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This is the twenty-first instalment of my Shroud of Turin News for January - June 2026.
I have removed Total Pageviews, which stood at 6,604,234, after I realised that I can see on another page what it currently is, and therefore if and when Google corrects it.
Articles will be in date order (oldest first). My comments will be within [bold square brackets] to distinguish them from the articles' words. In this post I will first list the more significant articles, after which I will prune duplications, and then comment on what is left.
My news I had continued most days word-processing Chapter 2, "What is the Shroud of Turin?" In parallel with my Open letter to Nature: "Shroud of Turin: Were the radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker?" Today (3 September) I started word-processing chapter 3, "A linen cloth," having previously completed word-processing chapter 1, "Preface" on 28 July and Chapter 2, "What is the Shroud of Turin?" on 3 September.
"New twist in Turin Shroud mystery as human DNA found on sacred Christian relic," GBN, 4 January 2026, Peter Stevens. "The presence of an "unusually high number of human heteroplasmies" and multiple sources of human DNA confirmed the Shroud of Turin "came into contact with multiple individuals, thereby challenging the possibility of identifying the original DNA of the Shroud"." [There are two reasons why identifying the DNA on the Shroud as Jesus' has never been a shroudie claim: 1. Any human DNA found on the Shroud could have been from one one of the great many humans who had handled the Shroud in its ~2000 year history. As STURP's blood chemist Alan Adler (1931-2000) pointed out:
"In `The DNA of God?' Garza-Valdez makes a large number of extravagant claims, many of them self-contradictory, at odds with accepted Shroud scientific literature, or at odds with basic accepted biochemical, chemical, or physical knowledge. This is illustrated by the DNA claim. The problem with the DNA claim is not that human DNA was isolated, but in identifying whose DNA it is. The Shroud has been contaminated by human contact countless times, offering many problems in this type of analysis."[AA99, 108]And 2. We don't have Jesus' DNA to compare it with! ]
"The DNA from animals including dogs, cats, chicken, and cows, suggest the linen travelled through the Mediterranean or had Mediterranean origins."[However, this is different. DNA of animals from locations which are consistent with the Shroud having "travelled through the Mediterranean" is cconsistent with the Shroud having journeyed from Jerusalem to Constantinople via Antioch in Syria and Edessa in today's Eastern Turkey, from the first to the tenth centuries[04Dec15]. It is not consistent with Shroud scepticism's "Standard Model" (see 11May24). Which is that the Shroud's flax was harvested, retted, spun into linen thread, the thread was then woven on a loom into a linen cloth, all within France[RTB], and then the image was imprinted on the cloth by an unknown forger who lived in the diocese of Troyes, in the time of Bishop Henri de Poitiers (r. 1354–1370)![RTB]. This "Standard Model" was implied by Oxford radiocarbon dating laboratory's Director, Prof. Edward Hall (1924-2001):
"There was a multi-million-pound business in making forgeries during the 14th century. Someone just got a bit of linen, faked it up and flogged it."[WS00, 9 4; HT01; OM10, 220]]
"The Shroud of Turin goes digital: Turin officially opens an ancient
relic to the world in the AI era," ZENIT, 11 January 2026. [Right (enlarge): Pope Leo XIV (r. 2025-) looks at the new online digital Shroud platform.] "On January 9, a quiet but symbolically charged moment unfolded inside the Apostolic Palace. Pope Leo XIV became the first person to experience a new digital reading of the Shroud of Turin [Obviously false!], signaling that one of Christianity’s most scrutinized relics has now fully entered the online world. The initiative, called Avvolti, was presented to the Pope by Cardinal Roberto Repole, the pontifical custodian of the Shroud. The encounter marked a turning point: a relic long associated with guarded exhibitions and careful physical access is now available globally through a dedicated digital platform." [This is underwhelming! The Shroud has been online via Shroud Scope since 2010! Those interested in the Shroud know that, so this "turning point" will likely be ignored. The Vatican is deceived if it thinks that the Shroud being "available globally through a dedicated digital platform" is better than "guarded exhibitions and careful physical access"!]
