[Previous: Shroud of Turin News, January - June 2025 ] [Next: Shroud of Turin News, January - June 2026].
This is the tenth instalment of my Shroud of Turin News for July - December 2025. I am still catching up with my Shroud news articles. 
As previously mentioned, I don't want to abandon my Shroud of Turin News posts, because they will be helpful in writing Chapter 11, "History of the Shroud," of my book in progress, Shroud of Turin: Burial Sheet of Jesus! [Right (enlarge)]. See 06Jul17, 03Jun18, 04Apr22, 13Jul22, 08Nov22, 20Jun24; 01Dec24 & 15Dec25. Articles will be in date order. My comments will be within [bold square brackets] to distinguish them from the articles' words. I will list the more significant articles, and then comment on them.
"The silent sermon: The evangelical power of the Shroud," The Catholic Weekly, 2 July 2025, Daniel Ang. The Shroud of Turin has intrigued believers and non-believers alike for centuries. And in recent decades, it has become increasingly clear that the Shroud is not merely a religious curiosity. It is, in fact, one of the most extraordinary artefacts in human history. [The Shroud is not an artefact. An artefact is man-made: "An artifact or artefact (British English) is a general term for an item made or given shape by humans, such as a tool or a work of art, especially an object of archaeological interest."[AAW]. But the Shroudman's image is God-made, i.e. acheiropoiētos, "not made with [human] hands." The word occurs three times in the New Testament, of things made by God: Jesus' resurrection body (Mk 14:58; Jn 2:19-21); Christians' resurrection bodies (2Cor 5:1 and Christians' conversion (Col 2:11). It was used in c. 593 by the early historian Evagrius Scholasticus (c. 536-94) who wrote of a "divinely wrought image" (Gk acheiropoietos) on the Image of Edessa/Shroud which saved Edessa from a Persian siege in 544. See 07Dec16]
For many, it is a relic. For all of us, it is a mystery. And for those who seek truth, it can be a profound source of encounter with the Gospel. [In Roman Catholic theology a "relic" is "The material remains of a saint or holy person after his death", as opposed to an "icon" which is a humanly created representation of a real sacred person or thing[26Nov13]. So, if the Shroud is not a relic, i.e. Jesus' actual burial shroud, imprinted with an image of his actual resurrected body, and infused with his actual blood, then it is a man-made fake.
We are living in an age that hungers for evidence, for the tangible, for something real, especially when it comes to faith. And it is here that the Shroud speaks powerfully. [It would be nice if this were true, but in my experience it isn't. I live a type of `Walter Mitty' existence. In my own evangelical Christian church, of which I have been a member since 1994, i.e. ~32 years, I am a nobody. Some of my fellow members, including the Pastor, know of my interest in the Shroud, but no one asks me about it. Yet, on the Internet my blog has today (21 July) had a total of 3,615,419 page views since 30Jun07 which is 6961 days. Dividing 3,615,419 by 6961 days equals an average of 519 pageviews a day, over 19 years! And it is accelerating. Yesterday my blog had 4711 pageviews and Last Month it was 204,304! ]
Many now know that there is a great deal of scientific and historical evidence suggesting that the Shroud could not have been the work of a medieval forger, as claimed by the carbon dating results of 1988. [If my "Open letter to Nature is published it will consign the carbon dating results of 1988 to the dustbin of history!.] In fact, the deeper we delve, the more difficult it becomes to dismiss the Shroud as merely a product of human hands. [And yet the Shroud will continue to be dismissed by most people, including most Christians, as merely a product of human hands.]
