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| photo by Paul Badde |
His studies led to the identification of the Veronica in the Holy Face of Manoppello
text and photos (except as noted) by Antonio Bini
Heinrich Wilhelm Pfeiffer has died
in Berlin. A former professor of
Christian art history at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and
advisor to the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church, under
Pope John Paul II, was born in Tübingen in 1939. To him we owe the studies, begun in the nineteen eighties, which led to the
identification of the Holy Face of Manoppello as the Veronica, formerly
venerated in St. Peter's. His research was inspired by the conclusions of Sister Blandina Paschalis Schlömer, who demonstrated how the Holy Face was completely
superimposable over the face of the Shroud. As he once told me, his entire life
– professional and religious – was
dedicated to ascertaining what might be the prototype for the image of Christ developed in
art over the centuries. In 1986 he published in Italy the book of essays “L’immagine di Cristo nell’arte” (The Image of Christ in Art), Ed.
Città Nuova, emphasizing that it was "a truly inexhaustible theme", and
in fact that much remained to be written, beginning the studies that would later interest him. The book was later published in Germany and
Spain. That same year his
first trip to Manoppello took place. In 1991 a first approach to the study of the Holy Face was published in Germany, under the title "Das Turiner Grabtuch und das Cristusbild" (The Shroud of Turin and the Image
of Christ), Ed. Knecht,
Frankfurt, written with the German sindonologist (expert on the Shroud) Werner Bulst.
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Fr. Pfeiffer, Sr Blandina Paschalis Schlömer, Antonio Bini, Fr. Carmine Cucinelli
at the Byzantine Church, Villa Badessa not far from Manoppello |
His research
continued in the following years until it was presented during a crowded press conference at the Foreign Press office
in Italy on May 31, 1999, which opened new perspectives to the dissemination of
the Holy Face in the world, just prior to Great Jubilee of 2000, which had among its objectives also to demonstrate the historical
dimension of the figure of Christ. The extraordinary response resulting from the international communication
of the news led the Municipality of Manoppello to confer upon the German
scholar, on December 8, 1999, the honorary citizenship of the Abruzzo city
In the course of the year 2000 his
book “Il Volto Santo di Manoppello” was published, Ed. Carsa, Pescara, with a preface by Cardinal Fiorenzo Angelini, who stated that it was "a publication that decisively contributes to
shedding light on the mystery of the Roman Veronica, destination of the “Romei”
who in the Middle Ages went on pilgrimage to the tomb of the Prince of the
Apostles". Cardinal Angelini was the founder and president of the International
Institute for Research on the Face of Christ (established in Rome on March 25, 1997), which saw Fr. Pfeiffer as a research partner. Cardinal Angelini, at the time the only native born Roman cardinal,
explained that he had wanted to follow the urging of John Paul II directed toward
favoring studies on the face of Christ. And John Paul II did not fail to take to heart what emerged from those studies and from his repeated meetings with Cardinal Angelini, so much so as to devote ample space, in
the apostolic letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, released on January 6, 2001, at
the conclusion of the Jubilee, to the theme of the search for and contemplation
of the face of Christ as the Church’s mission for the third millennium. This topic was
completely absent from the Apostolic Letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente,
published on November 10, 1994 introducing the upcoming Jubilee.
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| Cardinal Angelini and Fr. Pfeiffer at the University of Chieti |
It was not easy then for Fr.
Pfeiffer and even more so for Cardinal Angelini to argue that
the Veronica was in Manoppello, first of all because
of the long established state of affairs that had led the Vatican to never admit that the legendary image was no
longer in Rome, as it had almost certainly disappeared
following the Sack of Rome. Apart from the
conferences, the debate also took place in the media, in publications. I remember how Msgr. Dario
Rezza, a canon of St. Peter's Basilica and therefore part of that small number
of prelates chosen by the pope to be in
charge of the custody of the relics of St. Peter, had written, to counter the
hypotheses of Fr. Pfeiffer, an article entitled "In St. Peter's Basilica is kept the most famous relic in the world:
the "sudarium of Christ", published in the monthly 30Giorni n. 3, March
2000, pp. 60-64). In the following May issue no. 5/2000 of
the same magazine, Fr. Pfeiffer firmly denied
this thesis, replying with
an article of his own with the significant title: "But the "Veronica" is in
Manoppello". Nothing further
regarding the matter appeared in the magazine, although there were subsequent repercussions.
