Paul Badde's Questions Elicit a Brief Summary of Fr. Pfeiffer's Thesis that the Veronica and the Holy Face of Manoppello are One and the Same

An english translation of a selection from the book La Seconda Sindone (The Other Shroud)by Paul Badde,Newton Compton, Rome, 2007 p. 82. This book originally published in German Das Gottliche Gesicht, Pattloch Verlag GmbH and Co. KG, Munich

Paul Badde: (Vatican correspondent for Die Welt newspaper) "you were the first to say: The Veronica has been found in Manoppello!" while in Rome each year a Veronica continues to be displayed from the balcony of the massive pillar of the same name. We are dealing here with an astounding affirmation. Did someone else discover this? Did you read this from some other source?"

Fr. Heinrich Pfeiffer, S.J.(Professor of the Gregorian University, Rome): "No, what I had read was all the literature available regarding the images of Christ, from the beginning in antiquity. I knew all of it almost from memory. The discovery resulted from a process nurtured by various experiences. But the most significant circumstance was my first encounter with the veil, in the autumn of 1986. I had just finished my book on the images of Christ. It was then that I saw for the first time the image in question and immediately I said to myself: 'This must be the Veronica!'"

Paul Badde: "Why?"

Fr. Heinrich Pfeiffer, S.J.: "Because I already knew well that image from the things which I had read. And then because it is so transparent. There can not be two examples of an object of this kind. Of this I was immediately certain. One can not paint anything on it, not even with the greatest efforts. It's not possible, and that's that. Certainly it is possible to paint on both sides of a cloth simultaneously. The Byzantines were able to do it on silk. But you can not paint an image that practically disappears. There is no technique that makes this possible, it can't be done. And I knew that there had existed only one single object capable of exciting people in this way: In the West the Veronica and in the East the so-called "Icon of Camulia". And so it came immediately to my mind to consider them both as one and the same."