The Shroud Codex (10 page)

“How did your mother die?”

“She had ALS. I did everything I could to save her, but day by day her condition deteriorated. At the end, she lost all control of
her muscles. She couldn’t even speak. I was with her, but I never really got to say good-bye to her.”

“How did you feel when she died?”

“At first I was angry,” he recalled. “Then I felt lost. I was aimless. Nothing seemed to matter.”

“Did you blame God when she died?”

“No, I blamed myself. Maybe if I had been a better son, I would have seen her illness coming on earlier, when there might have been something we could have done to prolong her life.”

“That’s exactly what you said Jesus told you about me and my wife,” Castle said.
Interesting,
he thought to himself. “Now tell me why you decided to become a priest.”

“I remembered my mother had always told me she believed I had a vocation and that I would have been happier had I become a priest.”

“Did you agree?”

“Not when she was alive, but after she died, it all made sense to me. I was searching for God in physics and getting nowhere. I decided to search for God in the priesthood and ever since I made that decision, my life seems to have suddenly gained purpose.”

“What about your father?”

“He died three months before I was born. In a work-related accident, I believe. I know almost nothing about my father, not even what he looked like. My mother was always reluctant to speak about him, even when I asked, and there were no photographs of him that I ever saw.”

“How about other family? Do you have any brothers or sisters that I should know about?”

“No, I was an only child.”

“Your file says you saw your mother with God, in the experience you had after your accident. Is that correct?”

Bartholomew noted carefully how Castle framed the question.
“You are being very careful to avoid asking about my experience of dying after my car accident in any way that would give credence to it. But I did see her in the afterlife,” the priest insisted. “The car accident happened a few hours after I visited her grave in Morristown. I’m sure that part of the story is in my file, too. But I doubt you are ready to accept anything I could tell you about what happened to me on the operating table as if it were real.”

“Pretty much, you’re right,” Castle said. “A lot of study has been done on near-death experiences. You describe feeling yourself drawn into a tunnel and experiencing a white light—that’s a lot of what we know about how the brain dies. As far as I’m concerned, what you went through might be explained physiologically, without any reference to God whatsoever. Unfortunately, when it comes to proving something about the afterlife, we don’t have a lot of people to interview who are still dead.”

“How about me having a mental illness?” Bartholomew asked. “Have you come to any conclusions there?”

“That’s it for today,” he announced, looking at his watch. “The hour is up and it’s time for you to return to the hospital.”

“That’s all?” Bartholomew asked, surprised. “We were only getting started.”

“We will take it up again next week,” Castle said firmly, closing Bartholomew’s file and standing up. “We’re done for now.”

As Castle got up and ushered Morelli back into the room, he had some instructions.

“Father Bartholomew, I will be sending over papers to your hospital room later today so Father Morelli can have you transferred to Beth Israel Hospital. I am on staff there and I need to become your physician.”

“How much longer will I be in the hospital?”

“That depends. First, I want to run a series of tests on you. Then we will decide. I want to examine your wrist wounds with a
CT scan and an MRI. Then I need to see if we can do anything to control your hair growth.”

“I want to get back to my parish as soon as possible.”

“I understand that,” Castle said. “But you are my patient now and your health is my primary concern, both physically and mentally. I won’t keep you in the hospital any longer than necessary, but I’m your doctor now and you are going to have to follow my instructions.”

“Whether I like them or not?” Bartholomew asked.

“Yes,” Castle answered firmly. “Whether you like them or not.”

Same day

Dr. Stephen Castle’s office, New York City

1:00
P.M.
ET in New York City, 7:00
P.M.
in Rome

That afternoon, Castle telephoned Marco Gabrielli in Italy. Gabrielli was a professor of chemistry at the University of Bologna who had developed an international reputation for debunking various paranormal “miracles” that various frauds and con men had perpetrated over decades on a gullible religious public eager and willing to have concrete physical demonstrations that their beliefs in God were justified. Castle managed to meet Gabrielli on his first trip to Italy years ago, at a conference held in Rome by CISAP, an organization whose name roughly translates as the Italian Committee for Scientific Examination of Paranormal Phenomena. Castle was drawn to the CISAP meeting because the group applied the scientific method to a wide range of phenomena presumed to be explainable as paranormal, including ghosts, magic, astrology, psychic and spiritual healing, and UFOs. Gabrielli was one of CISAP’s most famous members. In their brief conversation at the meeting, Gabrielli let Castle know that he could
help the psychiatrist with patients who claimed or exhibited supposedly paranormal phenomena related to religion.