... Even Dr Michael Tite, the man who oversaw that 1988 testing, later admitted in a 2016 BBC interview that he had come to believe a real human body had indeed been wrapped in the Shroud. That is a remarkable admission, one which we would do well to keep in view. [By coincidence, this very morning (21 July) I had included that quote in Chapter 4, "The Man on the Shroud" in my book in progress:
"There's no real evidence it was painted on there, and the other oddity is if you look at paintings from the Middle Ages they always paint Christ with the nails going through the palms of the hands. `Whereas in reality, you have to put the nails through the wrist, I think a complete replication of the image has not been achieved. `I don't believe it was the Shroud [of Jesus], but I believe it is highly probable that there was a body in there – it was the time of the Crusades and an appropriate way to humiliate a Christian would be to crucify him.'" (Tite, 2020)[21Jun20].This is very significant. Unlike most Shroud sceptics, Tite saw the Shroud up close - for many hours at the cutting of the Shroud samples on 21 April 1988[08Dec22]. And he was forced to admit that the shroudman's image was not painted. But then it is a case of "out of the frying pan into the fire", "moving ... from a bad or difficult situation to a worse one." Because there are enormous problems with the Crucified Crusader Theory (see 19Jul17), which will be in my book. I have thought of writing an open letter to Tite listing those problems and asking him for his response, when I have the time.]
"Was the Shroud Laid on a Sculpture? A Study Full of Errors," UCCR, Alessandro Piana, 3 August 2025. The Shroud was allegedly not laid over a body but over a bas-relief sculpture. This is the "new" theory proposed by Brazilian designer Cicero Moraes, but it is riddled with errors that undermine its methodological validity. [See my 06 Mar26].
The Shroud of Turin, it is claimed, was not laid over a body but over a bas-relief sculpture. [A bas relief is one-sided, but the Shroudman's image is two-sided. So there would have needed to be two bas reliefs: one for the Shroud's front image and one for its back image. But why would a medieval forger go to all that trouble to make two bas relief sculptures, when he simply could have painted the Shroudman's image? This is a point that leading Shroud sceptic Walter McCrone (1916-2002) made:
"I realize that there are still, perhaps, a majority of people convinced by the carbon-dating that the `Shroud' is medieval, who are still looking for an answer as to how the `Shroud' was produced. Many mechanisms have already been proposed. Some say it was draped wet over a bas-relief to which it was shaped then dabbed with powder or a paint. Some say a painting was prepared and transferred to a cloth in contact with it by pressure ... Why go to all the work of preparing a statue or bas-relief or making a transfer of the image from a primary artist's rendering? A direct approach to painting a dilute watercolor image on a canvas of the proper size is a common sense assumption; Occam's Razor applies here ..."[MC99, 122 ].][...]
The Brazilian designer used free software to digitally simulate in 3D the dynamics of the fabric and map the contact area.According to his findings, the contact pattern generated by the bas-relief model is more consistent with the Shroud image, showing less anatomical distortion and greater fidelity to the observed contours. [Moraes had set up a strawman by comparing only the projection of a three-dimensional human model and that of a bas-relief model. But by his own admission the bas-relief model only had "less anatomical distortion and greater fidelity to the observed contours" of the Shroud image than the three-dimensional human model. That is, the bas-relief model was only relatively closer to the Shroud image than the three-dimensional human model. So, the bas-relief model still did not match the observed contours of the Shroudman's image!]
The first issue raised by Alessandro Piana is that the analysis does not address the physical and chemical elements related to the formation of the Shroud image. The focus is strictly methodological, centered on digital modeling and the comparative evaluation of contact patterns. [It was deluded of Moraes to ignore the practical realities of how a medieval forger made two bas reliefs, front and back, in negative, which when half of the Shroud's ~4.4 x ~1.1 metre rare and expensive 3:1 herringbone twill fine linen cloth was laid over the front image bas relief and the other half then was laid over the back image's bas relief, and how the two bas reliefs' images were transferred to the cloth.]
[...]Beard and hair were added to the model, while the eyes, nose, mouth, chest and other features were slightly modified to match the target individual, using digital deformation tools to approximate the model's facial structure to that of the Shroud image. [This is merely copying the Shroud using 21st century digital software and then claiming that this was how a medieval forger created it!]
