Prayer of St. John Paul II to the Holy Face

Lord Jesus, Crucified and Risen; the image of the glory of the Father, Holy Face, which looks at us and searches for us, kind and merciful, You who call us to conversion and invite us for the fullness of love, we adore and bless you.

 In your luminous Face, we learn to love and to be loved, to find freedom and reconciliation, to promote peace, which radiates from you and leads to you.

In your glorified Face we learn to overcome every form of egoism, to hope against every hope, to choose works of life against the actions of death.  Give us grace to place you at the center of our life, to remain faithful amidst dangers and the changes of the world, to our Christian vocation;

 to announce to all people the power of the Cross and the Word which saves; to be watchful and active, to attend to the needs of the little ones; to understand the need of true liberation which had its beginning in you and will have its end in you..

Lord, grant to your Church to stand like your Virgin Mother, at the glorious Cross, and at the crosses of all people to bring about consolation, hope and comfort.

May the Holy Spirit which you have granted, bring to maturation your work of salvation, through your Holy Face, which shines forever and ever.  Amen.

Photos by Paul Badde

Prayer of St. John Paul II taken from "Devotion to the Holy Face" which may be obtained from The Discalced Carmelite Monastery Gift Shop, 73530 River Road, Covington, LA  70435

A Way Forward for Collaborative Research on the Shroud of Turin and the Holy Face of Manoppello

Ever since  Sr. Blandina Paschalis Schlömer began to make the first systematic comparisons of photographs of the Holy Face of Manoppello and the Shroud of Turin in her convent in Germany there has quite often been opposition and disdain on the part of scholars of the Shroud for this endeavor. Actually this is not surprising given the mind-boggling claims that the Holy Face is actually not only the Veil of Veronica but the burial face-cloth of Jesus!  How could we have missed this all these centuries?

Nevertheless following in the footsteps of Sr. Blandina there have always been more than a few Shroud scholars who have tried to see if and how these two images of Jesus might be related.

 Recently several interesting articles comparing the two images using the ImageJ computer software for image processing and analysis have appeared on one of my favorite blogs:  The Shroud of Turin blog - latest news and views on the Shroud of Turin edited by Dan Porter (with apologies to Mr. Porter for my earlier error in attributing the editorship to someone else).

 The author of the two articles is Oskar K. from Poland who presents what I think is a compelling case for the Holy Face of Manoppello to be a part of the research on the Shroud of Turin and offers ImageJ software as one of the research tools.

Along with the fascinating overlays of the two images which are presented in his papers are a number of  hard hitting comments which the blog is known for.

http://shroudstory.com/2014/06/14/imagej-used-to-compare-the-shroud-of-turin-and-the-manoppello-image/#comments

Here are several of the author's replies to comments on his article which I find important.

The purpose of my paper, was merely to show the abilities of ImageJ +some interesting features. So every ‘shroudie’ can make own, even quite really serious research.

Methinks they are also amateurs as to the image matching, and interpretations coming from it... I think the proper people for that job are not in the academic Institutes of Art History, but rather in police department.


http://shroudstory.com/2014/06/18/the-manoppello-this-little-cloth-cannot-be-further-ignored-in-shroud-research/

and another comment by the author

Anyway, I see it extremely unlikely for Manoppello to be a painting. I have a question/challenge for all sceptics...If this is indeed a painting, how has it been made?


Many thanks to the  Juliusz Maszloch of Poland who made sure I was aware of these articles.  Here is Juliusz' website on the Holy Face of Manoppello. http://www.manoppello.eu/ 

The Holy Face of Manoppello In History and in the Future

In August of last year there was an important exhibition on the Holy Face during the annual Meeting of Rimini. Thousands of attendees were able to see the story of the Holy Face in history. In January of this year in New York a similar exhibition was held during the annual New York Encounter. A catalog describing the history of the Holy Face was produced in Italian with an english translation. The catalog entitled "The Rediscovered Face: the Unmistakable Features of Christ" is a tremendous resource for scholars as well as ordinary folks who would like to deepen their knowledge of the Holy Face. It contains many articles and examples of images of Jesus throughout the centuries, and in addition has a large number of important footnotes, and an extensive bibliography. The foreward was written by Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston.

The catalogs were produced by the same team as the exhibits, headed by the artist Rafaella Zardoni, along with Emmanuele Colombo, Michele Colombo, Paolo Martinelli, O.F.M. Cap, Paola Francesca Moretti, Giovanna Parravicini, and Maria Cristina Terzaghi. They were assisted by Paul Badde, Gregory M. Pell, Arianna Petraccia, Heinrich Pfeiffer, S.J., Davide Rondoni, Marco Rossi, Silvana Tassetto, and Paola Vismara. Amanda Murphy, Chris Vath and myself were responsible for the English translation. The english translation is available from www.Amazon.com as a paper back book and from www.ibs.it as an e-book.

In February of this year an association was formed coming out of these exhibtions to promote the study and knowledge of the image of the Face of Christ present in Manoppello and the history of the ancient acheropite images of Christ: representations of Christ on cloth which in accordance with various traditions in the East and the West were left by Christ Himself as a memorial of His Face. The website for this association is www.ilvoltoritrovato.org