Twenty Years Ago the World Heard That the Veronica Was Rediscovered in a Remote Shrine In Abruzzo

Erich B. Kush, President of the Foreign Press Association of Rome introducing Press Conference of May 31, 1999 conducted by Father Heinrich Pfeiffer, S.J. (left) and Professor Donato Vittore

Fr. Germano di Pietro, OFM, Cap., Antonio Bini, Fr. Heinrich Pfeiffer, SJ on the day of Press Conference 

Twenty years ago the international press conference in Rome which announced the findings of Fr. Heinrich Pfeiffer, S.J. that the Veronica was in Abruzzo

by Antonio Bini

(translator's note:  a shorter version of this article appears in the June 2019 edition of the Shrine's magazine, Il Volto Santo di Manoppello)

Twenty years have passed since an event that initiated the unstoppable process of knowledge and communication of the Holy Face around the world. "In a remote shrine at the foot of the Maiella, in Abruzzo, Veronica has been rediscovered after being missing for more than four centuries":  the news, a few months before the beginning of the Great Jubilee of the year 2000, burst into the headlines of the main Italian and foreign television networks, which broadcast with emphasis the results of the press conference organized at the Rome headquarters of the Foreign Press Association in Italy. In the crowded meeting, which was attended by many foreign journalists, Jesuit Father Henirich Pfeiffer, professor of Christian art and director of the course of cultural heritage at the Gregorian University of Rome, presented the results of years of study in support of the identification of Veronica with  the Holy Face revered in Manoppello. A research started a number of years earlier, based on some early insights of Sister Blandina, who documented the congruence of the veil of Manoppello with the face of the man on the Shroud of Turin. The German Jesuit's discourse was completed with the presentation of some research carried out a few months earlier by Prof. Donato Vittore, professor of the University of Bari, concerning the singularities of the veil emerging from investigations carried out with a very high resolution scanner. It was, according to the scholar, an inexplicable image. Also present was the rector pro tempore of the Shrine of Manoppello, Father Germano Di Pietro.

Until then the Holy Face had been known only locally, although recent research on the figure of Father Dominic da Cese has revealed the presence of a core of devotees from other regions of Italy and also from Germany and Austria. But these groups were attracted mainly by the charismatic figure of Father Domenico, who, moreover, never tired of urging pilgrims to the devotion of the Holy Face. At that time many considered the Holy Face a painting or a simple reproduction, as some rare tour guides hinted. Also on the level of printed material the rare traces of publications and studies led to a few very isolated texts, printed locally and without any diffusion that went beyond Abruzzo religious circles. I allude to the essays of Father Filippo da Tussio, published in L'Aquila in 1875, and the work by Father Antonio da Serramonacesca, published in Pescara in 1966 and little more, represented by some devotional pamphlets.

cover of the book by Father Filippo da Tussio on the Holy Face of Manoppello

But let's take a look at the steps leading up to the press conference.

During 1998, there had been some echoes in Manoppello of the German Jesuit's hypothesis about the Holy Face, which is why the Pro Loco (local volunteer grassroots promotional association) had decided to organize a conference so that Prof. Pfeiffer could inform the local community of his studies. In November, the President of the Pro Loco, Prof. Nicola Costantini, told me about the conference he was organizing, inviting me to give a talk on how Abruzzo was preparing for the Great Jubilee of 2000. I was then the director of tourism promotion for the Abruzzo region and in charge of the Jubilee Communication Project. I gladly agreed to participate in the conference, being an opportunity to speak about the 64 page booklet "Abruzzo on the way to the Jubilee" – , published in five languages, for a total of 250 thousand copies. On that occasion, the work of its publication was at the center of a positive collaboration – for the general lines of the work – between public and religious institutions, and therefore with the then archbishop of the diocese Chieti-Vasto and president of the Bishops' Conference Abruzzese-Molisana, Edoardo Menichelli.  Upon receiving news of the conference I was able to insert a very brief reference to the hypothesis of Fr. Pfeiffer, just as the booklet was going to print.

On 19 December 1998, the day of the meeting, I finally had the opportunity to meet and listen to Father Pfeiffer during the conference held at the Pilgrim Hotel adjacent to the shrine. I still remember now how very impressed  I was by the discourse of the German scholar and especially by the historical news about the Veronica, “The most important relic of the whole Christian world", and therefore on the reasons, also documented by numerous photographic slides, which led to the identification of the legendary veil with the Face of Manoppello. Until then, I thought Veronica belonged above all to legends. I also returned to Manoppello to observe the Holy Face carefully and at length. A living face appeared to me that seemed to speak to me. An impalpable image, but present, despite the exceptional transparency, that distinguished it from any painting.  In the days immediately following, I set out to search for historical sources on the Veronica, also with the help of my mother, former professor of Italian and history and scholar of religious spirituality. I then asked Father Germano to have documentation on the Holy Face. He allowed me to go to the archive inside the Friary permitting me to take any duplicate copies of the back issues of the old magazines and other publications regarding the Holy Face. I then compared what was heard at the Conference of Manoppello with my first research, also on the basis of essays that in the run-up to Jubilee 2000 were published on the history of the Jubilee events, convincing me of the extraordinary importance of the studies and the hypothesis of Father Pfeiffer.