Judging by the images attached to the study, the simulations were run only on the front side, not the back. Why? This is a crucial omission: if one is to believe in the idea of a brilliant and unknown medieval forger, one must ask how he could have produced a bas-relief that reflects both the front and back imprint. [Again, the medieval forger would have needed to have made two bas reliefs. But Moraes must know how absurd that would be, so he ignored it! And where are those two bas reliefs? They would be major works of art in their own right. Where are the records of their existence? And who was the unknown sculptor?]
[...]The fact that Cicero Moraes likely knows little about the Shroud and the decades of research on it is evident in his claim that the bas-relief used as a matrix "could have been made of wood, stone or metal, and pigmented or even heated only in the contact areas, generating the observed imprint." [This shows that Moraes did not consider the real-world implications of the Shroud image having been created by a bas relief.] Yet this theory has been debunked countless times since 1978, whether regarding pigment or heat. [A heated bas relief would leave hot spots where the cloth touched the metal or stone, e.g. the tip of the nose, but there are no hot spots on the Shroud. A cold bas relief relying on pigments to transfer the bas relief image to the overlying cloth would leave traces of pigment, but there are no pigments on the Shroud which constitutes the man's image (see below).] No technique has ever demonstrated that a bas-relief can produce a Shroud-like imprint with similar chemical and physical properties. Moreover, there are no traces of pigments on the Shroud, and any image created by a heated bas-relief would be fluorescent — unlike the Shroud image.
Unsurprisingly, Moraes himself is forced to concede that it is still 
[Above enlarge: "Correlation of image intensity on the Turin Shroud with the 3-D structure of a human body shape"[11Aug15, 06Dec19; 15Aug20 & 13Jul21].
possible, however remotely, that the Shroud "could be the imprint of a three-dimensional human body." [Moraes is ignorant that STURP proved experimentally (see above) that the Shroudman's image could be expressed mathematically as, "a single global mapping function," consistent with a real, three-dimensional, human body!]
[...]And then there's the recurring obstacle that thwarts such theories: the bloodstains on the Shroud prevented the image from forming underneath them. That is, the blood transferred from the deceased's body to the cloth first, and only afterward did the Shroud image appear. [STURP's Heller and Adler proved that the blood was on the Shroud before the image was (as it was for Jesus), and the blood prevented the later image from forming on the cloth[21Jul07; 08Oct09; 25Oct24]. This renders the bas relief theory impossible, because for a hot bas relief the image would would be under the blood, which would be cooked, and the pigment of a cold bas relief would have to be applied around the blood.]
"Shroud, A Rumor in a Medieval Document Peddled as Proof," UCCR, 29 Aug 2025. Alessandro Piana. A 1370 rumor in a medieval document about the Shroud is turned by the media into evidence against its authenticity. [See 10Oct25 and 12Nov25.] ... "Nicole Oresme, without ever having seen it, reports a "they say that" the Shroud was used to deceive the faithful. [As I wrote in my 10Oct25:
This is consistent with my assumption about this article by Sarzeaud, that the sceptics realise that they are losing in the court of public opinion and are desperate to turn this around. However, they won't do it with such a pathetic beat up that a 14th century philosopher, Nicole Oresme, who had never seen the Shroud, mentioned in a footnote, a rumour ("it was said"), that in the 1355 exposition of "the shroud of the Lord Jesus Christ" at Lirey, France, the "clergy" deceived the public to "elicit offerings for their church ...," which was false (see below). And Oresme did not dispute that it was "the shroud of the Lord Jesus Christ"!]Yesterday a preview in the Italian newspaper "La Stampa" of a publication in the journal Journal of Medieval History, which the Turin daily presented as follows: "The University of Louvain has found in a medieval document the oldest testimony about the Shroud. It dates back to 1370 and confirms that already in the Middle Ages it was known that the relic was not authentic". The news was picked up today by major international newspapers, such as The Independent [...] According to the study conducted by researcher Nicolas Sarzeaud of the Catholic University of Louvain, a passage from the Problemata of Nicole Oresme, a French theologian and philosopher of the 14th century, would prove that already in 1370 the Holy Linen was known as an artifact made to defraud the faithful. [...] During the review of an unpublished treatise by Nicole Oresme, the two researchers Alain Boureau and Béatrice Delaurenti highlighted a mention of the Shroud of Turin, written between 1350 and 1382 (probably after 1370), the date of Oresme's death. According to what Sarzeaud writes in his study, the interest would be to underline the existence of the Shroud of Turin about twenty years earlier than previously known: the well-known period of the Lirey Controversy (1389–1390) [...]