Among these I remember how Fr. Germano Di
Pietro, then superior of the Shrine of the Holy Face in the early 2000’s received the visit of two canons of St. Peter’s who
advised him to avoid references to the Veronica, considering that the Shrine’s
magazine had begun to deal with the legendary veil, in the light of new elements that documented the evident transformation of the representation of the image during the seventeenth
century, first with eyes open and later with them closed.
There was the other front, that of
the sindonologists, who certainly did not look kindly upon the rediscovery of
another Face of Christ, with clearer features
and visible every day.
The initial annual international
conferences (organized by Cardinal Angelini’s Institute) were the context in
which the scholar expressed the results of his research to an audience of theologians and scholars from all over the world. I
recall the coldness, if not hostility, with which he was received at the III International Congress, held
in Rome on October 30 and 31, 1999 at the Lateran University, after the
clamor of the press conference five months before, where he argued that theology, based exclusively on the sacred scriptures,
was poorly prepared for dialogue with the natural sciences. It was Fr. Pfeiffer himself who invited me.
On this occasion he emphasized how the image of the Holy Face and that of
the Shroud came from the same tomb and therefore had been in contact. The journalist and writer Paul Badde, in a statement released in Germany following Fr. Pfeiffer’s death, by the German Catholic Agency CNA, entitled "Fr. Heinrich Pfeiffer on the way to the unveiled face
of God”, also recalled how the scholar
in the past had been the object of ridicule for having "dared" to affirm that the Veronica had been found in Manoppello and that the Holy Face had been the prototype for the depictions of Christ in art, until the beginning of the sixteenth century. Using plain words, Paul Badde, several years earlier had written in his
first book dedicated to the Holy Face, referring to the German Jesuit, "that professor had told me that in the world there
was an even more significant image than the Shroud. Only a madman could support such a thing and that’s how Father Pfeiffer
was described to me." (cf. P. Badde, Das Muschelseidentuch, Auf der Suche nach dem wahrem Antlitz
Jesu, ed. Ullstein, Berlin, 2005).
The scenario of those years was
well described later also by Saverio Gaeta:
"it seemed a challenge
of a David against the Goliath of the army of sindonologists, who avoid
questions regarding the veil of Manoppello, because it disturbs the supposedly already
settled acquisitions of knowledge surrounding the burial cloths of Jesus"(S. Gaeta, L'enigma del volto di Gesù, ed. Rizzoli, 2010); the book was an expansion
of the first edition, distributed along with the Easter 2005 issue of the most
widely read Italian Catholic weekly - "Famiglia Cristiana"- which until then had ignored the topic of the Holy Face).
Also Fr. Carmine Cucinelli, on the
occasion of the Memorial service for Fr. Pfeiffer, which took place on December
15, 2021, at the Shrine of Manoppello, in his homily remembered the “ hostility
and opposition on the part of many colleagues among the Jesuits and other
religious orders in Rome and from other cities, which accompanied Father
Pfeiffer until his death and that he suffered patiently, convinced that in this
little city in Abruzzo is found the greatest treasure of the world.” All this, continued Fr. Carmine for having
affirmed and documented that “the Veronica, true icon, or Sudarium, is the face
of Jesus imprinted on the veil at the moment of the resurrection, and that the
Shroud, equally imprinted in the tomb of Christ, depicts Christ suffering after
his passion.” Stating that “on his gravestone could be written, paraphrasing
the words of St. John the Evangelist during his visit to the tomb of Jesus at
Easter: ‘He saw and recognized!’”.
The Mass, concelebrated by Fr.
Giovanni Ferri, Fr. Marian Michniak, Fr. Carmine, assisted by Br. Crispino
Valeri. The music was led by the
Handmaids of the Most Precious Blood of Manoppello.