"The Shroud of Turin enters the digital age," Aleteia, 12 January 2026, D. R. Esparza. "... Accessible via avvolti.org and sindone.org, the program works across smartphones, tablets, and computers. Users can move across a high-resolution reproduction of the cloth, enlarging details associated with the face, the wounds, and the signs traditionally linked to the Passion. "[Immediately there is a problem, Those sites are only in Italian and require a translation, into English and other languages. Many non-Italian readers (including me) could not be bothered with a site, after being confronted with a foreign language.] ... The digital project builds directly on the physical Avvolti installation that drew large crowds during the Jubilee year of 2025. From April 28 to May 5, a tent in Piazza Castello housed a life-size, 1:1 reproduction of the Shroud displayed on a specially designed five-meter table. More than 30,000 visitors from 79 countries passed through in just eight days, confirming that interest in the relic remains both intense and international. [The Vatican's self-deception continues. When the Shroud was last displayed physically in 2015, "From April 19, 2015 through June 24, 2015, more than two million visitors came to Turin from around the world to view the Shroud while it was on public display." (my emphasis)[SX20]. That was over a period of 66 days. That is an average of 30,000/8 = 3,750 per day for the digital exposition, compared with 2,000,000/66 = 30,303 per day for the 2015 physical exposition! So, the physical exposition of the Shroud in 2015 had as many visitors in 1 average day as the digital exhibition had in in 8 actual days! The Vatican is wasting its time and money hoping that a online digital exposition of the Shroud will substitute for a physical expoition of the Shroud. But they miss the point that to see the actual, physical, Shroud is to see the actual, physical, burial sheet of Jesus! Not a mere online photograph of it.]
"AI study blows open Shroud of Turin story and pinpoints strange origins," Irish Mirror, 23 January 2026, Emilia Randall. "A new 3D digital analysis suggests the Turin Shroud was likely created by a medieval artist using a shallow sculpture method, rather than being the actual burial cloth of Jesus Christ ... Michael Moran used AI to reveal more of the cloth's history. In a startling revelation, researchers have employed AI technology to expose a glaring impossibility regarding the Shroud of Turin - long believed to be Christ's burial cloth." [This journalist confuses Michael Moran, who in this 2024 article, "'Face of Jesus' unveiled by AI using Shroud of Turin after astonishing discovery," By Michael Moran, Daily Express, 21 August 2024, is merely a journalist who used Midjourney, an image generation program to generate a so-called image of Jesus. I blogged about this on 25 October 2024, where I commented:"While some may be favourably impressed by this AI depiction of Jesus, I am not. All that this AI program does (and it is admittedly clever programming), is search the Internet for depictions of Jesus based on the Shroud and combine them into one Shroud-like image. I cannot understand why some prefer to have this, the equivalent of an artist's painting of Jesus, when they can actually have a photograph of Jesus at the instant of his
Above: "Shroud of Turin Face Detail," AllPosters.com]
resurrection (a "`snapshot' of the resurrection" ...) which this above Shroud face photograph is, over my computer desk as I type!
The article also confuses, "A new 3D digital analysis suggests the Turin Shroud was likely created by a medieval artist using a shallow sculpture method ... a Brazilian digital graphics specialist ... Cicero Moraes utilised free modelling software ... " which was not AI. I will comment on Moraes's "shallow sculpture method" next. ]
"Shroud of Turin 'impossible' discovery made by AI study," Emilia Randall, 23 January, 2026. [First, as previously mentioned, Moraes' theory that the shroudman's image was created by overlaying the Shroud cloth over a "low relief" (i.e. bas relief ), is not "AI". Here, from my posts of 10Oct25, 06Mar26 and 17Jul26, are some of the problems of Moraes' bas relief Shroud image formation theory theory: • Bishop d'Arcis would be wrong that the Shroud had been "cunningly painted" by an artist who confessed it to his predecessor, Bishop Henri de Poitiers. • As leading Shroud sceptic Walter McCrone (1916-2020) pointed out, a medieval forger would have simply painted the Shroud. • Art based on bas reliefs did not exist in the 14th century. • A bas relief is one-sided, whereas the Shroud image is two-sided: front and back. So a medieval forger transferring a bas relief image to the Shroud cloth would needed to have created two bas reliefs: one for the man's front and one for his back! • Such bas reliefs, engraved with anatomical details unknown in the fourteenth century, would be great works of art in their own right. So where are they; or where is the record of their having existed? • STURP found that there is no paint, pigment or dye which constitutes the Shroud's image, so that rules out a cold