January 2026 Sermons

Wednesday January 7, 2026
AI study of the Shroud of Turin
by Fr Nicholas Karipoff
There was much excitement in the aftermath of the scientific studies of the Shroud in the 1970s. Many Christians at that time saw the 1978 documentary, ‘The Silent Witness’.
The Shroud is one of the countless holy relics plundered by the Crusaders from Constantinople in 1204 and the following decades. Brought to Europe by a secretive monastic order of Crusader knights, it was eventually transferred to Turin, Italy. Modern interest in the Shroud began with the first photos of the relic taken in the late 19th century by a photographer in Turin. When he developed his plates, he realised that the Shroud itself is a negative photograph on a large linen cloth. His negative plates revealed for the first time in history a clear positive image of the face and body of the Man Who had suffered scourging with Roman whips, a crown of thorns on His head, wounds from the nails in His hands and feet, and piercing of His side with a Roman lance.
In 1988 ten years after ‘The Silent Witness’ documentary three independent studies ‘proved’ that the relic was a 14th century ‘fake’, based on radioactive carbon tests. The dating however could not explain how a medieval European artist could have procured a piece of linen produced in Palestine near Jerusalem (shown by pollen in the material) woven according to the style of weave popular there before 70AD, and how he could have known about photography, negatives, as well as many other things only discovered centuries later. Nevertheless, atheistic scientists and their followers were gloating: another nail in the coffin of religion. Eventually it was revealed that all three groups of scientists took a patch from the Shroud sown on after a fire in the 14th century.
Now we come to recent studies using huge computer power – AI. Please watch this 21-minute film. You may want to read and/or see other material like the 1978 documentary.​

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