Fr. Pfeiffer was very attached to the Holy
Face and therefore to Manoppello, where he returned many times, combining study
and veneration of the sacred image, staying even for days, when his commitments
allowed him, always a guest of the Capuchins, as well as to participate in the feasts
of the Holy Face or to describe the sacred image to cardinals who requested his
presence. The last time he took part in
the May festivities was in 2018, walking along the procession mixed in among
the devotees and pilgrims. He was always welcomed with great friendship and
esteem by the religious community of the Capuchins who periodically hosted him
in the friary.
I remember his
collaboration with Fr. Carmine Cucinellli, then rector of the Shrine, together
with Sister Blandina, for the preparation of the exhibition inaugurated in Lourdes
on September 1, 2011 – entitled "Le Image du Christ a traver le visage de la Vierge"(The Image of Christ through the face of the Virgin),
which had been requested by the Msgr. Philippe Perrier, Bishop
at that time of the Diocese of Tarbes-Lourdes, after his pilgrimage
to Manoppello.
His precious testimony appeared in quite a few
issues of the magazine of the Holy Face, as well as in a great many interviews,
television appearances in Italy and abroad and in various documentaries. He
participated in many conferences. Noted
among these was his presence at the “International Workshop on the
Scientific Approach to Acheiropoietos Images”, organized by the ENEA
Research Center of Frascati on May 4-6, 2010, dedicated to a comparison of the
Shroud, the Holy Face and the Tilma of Guadalupe.
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| Fr. Pfeiffer at the center of the participants of the conference |
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| Fr. Pfeiffer delivering his paper |
In January 2016, in the year of the
Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, proclaimed by Pope Francis, he had taken part
in the solemn re-enactment of the ancient rite of Omnis Terra, instituted by
Innocent III in 1208, leading the procession that went from St. Peter with the
replica of the Holy Face to the nearby Basilica of Santo Spirito in Sassia. After
808 years there returned to history the Veronica, which the pope used to bring to
the poor and sick of the oldest hospital of Europe.
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| Ellen Badde, Fr. Pfeiffer, Paul Badde at Santo Spirito in Sassia |
In a statement of November 27, 2021, the
archbishop of the diocese Chieti-Vasto, Msgr. Bruno Forte, recalled that
"Father Heinrich Pfeiffer S.J. was a
witness to Christ through the research, knowledge and teaching of the history
of the Church. He made a great contribution to the study of the Holy Face of
Manoppello. To him goes my thanks and the gratitude of the Church of
Chieti-Vasto", underlining how studying the Holy Shroud and
the Face of Manoppello and initiating important research on this precious
relic, "which brought about the
recognition of it as the "Roman Veronica", promoting the pilgrimage
of Pope Benedict XVI to the Shrine of the Holy Face on September 1, 2006".
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| Fr. Pfeiffer with Archbishop Bruno Forte in May 2018 at Manoppello |
That visit, which
was opposed in Vatican circles, so much so that it was announced only about ten
days before the first of September, was an event of
extraordinary importance in the history of the Holy Face, of the Shrine and
also in the life of Fr. Pfeiffer,
who implicitly saw recognized in it the
validity of his years of research.
The photo that portrays the Jesuit
with Benedict XVI reveals the cordiality of that meeting, perhaps even
the pleasure and gratitude on
the part of the German pope. The
Jesuit will write that many years earlier he had hoped for a visit to
Manoppello by John Paul II and that he had even delivered to the then Cardinal Ratzinger
a report on the Holy Face.
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| Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Forte, Fr. Pfeiffer at Manoppello, Sept. 1, 2006 |
We recall that
visit through his own words published in the magazine of the Holy Face Il Volto Santo di Manoppello n. 2,December
2006, p. 30 ff.: "It is of enormous and beneficial
significance that the current Pope has seen and contemplated at length with his
own eyes this image of Christ which was venerated over the centuries as the
most important relic of Christianity. Perhaps this precious object would never
have been known by the general public if the late Father Domenico da Cese,
Capuchin of the friary to whom the Holy Face was entrusted many centuries ago,
had not wanted to show it during the National Eucharistic Congress of 1977,
held in Pescara. Perhaps a Pope would
never have gone to visit the Shrine of Abruzzo, if news of this exhibition had
not also reached a cell of a Trappist nun named Blandina Paschalis Schlömer at the convent of Maria Frieden in Dahlem in the Eifel region
in Germany and perhaps no scholar would have ever dealt with this extraordinary
find if the nun had not sent a package containing her research to the sindonologist
Fr. Werner Bulst of the Society of Jesus, and if there had not been present at
the time of the arrival of that package the undersigned, confrere of the late
great German scholar. With her study contained in that package, the Trappist sister
wanted to demonstrate nothing less than the perfect overlap of the two images: the
Holy Face of Manoppello, and the head that can be seen on the cloth of the
Shroud of Turin. And I too have been able to see the accuracy of her
experiments and the irrefutable result.