transfer of the bas relief image to the Shroud cloth using pigments, etc, as they would inevitably be trapped in the Shroud's weave. • STURP also found that bas-relief shrouds do not reproduce the Shroud's three-dimensional, superficial and non-directional properties. • If the Shroud image was created using heated bas reliefs to scorch the man's image onto the Shroud's linen, he would need to have manipulated a ~4.4 x ~1.1 metre (~14.4 x ~3.6 feet) linen cloth over two bas reliefs, heated at just the right temperature to not burn the cloth, when the only heat source was burning wood, charcoal, coal or oil, because electric heating was not invented until the 19th century. A heat scorch of a cloth draped over a hot bas relief inevitably causes hot spots (e.g. the tip of the nose) on the image, but there are no hot spots on the Shroud image; • Heat scorches fluoresce but the Shroud image does not fluoresce. • The blood was on the Shroud's linen before the image, which also rules out heated bas reliefs which would cook the blood. • If the Shroud was printed on linen laid over two bas relief, then the forger could run off many Shrouds, so why did he stop at one Shroud? • How did the forger obtain a ~4.4 x ~1.1 metre rare and expensive herringbone twill linen cloth, which the Shroud is? Which `just happens' to be close to 8 x 2 Assyrian cubits of 21.6 inches! ]
"Shroud of Turin: Medieval bas-relief hypothesis challenged on scientific grounds," Vatican News 10 February 2026. Last summer, in the same journal, Brazilian researcher Cicero Moraes published an article supporting the medieval forgery thesis. According to him, a bas-relief produces a type of contact that seems to correspond better to the contours visible on the Shroud than does the volume of a human body. From this he drew an argument in favor of a medieval artistic origin. From the moment of publication, however, Moraes’s article raised numerous doubts among specialists ... After the media attention subsided, the commentary just published in Archaeometry by Tristan Casabianca, Emanuela Marinelli, and Alessandro Piana fully confirms the legitimacy of that initial criticism ... Even more troubling, Moraes’s 3D modeling overlooks the principal specific features of the Shroud: the extreme superficiality of the image (a depth of one-fifth of a thousandth of a millimeter) and the multiple independent confirmations of the presence of blood, which are incompatible with any medieval artistic practice. The authors therefore question the real value of a model that does not faithfully reproduce the anatomical characteristics of the Man of the Shroud and that ignores its most significant physicochemical properties. [Here is the abstract of the article, "Commentary on the Article `Image Formation on the Holy Shroud—A Digital 3D Approach” by Cicero Moraes," Tristan Casabianca, Emanuela Marinelli, Alessandro Piana, Archaeometry, 8 February 2026:
"Abstract. The partial digital reconstruction of the Shroud of Turin by Moraes does not substantiate the low-relief hypothesis, medieval or otherwise. The study relies on ambiguous aims, methodological flaws, and fallacious reasoning. By omitting essential features of the artifact, it fails to advance understanding of the image formation process."]
"Shroud of Turin: Medieval Bas-Relief Hypothesis Questioned," Exaudi, 10 February, 2026. This article is similar, if not identical, to the above. So I will post a Shroud photo from the article (below) and 
[Above enlarge: Negative photograph of part of the man's front.]
highlight features that a medieval forger (bas relief or otherwise) would not likely have depicted on the Shroud, including: • Jesus is naked, which is Biblically correct (Mt 27:35; Mk 15:24; Lk 23:34; Jn 19:24) but medieval depictions of Jesus crucified almost always added at least a loincloth[RTB]. • Jesus appears to have no neck. That is because he died hanging on his cross with his head slumped forward on his chest ("When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, `It is finished,' and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit" - Jn 19:30 my emphasis) and his body became fixed by rigor mortis in that position. No medieval Christian art depicted Jesus' crucified body rigid with rigor mortis[RTB]. • Jesus' has only one nail wound visible, the other is covered by his opposite hand. A medieval forger would have clearly shown both Jesus' nail wounds[RTB]. • Jesus' nail wound is in his wrist, which is correct because nails through the fleshy palms could not support the weight of a man nailed to a cross. But medieval Christian art traditionally depicted Jesus' nail wounds being in his palms[RTB]. • Jesus's chest is covered with scourge wounds (see Shroud Scope) and his back has even more (see Shroud Scope) - over 100 in total[RTB]. A medieval forger (especially one using a bas relief) would not have gone to all that unnecessary trouble[RTB]. And • Each of the more than 100 scourge wounds has a tiny raised circular edge and a serum retraction halo, many of which are visible only under a microscope (invented c. 1609) and/or in ultraviolet light (discovered 1801)[RTB].]