Castle had worked with Gabrielli several times before. One patient, in particular, believed that the Jesus in the crucifix on his wall was crying blood. Gabrielli proved the patient had concocted an elaborate fake in which the Jesus on the crucifix turned out to be a statue with a hollow space in the head that was filled with a porous powder. The patient had glazed the statue with an impermeable liquid that was transparent to light. He then took a syringe with a long needle and inserted a syrupy red fluid into the statue through a tiny hole in its head. The porous material absorbed the red liquid, but the impermeable coating prevented the liquid from oozing out.

The crying Jesus was created when the patient scratched imperceptibly around the eyes, just enough to allow drops of the red liquid to start leaking out, appearing as if they were tears. The cavity in the head was small, so once the liquid oozed out, there typically weren’t any traces left in the statue. When the patient wanted the Jesus statue to start crying once again, all he had to do was to take the syringe and refill the cavity in the head. The patient was making a good living with the fraud, until he got careless. A would-be believer got upset when he noticed drops of the red liquid forming on the top of Christ’s head. When he pointed it out, the religious fraud threatened the would-be believer to keep quiet and, when the skeptic refused, the religious fraud beat him unmercifully. The case was referred to Castle when criminal charges were pressed and the lawyer defending the religious fraud decided to pursue an insanity defense. Castle was hired by the court to determine if the religious fraud was psychologicaly disturbed or not. Gabrielli provided the proof that the cleverness of how the blood-crying Jesus had been crafted proved the religious fraud was quite sane and very money-motivated.

Gabrielli was a man in his late forties, with a European build he kept thin from vigorous walking and a modest diet. He sported a Van Dyke beard and mustache. With his disheveled black hair, he looked like either an inspired artist whose mind was always somewhere else, or a mad scientist, which was probably the more apt conclusion. Gabrielli favored turtleneck sweaters and tweed sport jackets; he could have stepped out of a university lecture hall. In his many videos, which peppered Italian websites and were increasingly gravitating, in English translation, to YouTube, Gabrielli could be seen in his laboratory, wearing a white lab coat and working over one of the various apparatuses that he used to reproduce scientifically the “supernatural” phenomenon that had captured the public imagination. But what gained Gabrielli his large following was his sarcastic wit. His wry smile and green eyes darting beneath his bushy eyebrows gave many the impression that Gabrielli was a little boy who had discovered all by himself that there never was any Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.

Over the telephone, Castle described Father Bartholomew’s case.

“Did you examine the stigmata?” Gabrielli asked.

“No, his arms were bandaged and I typically don’t perform medical examinations in my psychiatric office,” Castle explained. “I am a physician on staff at Beth Israel Hospital here in New York City and I’m in the process of transferring Father Bartholomew to my care. I plan to examine his stigmata once I get him admitted as my patient.”

“Have you seen his medical charts?”

“Yes. The attending physician noted that the wounds did appear to have pierced through the wrists. Still, until I examine the wounds myself, I won’t be able to tell for sure. The attending physician did not have a CT scan or MRI performed. Until I order those tests and examine Father Bartholomew myself, I won’t know
if the stigmata wounds penetrate his wrists or if the wounds always were just superficial.”

“I’m sure you know that in Padre Pio’s case there were no wounds at all. His stigmata were completely faked.”

“What do you mean?” Castle asked, surprised to hear this.

“Padre Pio died on September 23, 1968, and he was buried four days later at the San Giovani Rotondo shrine in Pietrelcina, the little town where he lived most of his life as a priest,” Gabrielli said. “In April 2008, on the fortieth anniversary of his death, his body was exhumed. The Church kept Padre Pio’s body on display for well over a year. Thousands of people made the trip, some from the United States, to Pietrelcina to see Padre Pio’s body on display.”

