Turin shroud 'is a fake'

Press, 22 September 1980, Page 7

Turin shroud 'is a fake'

NZPA Chicago A scientist who examined particles taken from the shroud of Turin says he believes the purported burial sheet of Jesus Christ is a medieval fake. Dr Walter . McCrone, a Chicago microscopist _ who took part in a scientific effort to test the authenticity of the shroud, said he has found on the sheet traces of iron-ore pigment like that used by artists in the paint called red ochre. He said that although he cannot prove the shroud is a fake, his findings have convinced him it is not authentic. A Vatican specialist promptly challenged Dr McCrone’s interpretation. The cloth depicts the shad-

owy image of a bearded man bearing wounds such as those Christ suffered, according to biblical accounts of the crucifixion.

Over the years, some people have believed the image was caused by Christ’s blood stains or a kind of chemical reaction from his body and burial unguents. “I believe that the shroud is a fake, but I cannot prove it,” Dr McCrone was said to have told closed-door meetings of scientists and other members of ' the British Society for the Turin Shroud. Dr McCrone said a carbon 14 dating test probably would give a date around 1436, or 14 centuries after

the crucifixion. Italian Church authorities have refused to grant permission to cut the sheet to get a sample of cloth to test. It is entirely possible that an artist could nave done it much earlier than 1436, but it was very fashionable to make frauds at that time, Dr McCrone was quoted in the “Catholic Herald” as saying in last week’s lectures. A Vatican expert, Monsignor Giulio Ricci, dismissed Dr McCrone’s contention as “oddly curious, unreliable; and far-fetched.” . The Roman Catholic Church, while encouraging veneration of the shroud, has avoided taking a formal stand on its authenticity, believing that is the task of

historians and scientists, not theologians. Reputedly brought back from the Holy Land by Crusaders in the Middle Ages, the sheet is kept in Turin Cathedral. An international panel of scientists was allowed to examine the relic in 1978 and Dr McCrone said he worked on sample tapes taken at that time. It was Dr McCrone who exposed the Vinland map as a forgery. The map, purporting to display medieval knowledge of North America before Christopher Columbus, was shown by Dr McCrone to have been drawn with ink containing a pigment that was not marketed before 1917. ;