Only a year before the conference in Manoppello, the thick clouds of silence that enveloped Manoppello’s Holy Face for centuries began to dissipate. The occasion was the first International Congress on "The Face of Faces, Christ", which was held in Rome, at the Pontifical Urban University, on the initiative of the International  Institute for Research on the Face of Christ, founded by  Cardinal Fiorenzo Angelini (1916-2014), who  responded with intensity to the stimulus of Pope John Paul II, expressed in the years leading up to the Great Jubilee of 2000.

Archbishop Fiorenzo Angelini (later named Cardinal) with Padre Germano and Sister Maria Maurizia Biancucci,  Superior of the Benedictine Reparation Sisters of the Holy Face at Manoppello in the 1990's

In fact, the initiative is to be traced back to the path identified by John Paul II in his apostolic letter Tertio Millennium Adveniente, issued on 10 November 1994, in which the lines of preparation for the Jubilee were fixed, which envisaged for the year 1997 the initiation of the "reflection on Christ", “it is necessary to "highlight the distinctly christological character of the Jubilee"(cf. 40).

So at the beginning of 1997, the elderly cardinal, the only one at that time a native of Rome, immersed himself with great commitment to the enterprise, calling Prof. Heinrich Pfeiffer to cooperate in the preparation of the first congress, which was the context in which theologians and historians from various countries expressed hypotheses on the identification of the Veronica. Some articles dealt with the Holy Face, but in reality a general indifference prevailed.

Yet Cardinal Angelini, who also moved cautiously, had in the meantime become a strongly devoted and frequent visitor of the Holy Face in Manoppello, so much so that he put under its protection " the present and the future of the dear Benedictine Congregation of the Reparation Sisters of the Holy Face”, of which he was a spiritual leader and who had been involved in the organization of the activities of the Institute (cf. Shrine Guest Register, November 6, 1997).  All this happened despite the fact that the Congregation, founded by Venerable Abbot Ildebrando Gregori (1894-1985), was inspired by the Holy Face which came in a dream to Sr. M. Pierina De Micheli (1890-1945). A face very close to that of the man of the Shroud.  Later I learned that Abbot Ildebrando Gregori himself became a frequent visitor to Manoppello in the late 1950s.

In early 1999, there grew in me the strong conviction of the need to make public the results of Father Pfeiffer's studies in a context wider than that which was strictly academic and theological.

I took the idea first to Father Germano and then to Father Pfeiffer himself. With these premises, the Region of Abruzzo promoted the press conference in Rome. Once the date of May 31 had been decided, I had to inform Archbishop Menichelli with a letter dated May 28 1999, in which I explained that the conference would  give "an exposition of the historical-scientific outlines emerging from the studies by Professor Heinrich Pfeiffer of the Gregorian University of Rome and Prof. Donato Vittore, University of Bari about the possible identification of the Holy Face of Manoppello with the precious relic of Veronica, at one time revered at St. Peter’s". A simple wording, which a few months later appeared to me naive, as it certainly did not take into account the historical complexity of the issue and, above all, the attitude of the official Church, which had never admitted the disappearance of the revered image, as well as the hostile positions by some influential sindonologists (Shroud experts), especially Italians.

Letter informing Archbishop Menichelli of the Press Conference of May 31, 1999

In the aftermath of the press conference, which had a huge impact, never repeated since, not even with the visit of Benedict XVI, Archbishop Menichelli sent me a telegram in which he thanked me for informing him. A cautious message, which, however, conveyed great satisfaction. On the other hand, the then archbishop of Chieti, afterwards created cardinal in January 2015, had always been very attached to the Shrine of the Holy Face, which he chose as a Jubilee church of 2000.

Letter of acknowledgement regarding Press Conference from Archbishop Menichelli  

The most aloof circles turned out to be that of the Catholic media. The Spanish TV news Antenna 3, in reporting the news with an extensive service, showed adherence to the Pfeiffer hypothesis, feeling the duty to emphasize the "total silence" of the Vatican. The absence of official comments or positions mitigated the communicative effects of the press conference, while newspapers and magazines were very interested in the historical aspects related to Veronica's image. For example, the German magazine Focus published an article entitled "Pilgrims deceived" ("Getaesche pilger"), immediately highlighting the delicate question of silence that for centuries would have hidden the Veronica's disappearance, the relic which had represented the aspiration of medieval pilgrims.

The most-followed television news program in Italy (TG1 – RAI), in the absence of official expressions of the Church, heard the opinion of the most wel-known scholar of the Shroud, Prof. Pierluigi Baima Bollone, who spoke of the Holy Face as a simple copy. Only a year later, the sindonologist had to admit Sr. Blandina's conclusions on the overlapping of the Shroud and the Holy Face, at least in ten points, in a book entitled: "Shroud, 101 Questions and Answers".

