By Junno Arocho Esteves
(OSV News) — A study published in July revealed that a new analysis of the Shroud of Turin, including the composition and a microscopic analysis of bloodstains, shows that the marks are consistent with the tortures endured by Christ as described in the Gospels.

The study, titled “New Insights on Blood Evidence from the Turin Shroud Consistent with Jesus Christ’s Tortures,” stated that the presence of creatinine particles with ferritin, which are often a by-product of muscle contractions, “confirms, at a microscopic level, the very heavy torture suffered by Jesus of the HST,” or Holy Shroud of Turin.

Furthermore, “numerous bloodstains scattered throughout the double body image of the HST show evidence that Jesus of the HST was tortured,” it stated.

“Bloodstained marks all over the body image which are consistent with pre-crucifixion flagellation, bloodstained marks on the head that are consistent with a ‘crown’ of thorns, blood marks on the hand and feet that are consistent with crucifixion and the bloodstain on the chest that evidences a post-mortem wound that corresponds with the post-mortem spear wound that Christ received as is described in the Bible,” the report said.

The new study was written by Giulio Fanti, associate professor of Mechanical and Thermal Measurements at the Department of Industrial Engineering of the University of Padua. According to his personal website, Fanti has studied and written about the famed burial cloth since 2004.

The funding for the study, the report said, “was partially supported by a religious group
that requested anonymity” and that the group entrusted Fanti with “the analysis of the so-called ‘Padre Pio handkerchief,’ a fabric on which two images considered miraculous are imprinted on the front and back of (a Shroud of Turin-like) Jesus Christ and Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, respectively.”

According to the report, a preliminary study conducted by Fanti, along with Christian Privitera, an engineer, revealed the presence “of an almost transparent substance” between the bloodstained threads of the shroud.

“This substance, given its origin and in agreement with other scholars who have analyzed the Shroud of Oviedo, could be the semi-transparent fluid produced by pulmonary edema,” the report said, referring to the excessive accumulation of fluid in the lungs that Jesus was believed to have suffered from while on the cross.

The Shroud of Oviedo, Spain, is what both tradition and scientific studies claim was the cloth used to cover and clean the face of Jesus after the crucifixion.

Fanti’s study on the Shroud of Turin stated that aside from confirming the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ torture, including the flagellation, the right eye of the man of the shroud, given that it was “more sunken” with a vertical mark over the “apparently furrowed” eyelid,” indicate that he “could have been blinded by another blow of the scourge on the head.”

“As an alternative to the scourge mark on the right eye, one can think of a wound produced by a thorn from the crown placed on Jesus’ head,” the report stated.

The 14-foot-by-4-foot shroud features a full-length photonegative image of a man, front and back, bearing signs of wounds that correspond to the Gospel accounts of the torture Jesus endured in his passion and death.

The Catholic Church has never officially ruled on the shroud’s authenticity, saying judgments about its age and origin belonged to scientific investigation. Scientists have debated its authenticity for decades, and studies have led to conflicting results.

A 1988 carbon testing dated the cloth to the 12th century, leading many to conclude that the shroud is a medieval forgery. However, scientists have challenged that claim by noting that the methodology of the testing was erroneous and that the sample used in the carbon dating process was a piece used to mend the cloth in the Middle Ages.

A 2014 study published in the 2018 Journal of Forensic Sciences by Matteo Borrini, an Italian forensic scientist, and Luigi Garlaschelli, an Italian chemist, stated that blood patterns on the shroud were not consistent with those left by a crucified person.

Garlaschelli also posted a YouTube video of his experiment in 2015 using a live person to study the blood patterns in various positions as well as pressing a sponge against a plastic mannequin to examine the way the fake blood flowed.

However, several experts and researchers criticized the 2014 study, stating that their findings lacked the accuracy of past studies, some of which involved cadavers of men who died of hemopericardium, the pooling of blood in the heart, which is believed to be what ultimately caused Jesus’ death on the cross.

