The Sixth Station(116)

“Astonishing. And the Vatican gets away with it—showing a fake, I mean?”

“For nearly five hundred years so far, yes. They obviously must have thought they would get the original back in the beginning, and that it might be better and wiser to keep quiet about the robbery until it was returned. But it never came back to Rome or to Saint Peter’s.”

“So I should not even try to see the Veil that is kept here?”

“No, I’m sorry, but the Veronica at the Vatican is not the Face you are looking for.”

“But it makes no sense! I mean, how could the most important relic in all of Christendom be hiding in a town no one’s ever heard of?”

“Well, many have heard of it, for one thing, and for another, it’s actually hiding in plain sight. It’s on display at the altar of the church there. In fact, in September of 2006 Pope Benedict himself went there and knelt down and prayed before it!”

“What?” I couldn’t believe what he was saying. “But you said the Veronica was just a legend.…”

“It is. But the actual cloth with Jesus’ true face—created without a drop of paint or dye or any coloration made by man—does exist. The cloth of Manoppello. Manoppello, by the way, ironically enough, means ‘napkin,’ even though the village name was in place well before the Veil arrived.

“In fact the Veil, wrapped in a package, was left by an angel, as the legend goes, on a bench in Manoppello right after the sacking of Rome. A doctor, Giacomo Antonio Leonelli, found it, opened it up, and found the cloth imprinted with the face of Jesus.”

“Jeez,” I piped in, “it’s like finding the original Gutenberg Bible in a cab!”

“That is correct. Leonelli’s family kept it until 1608, when, after a series of events, it was donated to the Capuchin friars, who have kept it until this day.”

“So it’s been there all this time?”

“Yes. But the real Veil, the one I’ve described and that is kept there, is not Veronica’s Veil.”

“Now I’m really confused.”

“Rather it is, I believe, the face cloth, or napkin, that was placed over Jesus’ face in the tomb.”

“By whom?”

“By the last person who laid our Lord to rest in his grave. However, in order to explain the image on the cloths, over the years a tale was created that a woman wiped the face of Jesus on His way to Calvary and His image mysteriously appeared. Nowhere does this tale appear in the Bible, however.”

“Let me ask you something else,” I said. “Why was a napkin laid over the face of Jesus? I don’t understand.”

“I remember reading that it had been common practice back in the time of Jesus to lay a napkin or cloth upon the face of the deceased in the tomb. When Jesus arose from the dead, I believe this cloth was left with His imprint!”

“Who placed this cloth over Jesus’ face, do you think?”

He looked at me, studying me to see, perhaps, if I could absorb what he was about to say or if I would dismiss him as a kook.

“Mary Magdalene! She was among the last who saw Him in His grave and the first person to whom He appeared after His resurrection—in front of that same tomb. The veil or napkin was then discovered by Peter and John—in the tomb. As John reports in his gospel, ‘at a particular place.’”

So that’s why the Magdalene Chalice legend persists in the Languedoc area around Montségur. She brought it with her when she settled there with the other Jewish émigrés!

“The Holy Face of Manoppello is the proof—almost a photo—of the face of Jesus at the exact instant of His resurrection from the dead.

“And it matches up exactly with the image on the Shroud, which very few people know.” He then took out his wallet and gave me two transparencies roughly the size of funeral cards—the ones that are given out at wakes and such. He held up the first one.

The Shroud of Turin. I recognized the image. He held up the second, a nearly transparent card on which a face was faintly visible.

“This one, the Shroud of Turin, is an unchanging opaque negative—while the image on the Holy Face is a positive, transparent image with a million different expressions. The Shroud is like a faded negative of a photo.”

I had to ponder for a moment what that meant. Negative and positive? Same image?

Then he put the Veil transparency on top of the Shroud opaque image. “They match up precisely.” I took his word for it because it was so hard to see in the light of the cathedral.

“Who took these photos?” I knew that no one had photographed the Turin Shroud out of its glass—at least not in modern times.