"Believers See Jesus’s Face in the Shroud of Turin. A Study Now Says It’s Something Else. It may be no man at all." Popular Mechanics, 11 Febuary 2026, Michael Natale. ... Those who believe in the authenticity of the relic suggest that it was the very cloth wrapped around the body of Jesus after his crucifixion, and his divine nature left this eternal impression of his visage. [The evidence is overwhelming that this is so!] But objections have long been raised against this hypothesis—and not just within the secular space. Perhaps the most famous denunciation of the Shroud of Turin came from John Calvin, the 16th-century French theologian who became the namesake of Calvinism. [See my posts of 05Jan11, 11Jan11 & 07May23. In the first of these I disclosed: "I am a life-long Calvinist, owning Calvin's two-volume "Institutes of the Christian Religion" and a 12-volume set of his New Testament Commentaries, as well as his commentaries on Genesis and Daniel. And I still am. However, "I regret to say that while Calvin was right about a lot of things, he was wrong about the Shroud."] In his Treatise on Relics, he responds almost mockingly to the assertions of the Shroud’s divine origins, asking [ Calvin's criticism of the Shroud revealed that he knew little about it. He was rightly critical of the 16th century Roman Catholic Church's uncritical attitude towards relics, and he lumped the Shroud in with them, in a classic case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.] “How is it possible that those sacred historians, who carefully related all the miracles that took place at Christ’s death, should have omitted to mention one so remarkable as the likeness of the body of our Lord remaining on its wrapping sheet? This fact undoubtedly deserved to be recorded.” [As I pointed out in my post of 05Jan11, "This is an example of the Argument from Silence, fallacy, i.e. `the Shroud must be false because the New Testament writers did not mention it bearing Jesus' image.' But, "This is the same argument that Christianity's critics use against the Virgin Birth, that it is only mentioned explicitly in two gospels Mt 1:18-24 & Lk 1:26-38, therefore it must be false, because otherwise the other Gospels would have mentioned it. Or the resurrection of Lazarus must be false because only one Gospel mentions it (Jn 11:38-43) and such a stupendous miracle, if it really happened, would have been mentioned in all four gospels. But the fact is, as Calvin was well aware, the Gospels did not mention everything about Jesus, and in fact Jn 20:30-31; 21:25 explicitly states this. Calvin himself in his Commentary on John later wrote that "John ... has only written some things out of many; not that the others were not worth recording (my emphasis).] Calvin cites several Biblical reasons as to why this couldn’t have happened—from the fact that none of the disciples ever mentioned seeing such an impression on the shroud, [In my 05Jan11 post I gave reasons why, in the only mention of the contents of Jesus' post-resurrection tomb, Jn 20:3-8, the Apostles Peter and John, did not mention there being an image on Jesus' Shroud. But in my 07May23 post, ~11 years later, I had since realised that there is an even better reason: Jesus' Shroud was not in the tomb! Jn 20:3-8 (NIV) correctly translates that what was in the tomb when Peter and John entered it, was "the strips of linen" (Gk othonia) which had bound Jesus' hands and feet (Jn 19:38-40; 11:44), and "the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head" (Gk soudarion), not the Shroud (sindon):
"3 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4 Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. 8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed."According to the late 1st century-early 2nd century Gospel of the Hebrews Jesus had taken the Shroud with him out of the tomb and had given it to "the servant of the priest," i.e. the Apostle John (see my 3-part series, "Servant of the Priest."] to the fact that the Roman soldiers weren’t exactly on friendly terms with the Followers of Christ, so it’s unlikely they would have let them abscond with such a sacred item. [As I showed in my 11Jan11 "Calvin is simply wrong. The guards had been rendered unconscious (i.e. "became like dead men") ... Mt 28:2-4,11. And then after that, before the first of the disciples had arrived at the tomb, the guards had evidently fled, because "some of them went into the city and reported to the chief priests" (Mt 28:11). Also, there is no mention of any members of the guard being still at the tomb by the time the disciples arrived, and why would they still be there if the body of Jesus had vanished?] Plus, he notes, St. John said that Jesus was buried “according to the manner of the Jews.” Were this in fact the case, the body and head would have been wrapped with two separate cloths, not one. [The latter words were not Calvin's but the writer of this Popular Mechanics article. It is fallacious that, because "the body and head would have been wrapped with two separate cloths" one of them could not have been the Shroud [10May12; 08May18; 08Sep19; 07Jul23].] “In short,” Calvin concluded, “...either St John is a liar, or all those who boast of possessing the holy sudary are convicted of falsehood and deceit.” [As I pointed out in my post of 11Jan11, this is a Fallacy of False Dilemma by Calvin, claiming there are only two possible alternatives: Either 1) "St. John is a liar"; or 2) "All those" claiming to possess the Shroud are guilty of "falsehood and deceit." But there is a third alternative, that Calvin is wrong and one of the shrouds, the one which he listed at "Nice" in his Treatise on Relics, is the genuine original and all the others are inferior copies.]
"Holy Shroud, medieval painting? The response of three Italian scientists to a Brazilian `researcher'," ZENIT, 11 February 2026, Valentina di Giorgio.