In his report, Fanti questioned the results of the 1988 study, stating that certain factors, including the presence of neutron radiation, transformed elements in the shroud, “thus heavily skewing the results of the radiocarbon dating of the HST performed in 1988 by many centuries.”

(Junno Arocho Esteves reports for OSV News from Malmö, Sweden.)

By Gina Christian , OSV News

Faith, prayer and a transcendent hope in Christ sustained a Ukrainian Catholic priest amid more than a year and a half of Russian captivity and torture — and now, he is sharing his story to remind others that God “loves us and wants to save us.”

Redemptorist Father Bohdan Geleta reflected on his experiences in an hourlong interview with host Taras Babenchuk that aired Aug. 20 on Zhyve TV, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church’s television channel.

In November 2022, Father Geleta and his fellow Redemptorist Father Ivan Levitsky were seized by Russian forces from their parish, Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos in Berdyansk, Ukraine.

The two — whose exact locations and conditions were largely unknown to Ukrainian and church officials for most of their 18-month captivity — were among 10 prisoners returned to Ukraine in late June. Both priests had lost significant amounts of weight, and their heads had been shaved.

Father Geleta confirmed that he and Father Levitsky had been subjected to both psychological and physical torture at the hands of Russian forces, confirming reports that Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the UGCC, had received within the first weeks of the priests’ capture, which took place a full nine months after Russian troops took over Berdyansk.

Initially, the two priests had been able to continue their pastoral ministry after the Russian occupation, celebrating Divine Liturgy, praying and taking in refugees, said Father Geleta.

In fact, the refugees motivated them to stay, he said, and provide both spiritual and material support.

Yet prayers for peace had to be done “very delicately” since “it was dangerous to express such a sentiment there,” he said — and a car marked with the letter “Z,” a symbol of Russian troops in Ukraine, circled the church “several times” as “a sign” that Russian occupiers were watching.

On Nov. 16, 2022, the occupiers made their move in broad daylight. Father Geleta had just returned from a burial and was preparing to celebrate Divine Liturgy; Father Levitsky was about to hold an outdoor prayer gathering.

“Two masked people came into the church. I think they were military. They were carrying weapons, and they came up and said in Russian: ‘Come with us,'” Father Geleta recalled. “I asked them in Ukrainian what they wanted, why they came into the church dressed like they were. They told me that they did not understand Ukrainian. I switched to Russian. Then I changed my clothes, took off my vestments, and went with them to the central pre-trial detention center in Berdyansk … And there they drew up a report that Father Ivan and I had violated some rules. We had to take permission from the authorities to pray in the city.”

The charge is a typical one for Russian occupation forces in Ukraine, who have broadly sought to suppress all faiths except Russian-aligned Orthodox groups by destroying houses of worship; detaining, torturing and killing clergy; and creating laws — in violation of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit the imposition of outside rule by occupying forces — to restrict religious practice. In Zaporizhzhia, the region surrounding Berdyansk, Russian occupation officials issued a written decree banning the UGCC as well as the Knights of Columbus and Caritas, the official humanitarian arm of the worldwide Catholic Church.

Father Geleta and Father Levitsky, who were kept separate for most of their imprisonment, were first taken to damp basement cells where they “could also hear screams from our cell in the corridors,” as captives were tortured. One of Father Geleta’s cellmates had been electrically shocked and forced to learn the Russian national anthem — or face execution.

The priests were first offered an opportunity to cooperate with employees of the FSB, Russia’s security bureau, which has in some cases sought to recruit religious leaders to promote Russia’s grip in occupied areas of Ukraine.

“They said if we agreed, they would show us around and tell us what we needed to do,” said Father Geleta. “But we refused.”

The priests were also questioned on camera by Russian propagandists, he said, noting that his inquisitors “really don’t like the word ‘war,'” but instead prefer the Kremlin’s euphemism, “special military operation” to describe their attacks on Ukraine, which began in 2014 and which have been determined to constitute genocide, according to two major reports from the New Lines Institute and the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights.