Without detracting from the importance of the direct study of historical documents, fundamental to the understanding of the past, where is the news? That around 1370 there was a person who, by hearsay, considered the Shroud a forgery? [...] But if in the 21st century, with all the technology possible available and with an exorbitant number of scientific articles demonstrating the impossibility of reproducing the Shroud image, there are people who believe in the artificial and medieval origin of the artifact, should we really be concerned about a 14th-century commentator who speaks by hearsay? [Obvioudly not! But there are literary types like Sarzeaud who do understand scientific evidence and wrongly think that because a claim is the oldest surviving, it must be correct. But this is the argumentum ad antiquitatem fallacy. It would only be valid if the claim was by someone who was an eye-witness to the Shroud's c.1355 exposition. And Oresme definitely was not-he never saw the Shroud!]
Here he comes again on the horizon: the medieval forger. A phantom luminary of falsifications with foresight, who, though he could have become rich and famous thanks to his skill in creating still irreproducible images of the Christus patiens and in complete contradiction with the iconography of the time, instead of enjoying his skill and distributing fake relics throughout Christendom, decides to make only one copy to send to Lirey with the precise intent of making everyone gullible. Including us, almost 700 years later. If the Middle Ages produced such a man capable of surpassing 21st-century technology, then we have not discovered the Shroud, but the greatest forgotten genius in history. [And art historians want to have it both ways, assumimg that the Shroud is a medieval forgery but ignore that the Shroud must be therefore be a medieval work of art!] Too bad that no one ever saw him, just as Nicole Oresme never saw the Shroud on which he doubted authenticity based on hearsay.
["For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions" (2Tim 4:3)!]
"Shroud of Turin to go on virtual display for Holy Saturday," EWTN, 26 September 2025, Hannah Brockhaus. For the second time, the Shroud of Turin will be exposed for veneration on social media and websites on Holy Saturday, the archbishop of Turin has announced. [For the first time, see 22May20.]The Shroud, which bears the image of a crucified man and has been venerated for centuries as Christ’s burial cloth [Congratulations to this journalist, Hannah Brockhaus, for omitting the usual, "which many believe to be."], will be displayed via live stream on April 3. [I vaguely remember seeing this and it was underwhelming! ]...
“The Shroud is a reality that concerns everyone. The Shroud image that Turin has preserved for almost five centuries testifies to pain and death, but also to resurrection and eternal life,” Turin’s Archbishop Cesare Nosiglia said in his March 3 announcement. [This is damning the Shroud with faint praise! Why doesn't the Archbishop of Turin tell the truth? That the Shroud is Jesus' burial sheet and the image on the Shroud is a photograph of Jesus at his resurrection?]...
"Discovery in Turin's Shroud confirms burst of radiant energy at Resurrection," ZENIT, 2 October 2025.
"Obituary: Daniel Carl Scavone," February 11, 1934 – November 7, 2025, Dignity Memorial, 7 November 2025.
To be continued in the eleventh instalment of this post.
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to extract or quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided the extract or quote includes a reference citing my name, its title, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
Bibliography
AAW. "Artifact (archaeology)," Wikipedia, 18 June 2026.
MC99. McCrone, W.C., 1999, "Judgment Day for the Shroud of Turin," Prometheus Books: Amherst NY.
RTB. Reference(s) to be provided.
Posted 17 July 2026. Updated 29 July 2026.
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