So I made, together with Roman sindonologist friends, the first trip to
Manoppello. An extraordinary vision and a new conviction were offered to me at
that moment: I had found the Roman Veronica, given up for lost by all scholars.
It was a moment of great emotion."
Some small
explanation is necessary to understand the sequence of circumstances briefly recalled
by Fr. Pfeiffer, who alluded to an exhibition
on the Holy Face that Fr. Domenico da Cese, of the friary of Manoppello, organized
in Pescara during the week of September 1977 in which the National Eucharistic
Congress took place in the Adriatic city, which saw the last pastoral visit of
Pope Paul VI, on September 17, 1977.
Father Domenico
organized a small exhibition, in rooms available to the Capuchins, to make up
for an oversight by the organizers of the Eucharistic Congress who had
completely ignored the Holy Face. Some information about that exhibition arrived
in the following months to the journalist and writer Renzo Allegri, a
well-known biographer of Padre Pio, who traveled to Manoppello the following
year, publishing his article on the Holy Face in the Italian weekly publication
Gente of September 30,1978, a few days after the death of Fr. Domenico.
The same article was translated and published the following month in the German-speaking
Swiss Catholic magazine Das Zeichen
Mariens,
which arrived in the German convent where Sr. Blandina had been devoting
herself to the Shroud of Turin. She began to study it also in relation to
that Holy Face of which she previously had been unaware.. Another fortuitous circumstance
was the presence of Fr. Pfeiffer in Germany, in the study of the Jesuit Werner
Bulst (1913-1995),then considered the
most authoritative German sindonologist.
On that occasion the elderly Fr. Bulst
gave to Fr. Pfeiffer the documentation sent by the nun, telling him "You are (working)
in Rome, and therefore you can take care of it". And Fr.
Pfeiffer gave years of study and research to understand the mysterious image
and to bring it back into the history of Christianity.
Studying the Holy
Face, the German Jesuit became aware of the figure of Fr. Domenico da Cese. The
capuchin himself, endowed with supernatural powers, according to many testimonies,
had arrived empirically, in the early seventies,
to the same conclusions as Fr. Pfeiffer, asserting the thesis that the cloth of the
Shroud and that of the Holy Face came from the tomb of Jesus. Fr.
Domenico wrote his reflections not in essays
and magazines but on simple holy cards that he distributed to promote the
knowledge and veneration of the Holy Face. Fr. Pfeiffer also knew about the
relationship between Fr. Domenico and Padre Pio, as I could tell from several
conversations I had with him over the years, during which he was led to reflect
upon the fate of the Capuchin, who died in Turin, where he had gone for the
exposition of the Shroud. Pfeiffer reported on some occasions, to people close
to him, that he had noticed a friar, of powerful build, among the crowd
visiting the Shroud in the Cathedral of Turin on September 12, 1978, where the scholar was to participate in
a conference on the Shroud. On the
evening of that same day, Fr. Domenico was hit by a car, dying five days later
in the hospital, due to the serious injuries he suffered. Years later, Fr. Pfeiffer would recognize that friar while studying
the Holy Face in Manoppello. With regard to Fr. Domenico, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints
granted a nihil Obstat to the process of beatification (2015), which has yet to be opened, despite
the generous work of gathering testimonies undertaken by Brother Vincenzo
d'Elpidio, now deceased, who was his
friend and for many years the guide for thousands of devotees and spiritual
children of Fr. Domenico.
