Christ's Death Certificate Said Deciphered By Vatican Scholar

The Shroud of Turin (also known as the Holy Shroud or Turin Shroud) is a linen cloth which bears the image of a man. The image is best seen in a negative image rather in the normal sepia tone of the shroud. A negative image can be seen above.

While the image appears to be of a man, more precisely, to believers, the Shroud of Turin contains the image of Jesus Christ. It is believed that the shroud was used to cover the body of Christ at the time of his burial. Non-believers point out that carbon dating done in 1988 shows that the cloth postdates the Crucifixion of Jesus by more than a millennium (the Middle Ages).

However, Dr. Frale said that "I think I have managed to read the burial certificate of Jesus the Nazarene, or Jesus of Nazareth." The researcher said that she had reconstructed the information from fragments of Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic imprinted on the Shroud of Turin. The letters are barely visible to the eye, and were first detected in 1978 during an examination of the shroud.

Dr. Frale said the text includes the words includes the words "Jesus Nazarene" and mentions that he was sentenced to death. It is her belief that the text was written on a document used by a clerk to identify the body, and that the ink then seeped into the cloth.

Dr. Frale told "La Repubblica" that during Christ's, Jewish burial practices in a Roman colony such as Palestine would mean that a body buried after a death sentence could only be returned to the family after a year in a common grave. It was typical to attach a death certificate was to the burial shroud. Additionally, this certificate was usually attached to the cloth around the face. Additionally, Dr. Frale added the nature of a community of Greek-speaking Jews in a Roman colony would make the use of three languages in the "certificate" typical.

Some have called the Shroud of Turin a fraud. Meanwhile, the Holy See itself has never either endorsed the Turin Shroud or rejected it. Pope John Paul II perhaps came the closest to accepting it, by arranging for public viewings in 1998 and 2000.

In 1998, Pope John Paul II said: "The Shroud is an image of God's love as well as of human sin. The imprint left by the tortured body of the Crucified One, which attests to the tremendous human capacity for causing pain and death to one's fellow man, stands as an icon of the suffering of the innocent in every age." Additionally, it's been announced that Pope Benedict XVI will pray before the Shroud of Turin when it is put on display again next Spring in Turin.