The church has never officially ruled on the shroud’s authenticity, saying judgments about its age and origin belonged to scientific investigation. Those accurate studies, she told Vatican News, “yielded different results from those of Borrini and Garlaschelli.” Marinelli, however, said the experiments conducted by Borrini and Garlaschelli lacked the accuracy of past studies involving cadavers of men who died of hemopericardium, the pooling of blood in the heart, which is believed to be what ultimately caused Jesus’ death on the cross. Garlaschelli posted a video of the scientific experiment on YouTube in 2015 using a live person to study the blood patterns in various positions as well as pressing a sponge against a plastic mannequin to examine the way the fake blood flowed. The 14-foot-by-4-foot shroud has a full-length photonegative image of a man, front and back, bearing signs of wounds that correspond to the Gospel accounts of the torture Jesus endured in his passion and death. The study, which was conducted in 2014 and published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences July 10, claimed the blood patterns on the hands are “only consistent with a standing subject with arms at a 45 degree angle” while the blood stains emanating from the right side of the chest - believed to be from the lance that pierced Christ - “are totally unrealistic.” “If this is considered science, I guess I’ll just have to take my degree in natural sciences and throw it away,” she said.

“Does it seem like a scientific criterion to take a mannequin - like the ones used to display clothes in a store window - and a sponge soaked in fake blood attached to a piece wood that is pressed on the right side of a dummy to see where the streams of blood fall?” Marinelli asked. In an interview with Vatican News July 17, Emanuela Marinelli, an expert on the Shroud of Turin, said “there was nothing scientific” about the experiments conducted by Matteo Borrini, an Italian forensic scientist, and Luigi Garlaschelli, an Italian chemist. A leading expert on the cloth believed to be the burial shroud of Jesus dismissed a new study claiming that blood patterns on the shroud are not consistent with those left by a crucified person.

Shroud of turin 2020