Yet “neither Father Ivan nor I compromised,” said Father Geleta. “We just told the truth, that it was a war, that they were criminals, to their faces,” he said, adding that it was clear they would be “punished” for their stance.

Their captors, Father Geleta said, “forgot about us for four months,” after which they accused the priests of storing weapons in their church, a charge for which they were to be tried and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The two were transferred for five more months to Russian penal colony No. 77 in Berdyansk, where Father Geleta was moved to a solitary cell with a speaker that was “was blaring Soviet songs all day long,” which he was forced to listen to.

“I realized then how a person goes crazy, I realized why people commit suicide then,” said Father Geleta. “And, of course, the Lord God helps, and he gives strength through prayer. God, Jesus Christ, Mary and the angels were all present. Prayer was salvation. And as I was saying, I felt the prayer of the church.”

The priests were moved once more — driven handcuffed and blindfolded, with bags on their heads — to another penal colony in Horlivka, located in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, where prisoners were “harmed almost every day … the admission was very terrible, very cruel,” said Father Geleta.

Those who had fought in Ukraine’s Azov regiment, which along with civilians had defied Russia’s occupation of Mariupol until the city fell in May 2022, were “very much abused there,” he said.

The priests were also abused multiple times. “I was almost never beaten during the admission, but Father Ivan was beaten so severely that he lost consciousness twice,” Father Geleta said.

The Ukrainian priest said that while he was being tortured — something “you can’t get used to” — he “remembered Jesus Christ, his cross, his suffering.”

“And such strength and grace poured in that, that I was saying: Lord, I can sympathize with you,” he said. “When they were taking me somewhere, I was already preparing internally, praying and asking God to give me strength. I did not know whether I would survive or not.”

He and Father Levitsky shared a cell for just 15 days of their 10-month imprisonment at Horlivka, where according to the priest about 2,000 prisoners of war were held.

“We had the opportunity to get to know a lot of people,” said Father Geleta. “They told us a lot, and they were looking for help from the inside, spiritual help.”

While unable to celebrate liturgy, Father Geleta said he began holding morning and evening prayer meetings of about five minutes each, reading a passage from a Russian-language Bible, reciting the Our Father and Hail Mary, and then praying for prisoners’ intentions.

“It was enough to “spiritually gain such energy and go on living,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that it was some kind of propaganda or preaching, because the Our Father and the Hail Mary are common Christian prayers. … The warders didn’t even come in and see us.”

Father Geleta said he was also able to hear confessions, and sensed that “the whole church” prayed for the priests’ release.

He said his captors considered UGCC Catholics as “sect that split from Orthodoxy,” and that the UGCC and its priests must be “eradicated, isolated from society, and purified.”

“They genuinely praise God. Genuinely, yet they beat people, you know?” Father Geleta said of his captors. “It’s such religious fanaticism.”

When the June prisoner exchange was arranged, he and Father Levitsky thought they were possibly being moved to Siberia, said Father Geleta, who felt “profoundly grateful” upon regaining his freedom.

“Even now I cannot digest it all, realize it. It is still … coming to me,” he said.

As he readjusts to freedom, Father Geleta has discerned the hand of the divine in the sufferings he and Father Levitsky endured.

“Together with Father Ivan we sympathized and bore this cross with those prisoners who fought for freedom, for a free Ukraine, for winning this happiness of not only living like people, but being close to God, to the salvation of the Lord,” he said.

“And it will probably remain there, this particle, for a lifetime, you know, as long as I live on earth,” he acknowledged.

“And I want to tell all the others, and especially those families, those mothers, wives, who have their sons, their fathers, their sisters in captivity, not to lose hope, to pray, to turn to God, and everything will be all right. The Lord God knows that even through these sufferings he leads everyone to himself. We do not know this, it is a mystery. Otherwise, a person might not be able to bear it,” Father Geleta said.