“Sounds bizarre,” Castle said.

“In a way it is. But the faithful believe that because Padre Pio’s body had not deteriorated in death, it was a sign from God that his life was holy and he is now a saint. Otherwise they think the body would not have been preserved like this, in an incorrupt state, some forty years after he died.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Not for a minute,” Gabrielli answered without hesitation. “But that’s not the important part of the story. When the body was first exhumed, Bishop Domenico d’Ambrosio examined the body. I know Bishop d’Ambrosio quite well. He told me Padre Pio’s body was well preserved; that part is true. From the very beginning of the exhumation, you could clearly see his beard and he was still wearing the mittens that covered the stigmata on his wrists. There were parts of his body that had decayed. You could see the skull and part of the cheekbone was exposed. The public never saw his whole body, just his body in his brown Capuchin habit with an elaborate silk stole embroidered with crystals and gold. His face was covered with a silicone mask that was very life-like.
But the hands were so well preserved that d’Ambrosio said Padre Pio’s fingernails were intact. The point is that d’Ambrosio examined Padre Pio’s hands and feet and swore there were no signs of the stigmata. Legend has it that Padre Pio’s stigmata disappeared at the moment of his death. That was the testimony of his fellow friars and the doctor who attended to him at his death.”

“That’s convenient, isn’t it,” Castle said sarcastically. “The moment he dies, the stigmata just disappear.”

“But there’s more,” Gabrielli went on. “A historian digging through the Vatican archives found a letter from a pharmacist who claimed he visited Padre Pio in 1919 and Padre Pio gave him an empty bottle that he asked him to fill with carbolic acid. The pharmacist said Padre Pio claimed he needed the carbolic acid to disinfect syringes for injections. Padre Pio also used other common medications of the time, like Valda tablets, which were a mild, plant-based antiseptic that people used to take for throat or bronchial ailments.”

“What’s the significance of the carbolic acid?”

“I’ve got a video right now on the Internet that shows how you can create stigmata with commonly available chemicals. You apply iron chloride on one hand and let it dry and put potassium ferrocyanide on the other hand and let it dry. Then when you rub your two palms together the chemicals combine to produce what looks like stigmata wounds. The chemical action is painless and disappears quickly, once you wash your hands. On the same video I show how you can customize a razor to scrape the palms of your hands to produce bleeding sores that look exactly like stigmata. Carbolic acid is a mild disinfectant that will keep open wounds from getting disinfected. Going back to 1918, visitors to Padre Pio claimed his wounds had a smell of carbolic acid and that he covered up the smell with eau de cologne, claiming his blood had a miraculous fragrance.”

“So you are convinced Padre Pio was a fraud?” Castle asked.

“Yes, there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever,” the chemist answered.

“Padre Pio would never let any physician examine his wounds to see if they penetrated clear through his wrists. He always claimed the pain was too severe when doctors tried to see whether or not their fingers would meet through the stigmata wounds on his wrists, and no physician ever managed to convince him to go under anesthetic to be examined in a hospital setting. Padre Pio always wore those mittens over his hands, so that the stigmata were largely covered up. Padre Pio was serious about hiding his wounds. All you could ever see were photographs that showed bleeding palms from a distance, or what appeared to be scabs of crusted blood at the edges of the mittens, supposedly resulting from blood flowing from the wounds. But who knew? As far as I am concerned, Padre Pio’s stigmata were never subjected to rigorous medical examination when he was alive.”

“Why hasn’t this come out?”

“It has come out. There are even persistent rumors in Italy that Pope John XXIII was confronted with evidence by a Vatican investigator who examined Padre Pio’s secret files in the process of declaring him to be a saint. There is evidently a journal entry John XXIII wrote in his diary lamenting the evidence that Padre Pio committed sexual indiscretions with women who were part of his inner circle. There were even accusations that he had sex with women in the confessional, or that he invited them to visit him privately in his cell, where they stayed the night. Other accusations were that he took money in the confessional, enriching himself. Padre Pio finally admitted that this was true, but he claimed he gave the money to poor penitents.”