"New twist in battle over whether Turin Shroud is real or medieval fake," The Daily Star, 11 February 2026, Daniel Smith."Shroud of Turin Sculpture Theory Criticised by Experts in Latest Publication," Catholic Connect, 12 February 2026.
Expert debunks controversial evidence that ‘confirms’ existence of Jesus," LADbible", 12 February 2026, Joe Harker."Scientist Says Famous Jesus Relic Doesn’t Add Up," Inquisitr, 13 February 2026, Sohini Sengupta.
"Shroud study debate returns to spotlight," Aleteia, 18 February 2026, D. R. Esparza.
"A 600-Year-Old Document Exposes a Historic Fraud," Popular Mechanics, 17 March 2026, Michael Natale.
"Shroud: The Bas-Relief Hypothesis Definitively Debunked," UCCR, 23 March 2026, Alessandro Piana."The Shroud of Turin bears DNA from many people, plants and animals," New Scientist, 30 March 2026, James Woodford.
"New DNA Analysis Suggests That Shroud Of Turin May Have Indian Origins," NDTV, 31 March 2026, Srishti Singh Sisodia."Surprising DNA analysis reveals where Shroud of Turin may have actually originated," New York Post, 31 March 2026, Ben Cost."Shroud of Turin Mystery Deepens: Scientists Find DNA From ‘Multiple People’," Charisma Magazine, 31 March 2026, James Lasher.
"The mystery of the Shroud of Turin deepens,"Express Newspaper, 31 March 2026.
"Shroud of Turin shock as scientists find new DNA on Jesus 'burial cloth'," Daily Express, 31 March 2026, Emily Wright.
"Twist in Shroud of Turin mystery as scientists find shock new DNA in burial cloth ‘showing imprint of Jesus’," The Sun, 31 March 2026, Jamie Harris.
"New DNA research confirms Shroud of Turin's passage through the Middle East," Vatican News, 1 April 2026."DNA Study Casts Even More Doubt on Shroud of Turin’s True Origin," Gizmodo, 1 April 2026, Gayoung Lee.
"DNA Analysis Says Turin Shroud May Have Indian Traces," VOI, 1 April 2026.
"Scientist traces Shroud of Turin back to India, piling on more confusion over the relic," Wion , 1 April 2026, Anamica Singh.
"Scientists uncover human, plant, and microbial DNA in the Shroud of Turin," Tech Explorist, 2 April 2026, Pranjal Malewar.
"New Study Reopens the Case of the Turin Shroud’s Origins: what the DNA says," ZENIT, 3 April 2026.
"DNA research sheds new light on the Shroud of Turin’s complex history," EWTN, 3 April 2026.
"Shroud of Turin, claimed to be Jesus' burial cloth, contaminated with carrot and red coral DNA," Livescience, 5 April 2026, Chris Simms."Jesus’s Burial Cloth or Medieval Forgery? DNA Evidence Further Complicates the Debate Over the Shroud of Turin," Smithsonian Magazine, 9 April 2026, Sarah Kuta.
"DNA analysis claiming new origins for the Shroud of Turin 
[Above: "A photo-negative view of the Shroud of Turin highlights the image of a bearded man on the shroud ..." Could an unknown medieval forger really have created this? Or does Naturalism's Emperor have no clothes?]
doesn't hold up, experts say," Scientific American, 9 April 2026, Stephanie Pappas.
"Light Experiment Raises Claims About Jesus’ Resurrection," Greek Reporter, 9 April 2026, Abdul Moeed.
"Shroud of Turin: DNA Tests Prove It’s A Forgery," Artlyst, 10 April 2026.
"New Shroud of Turin DNA Analysis Fails to Convince Experts," Greek Reporter, Abdul Moeed, 10 April 2026.
"Shroud of Turin: Analyses Confirm its Presence in the Middle East," FSSPX News, 12 April 2026. To be continued in the twenty-second instalment of this post. Notes: Bibliography Posted 30 August 2026. Updated 26 September 2026.
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]
AA99. Adler, A.D., 1999, "The Nature of the Body Images on the Shroud of Turin," in Adler, A.D. & Crispino, D., ed., "The Orphaned Manuscript: A Gathering of Publications on the Shroud of Turin," Effat Editrice: Cantalupa, Italy, 2002, 103-112.
HT01. Hedges, R. & Tite M., 2001, "Obituary: Professor Edward Hall," The Independent, 16 August.
OM10. Oxley, M., 2010, "The Challenge of the Shroud: History, Science and the Shroud of Turin," AuthorHouse: Milton Keynes UK.
RTB. Reference(s) to be provided.
SX20. "Shroud Exhibitions: 2015 Exposition," Shroud.com.
WS00. Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., 2000, "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London.
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