The Shroud Codex (26 page)

“Follow the close-up,” Ferrar said excitedly. “It’s exactly what is happening.”

“I just can’t believe it,” Dunaway said in astonishment. “Are those the nail wounds on his feet?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what is happening,” Ferrar said. “You can see the feet beginning to bleed. When the camera pans back, you can see all the wounds—the forehead bleeding with the crown of thorns, the wrists bleeding from the nails. Underneath those purple vestments, the robes the priest is wearing for Mass, I’m told the scourge wounds opened up again on his body and began to bleed.”

“But the cross is invisible and there is no crown of thorns,” Dunaway pointed out. “There aren’t any nails being driven
through his wrists or his feet. I don’t understand how what I’m seeing could possibly be happening.”

“That’s why it’s being considered a miracle,” Ferrar said. “There were about one hundred people in the church at the time attending Mass and they all stood there spellbound, not knowing what was happening. One woman said it looked like Father Bartholomew was experiencing in his own body the passion and death of Jesus Christ.”

Just then the video showed Anne running forward and screaming, as she saw her brother suffering Christ’s passion and death. On the video, her blood-curdling scream seemed to reverberate throughout the cathedral.

“Who’s that?” Dunaway asked.

“I’m told that is Anne Cassidy, the priest’s half sister,” Ferrar answered.

“How long did Father Bartholomew stay levitating above the altar?” Dunaway asked. “It’s incredible—this happened in midtown Manhattan just a few minutes ago.”

“It seemed like an eternity that Father Bartholomew levitated there above the main altar in St. Patrick’s Cathedral,” Ferrar answered. “But it was less than five minutes from start to stop. You’re seeing it on the video just as it happened. I don’t think we edited anything out.”

“How did it end?” Dunaway asked.

“As soon as his sister screamed, Father Bartholomew collapsed to the ground and it was over,” Ferrar said. “It’s on the next part of the video. Let’s watch—you can see it happening.”

“Remarkable,” Dunaway said as he watched the remaining video. Anne screamed and fainted; the police and ambulance personnel rushed into the cathedral.

“I never would have believed it, except for your video,” Dunaway
said. “It’s the most remarkable news video I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“I know,” Ferrar said. “I stood there entranced, watching as it happened. We have the best video crew in the business. They just kept videotaping and going for those close-ups while I stood there in disbelief.”

“Is that the end of the video?” Dunaway asked. The program returned to the studio to show Dunaway and Ferrar sitting side by side at a desk on the set.

“Yes, that’s it,” Ferrar said. “As you saw right at the end of the video, the New York police rushed over to surround our video crew. We were told to stop filming and we were promptly escorted outside the cathedral onto Fifth Avenue.”

“Where is Father Bartholomew now?”

“I believe he was taken by the ambulance to Beth Israel Hospital in lower Manhattan,” Ferrar answered. “The man who came to Father Bartholomew’s aid late in the video is his physician, Dr. Stephen Castle.”

“Stephen Castle, the psychiatrist?” Dunaway asked.

“Yes. The other priest who rushed to the altar was Father Marco Morelli, a Jesuit the pope sent from Rome to work with Father Bartholomew.”

“So, you’re saying the Vatican is involved with Father Bartholomew’s case?”

“Yes,” Ferrar said. “I’m told Pope John-Paul Peter I has taken a personal interest in Father Bartholomew and I believe I can confirm that Dr. Castle has been hired by the Vatican to take Father Bartholomew on as a patient.”

“The Vatican must think Father Bartholomew is crazy. Why else would a psychiatrist be hired to treat him?”

“I don’t know if the Vatican thinks Father Bartholomew is
crazy, or if the Vatican is just being careful,” Ferrar said. “Based on reports I filed over the past few days, Archbishop Duncan is also very deeply involved in this case. The Catholic Church is taking the case of Father Bartholomew very seriously.”

“I can see that,” Dunaway said, appearing suddenly distracted. “I’m being told by the control room that we also have a news clip of a press conference Archbishop Duncan and Dr. Castle held last week. I think we are going to play a clip from that now.”

That evening the network televised an hourlong special report,
The Miracle at the Cathedral,
hosted by Fernando Ferrar.

Nielsen reports the next day showed the broadcast was one of the most-watched Sunday evening news shows ever, with over ten million people tuning in.

Geraldo Rivera, move over!
Ferrar thought as he left headquarters that evening around midnight. He was confident his career was made now.

Monday morning

Dr. Stephen Castle’s office, New York City

Day 19

When he entered the conference room, Dr. Castle found the group had assembled. Archbishop Duncan was not there, but Father Morelli and Father Middagh were, as well as Anne. She still looked tense, obviously concerned about her brother.

After Ferrar’s TV reports, Father Bartholomew’s story was the buzz on the Internet. Videos taken from TV coverage of the levitation in the cathedral had received more than fifteen million views online in less than twenty-four hours.

“Father Bartholomew is resting comfortably at Beth Israel Hospital,” Castle told the group as he began the meeting. “If the experience with Father Bartholomew’s previous wounds is any guide, I expect his wounds will heal quickly and that Father Bartholomew will recover rapidly, much more so than would normally be the case with such severe wounds.”

Anne was relieved to hear this, but still, she was not convinced.
“Can Father Morelli and I return with you to the hospital this afternoon to see my brother?”

“I’m not sure,” Castle said. “At the end of this meeting, I expect to get a report on his condition and I’ll make a decision then.”

“Okay,” Anne said compliantly.