*****
"Manoppello mourns
Father Pfeiffer," headlined Il Centro, the most widespread regional newspaper in Abruzzo,
in an article by Walter Teti, who
had also had the opportunity to
know him personally, to present the reactions to the news of the
death of the German Jesuit, recalling the long relationship between
the German scholar and the town of Abruzzo.
A feeling of gratitude of which the mayor himself, Giorgio De Luca, had
expressed, who announced the
desire to dedicate a street to him, possibly, right on the hill of the Capuchins
to which Fr. Pfeiffer had
certainly shown the way to millions of people. Fr.
Pfeiffer himself, would have liked to remain buried forever in Manoppello. A desire that was also confirmed by Sister
Blandina.
Known, respected
and loved by all, as can also be seen from the messages that appeared on the
Facebook page of the Shrine and on other pages, starting
with that of his historic University, which
in a message of condolence underlined
how Fr. Pfeiffer "has enriched the Pontifical Gregorian University with
his academic dedication and his passion for Christian art for over 40 years .. "Recalling how "famous (are) his
studies on the Sistine Chapel and on the Holy Face of Manoppello" concluding
with the hope: "may he contemplate the Infinite
Beauty".
He was a person very dear to me. I had met him
in December 1998 on the occasion of a conference on the Holy Face that was held
in the hall of the then Casa del Pellegrino – to which I had been invited, being
the managing director, at that time, of tourism in Abruzzo and heading up a project for the
development of tourism for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000. In front of a scarce
audience he showed and described many slides, as was used back then, explaining
the Holy Face and its history through the oldest images of Jesus, even before the
Veronica (vera – ikon) arrived in Rome. From
then on we frequently met together through the years. I even met him several
times at the Gregorian University, where I always saw his willingness to offer
explanations, discussing together various matters.
Unfortunately, a few years ago he suffered
some health problems while teaching summer courses at the University of Puebla,
Mexico. Slowly he had recovered. Two years ago came the decision for him to
stay at the residence for elderly Jesuits near Berlin.
On the first of
December 2019 I received his last short email in which he updated me about his arrival at
the Jesuit residence in Kladow,
near Berlin, writing to me: "Dear Antonio, I don’t know if you might
sometime have a chance to come to Berlin. I always look forward to seeing you
and greet you and yours with inclusive blessings. Your Fr. Heinrich
Pfeiffer." A last unforgettable
testimony of humility and affection for me and my family, having
shared with him a not easy path –
especially during the first years – of dissemination of
the knowledge of the Holy Face.
In the following months no reply came to my emails with which I had informed him of the latest important happenings.
I would like to
recall how in the summer of 2018 he was invited by Giovanni Gazzaneo, editor
of "Luoghi dell'Infinito",monthly magazine of the newspaper Avvenire,
to write an article on the Holy Face
for a special issue for the month of October, in
conjunction with the "Week of Beauty: Your face I seek", which would
be held in Grosseto from October 19 to 28,
where a copy of Manoppello's veil would be exhibited, enclosed in a silver reliquary dating
from 1902. The article,
"The veil of secrets: the enigma of Manoppello", was probably his
last published writing, in which one can read an effective synthesis of his long
path of research, with several
parallel readings on the
historical level that began by
stating that "in a small town in Abruzzo one of the greatest treasures in
the world is hidden", with the concluding reference, to the visit of Benedict XVI and, as well, to
what was stated by the Prefect of the Papal Household, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, in the church of Santo Spirito in Sassia, at
the end of the procession that on January 16, 2016 recalled the
rite of Omnis Terra: " It is a copy of that ancient
original that Pope Innocent IIII showed to pilgrims and that for four hundred
years has been kept in Abruzzo, on the Adriatic, in a peripheral area of Italy,
from where today for the first time it has been brought back to the place where
its public worship began." Fr.
Pfeiffer was among the concelebrants, along
with Fr. Carmine Cucinelli and other religious, including two authoritative canons
of St. Peter's, the Lebanese archbishop Edmond H. Farhat and Msgr.
Americo Ciani.
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Fr. Pfeiffer second concelebrant from the right during Omnis Terra Mass
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Veronica had reappeared
in the history of the Church, after a long and troubled series of events.
"But all research is always only a debtor to one thing only: the
truth," wrote the unforgettable Fr. Pfeiffer.
.
