John, had testified that Christ was dead when he Was taken down from the cross, it said. “The Foundation for the Defence of the Holy Shroud should put its mind at rest. The holy shroud does not need such defenders,” the Vatican weekly said.