Castle shifted gears unexpectedly. “At this meeting, I’m interested in learning more about the wounds we see on the man in the Shroud of Turin. As you all know, the world press is widely reporting that Father Bartholomew is now suffering the same wounds Jesus Christ suffered in his crucifixion, now including the crown of thorns and the stigmata in his feet. Pictures of the Shroud of Turin and Father Bartholomew are being juxtaposed on the Internet, on television, and in the print media internationally. Father Morelli explained to us last time that the Shroud of Turin provides a remarkably detailed view of the crucifixion of Jesus as described in the gospels of the New Testament, as well as the practice itself as described in contemporary Roman accounts. What I want to know in this meeting is this: Is there any basis on which we can discredit the comparisons the international news media are making between Father Bartholomew and Jesus? Given what we can learn about Roman crucifixion practices from studying the Shroud of Turin and what we know of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ from the New Testament, is there any basis for saying that what is happening to Father Bartholomew is
not
what happened to Jesus Christ?”

Father Middagh was prepared for this. “Let’s start with the nail wounds on the feet.”

“Okay,” Castle said. “I’m listening.”

Middagh projected an image from his computer onto the screen at the end of the conference room. “This is a view of the feet and calf area of the legs from the posterior image of the man in the Shroud. Remember, you are looking at a negative image in
which left and right appear exactly as they would appear in the body of the crucified man in the Shroud. The image of the left foot shows only the heel area. The images of the feet are on the dorsal side of the body and were formed by blood contacting the Shroud, as we discussed before.”

“In simple terms, what does all this mean?” Castle asked.

“It means the Roman executioners placed the sole of the right foot flat against the upright beam of the cross. Then they bent the left knee and twisted the body so the instep on the bottom of the left foot rested on top of the right foot. One nail appears to have been used to drive through both feet. The wound looks like it is in the metatarsal area of both feet, which would have been just forward of the small cuneiform bones just above the heel. The Roman executioners could have a different calculation with the feet than in nailing the wrists.”

Studying the slide, Castle followed the explanation clearly.

“As we discussed before,” Father Middagh went on, “the nails had to go through the small bones in the wrist, not the palms of the hands, because the hands nailed to the cross had to carry most of the weight of the body. The feet were different. The feet nailed to the cross did not have to carry body weight, but a crucified man would need to push down on the feet in order to lift himself up so he could breathe. In a way, the metatarsal region of the foot is more like the palm of the hand. If a man were crucified upside down, the feet would have to be nailed through the small cuneiform bones above the metatarsals. But the Romans needed to leave that region of the foot intact so the crucified man could push down with his legs to lift his body up. Basically, the nail in the feet just rode back up toward the heels as the crucified man lifted up to breathe.”

“The pain had to be excruciating,” Castle said.

“It was,” Middagh said. “In fact, the word ‘excruciating’ derives from the Latin
ex crucis,
which denotes ‘from being crucified.’ The point of crucifixion was to make the death painful beyond description. Most people who were crucified died of suffocation. The weight of the body hanging down on the arms tended to fix the muscles needed for breathing in an inhalation state. To exhale, the crucified man had to pivot his weight down against the nail in his feet to allow the diaphragm to force the air out of his lungs. The nail in the feet rubbing on the bones in the feet would cause searing pain. In the process of breathing, the man’s elbows would flex, causing the wrists to rotate around the iron nails, resulting in burning pain along the damaged median nerves leading to the thumbs. Eventually, the muscles tired and cramped, and the crucified man died of cardiopulmonary asphyxia.”

Castle quickly grasped the anatomy of crucifixion. “What does the frontal view of the man in the Shroud show about the feet?”

“The feet in the frontal view are less distinct in the Shroud,” Middagh said, “so you won’t see much from the slide. From the ventral view, the bloodstain on the left foot is clear. The left foot was the foot placed on top, so we can see where the nail pierced the metatarsal area, about two-thirds of the way up the foot toward the heel from the toes. In the dorsal view of the man in the Shroud, we saw more clearly the sole of the right foot that rested flat against the cross. Hidden in the Shroud images of the feet are the parts of each foot that were inside after the left foot was crossed on top of the right. In other words, we don’t have a very good image of the bottom of the left foot or the top of the right foot. But we can clearly see from the ventral view that the left knee is bent and the body rotated from the hip to accommodate the left leg resting partially on top of the right leg. Crucified this way, the lower part of the body would have been twisted somewhat away from the left, with the knees protruding most likely to the right. The crucified man’s back would have rubbed against the wood of the upright beam of the cross each time the man lifted his body up or down in the process of breathing. In doing so, the scourge wounds on the back would have been reopened and rubbed raw.”

In his mind, Castle quickly reviewed the many painted images of crucified Christ that he had seen in museums around the world. What Middagh was describing differed from the painted images in several important aspects. “So you don’t think, then, that the feet of the man in the Shroud were nailed to any footrest that he could have used to support his weight?”

“The Shroud shows no evidence of a
suppedaneum,
or footrest,” Middagh answered. “You’ve got to remember the precise way Roman executioners fixed a man to the cross depended upon how long the Romans wanted the man to live. The arms and legs could be tied to the cross, which would prolong the time the man had to suffer. A footrest or even a little seat or
sedile
was fashioned as
a block of wood and nailed to the upright crossbeam so the man could rest his buttocks. Again, these niceties prolonged the death. A fully adult man crucified this way could last two or three days, possibly longer, providing he had not been scourged to within an inch of his life and that he had been tied to the cross instead of nailed. With a
suppedaneum
and a
sedile,
breathing was easier and the problem became dehydration and thirst, with the crucified man more likely to die from a combination of thirst and exposure, rather than asphyxia.”

“The problem in Christ’s crucifixion was that the Roman executioners were up against the Sabbath,” Morelli interjected. “To comply with Jewish law, Christ had to be dead and buried by sundown. In Jerusalem, two thousand years ago, much more so than today, everything in the Jewish community was expected to come to a total standstill once the sun went down on Friday.”