New Evidence Suggests Shroud of Turin may be Authentic

A breaking news story appearing in the August 9th edition of Rome newspaper Il Messaggero (see URL below) reveals that a 16th Century patch of medieval material was invisibly woven into the sample used to date the Shroud of Turin in 1988. There is now conclusive physical evidence that this material skewed the date making the Shroud appear as if it had been created in the Middle Ages when it may have been from the first century.

The Shroud of Turin, believed by many to be the actual burial cloth of Christ, lost much of its appeal after the release of the 1988 Carbon-14 test, which dated the cloth to between 1260 - 1390 AD. At the time, it appeared that the jury was in and the final verdict on the age of the Shroud was cast. Or was it?

On August 9, 2002, Rome newspaper Il Messaggero, revealed that new evidence has been discovered that the sample used for dating the Shroud was contaminated by a patch used to repair the Shroud in the 16th Century. This new hypothesis was put forth by Dublin, Ohio Shroud researchers, M. Sue Benford, R.N., M.A., and former Benedictine Monk and Catholic Priest, Joseph G. Marino. Benford and Marino demonstrated that a patch" of material, from the 16th Century, was skillfully spliced into the 1st Century original Shroud cloth in the C-14 sample used by the laboratories for testing.

Photographs of the uncut C-14 sample, and one of the sub samples, were blindly analyzed by European-trained weaver, David Pearson of the French Tailors in Columbus Ohio, who reported, there is no question that there is different material on each side of the weave pattern. It is definitely a patch!" He explained that medieval European weavers would typically try to match the original cloth and then hand-stitch the new material into the old such that it was invisible to all but the trained observer. But why do this? Considering the C-14 sample had been excised adjacent to a previously removed area of the cloth (5 ½" x 3 ½" in size), this restoration would have been required to maintain both integrity and aesthetic consistency of the revered woven artifact. However, the patch was not an identical match; thus, even untrained observers can readily see the disparities between the two materials in the C-14 sample (photos available). Two other textile labs corroborate the weaver's observations.

New information about a secret dating test in 1982, at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), supports the Benford/Marino hypothesis as does extensive chemical and physical analyses of actual Shroud fibers by former STURP chemist Dr. Ray Rogers. All the details will soon be available at www.shroud.com.

For more information contact:

M. Sue Benford
2408 Sovron Ct.
Dublin, OH 43016
(614) 766-6933
email: MSBENFORD@aol.com