On the question of whether or not the Veronica was present in St. Peter's, there was no lack of discussion within the Church, even if only in certain circumstances did clear positions emerge. Among these I recall an article by Dario Dezza, a Canon of St. Peter’s Basilica, which appeared in the monthly 30 Days  No. 3 of March 2000, which questioned the thesis of Fr. Pfeiffer, and without ever mentioning it, writing that in St. Peter’s Basilica "is guarded the most famous relic in the world , the "Shroud of Christ, commonly referred to as the Veronica." Following this he admits he is involving himself in a "tangled" (sic!) story and that the image presents a dark background. Two months later, in the same magazine, Fr. Pfeiffer replied firmly to the Canon of St. Peter with a further article entitled "But the “Veronica" is in Manoppello", strongly dismissing the canon's claims. The matter was not followed up further, at least in that magazine.

It is also significant to point out the letter from a devotee of Manoppello to which the editors of the Famiglia Cristiana, the most popular Italian Catholic weekly, responded.  The devotee, who complained in the letter about the disinterest of the Catholic weekly compared to what the Italian and foreign media reported, and the privileged attention paid to the Shroud by the weekly. In the polite reply letter, the silence was justified by the line of the text, which stated “it is not our custom to chase after sensational discoveries, especially when they recycle things already known and that are occasionally presented as discoveries".  It is a response that gives one pause considering that little or nothing had emerged on the Holy Face outside the strictly local area, while the same weekly had never been interested in the veil of Manoppello.

But time led to different attitudes, as we could see over the next few years. In fact, it was Famiglia Cristiana that published the book "The Face of the Risen One", authored by Saverio Gaeta, then editor-in-chief of the magazine, distributed in Italian newsstands along with the issue of the magazine for Easter 2005. It was the first book published and distributed nationally on the Holy Face of Manoppello. In the same year, just a few months later, Paul Badde's book was published in Germany with the title “The Divine Face”

But let’s return to the effects of the conference at the Foreign Press Association. With the article "At the Threshold of 2000, the Holy Face made headlines around the world”, I told of that event in the magazine of the shrine “Il Volto Santo di Manoppello”. The article marked the beginning of my collaboration with this magazine, which has become constant over the years. A journey that has made me over time a witness and chronicler of so many extraordinary facts.

With that issue (No. 2/1999), the magazine first came out in color. In his editorial, Father Germano wrote that "throughout the world a proclamation has resounded: The Roman Veronica has been found." In the same issue, the late Father Ignazio Scurti, an elderly, wise and cultured Capuchin friar, observed enthusiastically: "The Shrine of the Holy Face of Manoppello has taken flight (and what a flight!)". In the same issue, another article unsigned, but attributable to Father Germano, spoke about the visits to the shrine by cardinals Sodano, Tonini and Pappalardo that took place in the days immediately following the press conference of Rome. With great simplicity the article recounted the fear of the Capuchins regarding possible reproaches for having "dared" to identify Veronica with the Holy Face. The assessments of Cardinal Angelo Sodano, then Secretary of State, were of particular concern. At the end of the visit, Father Germano admitted: "Fear has disappeared: now it can be said openly, even if only by hypotheses”. For centuries the Capuchins had not been able to do that!

In that summer of 1999, several events relating to the imminent beginning of the Jubilee were in full preparation.  Among the events’ purposes were also, and certainly not secondarily, to propose a historical dimension to the figure of Christ in the bi-millennial anniversary of his birth.

In the autumn of 1999 I was invited by Fr. Pfeiffer to attend the third conference of the International Institute of Research on the Face of Christ, also chaired by Cardinal Angelini. There I was able to experience first-hand the palpable coldness and skepticism with which most speakers and participants followed the discourse by the German Jesuit.  Several years later, Paul Badde would write in his first book on the Holy Face: "..that professor (Fr. Pfeiffer) told me that there was in the world a more significant image than the Shroud. Only a lunatic could assert a thing like that and such, it had been told to me, was Father Pfeiffer." But the rigor of Fr. Pfeiffer's research and his tenacity have managed over time to overcome so many mistrusts, the validity of his studies becoming more and more recognized.

We also know that on several occasions Cardinal Angelini spoke of the Holy Face with John Paul II. At that time, rumors also emerged that the Polish pope would have made a private visit to the shrine on a weekday, hidden from the Capuchins themselves, when it was still possible to be in front of the Holy Face in an empty church. In this regard it should be remembered that after the death of the pope, his secretary Stanislaus Dziwisz, afterwards Cardinal of Krakow, admitted a hundred private getaways by the Pope to his beloved Abruzzo mountains.

On 29 October 1999, less than five months after the press conference of Pfeiffer and Vittore, an important exhibition on the history of jubilees opened at Palazzo Venezia in Rome, entitled: "Pilgrims to Rome and Jubilee, The Medieval Pilgrimage to St. Peter’s (350-1350)". The exhibition, promoted by the Italian State, through the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, in collaboration with the Vatican Museums, the Vatican Apostolic Library and the Fabbrica (see description in the note below) of St. Peter’s , set up with documents and works of art from various museums and archives around the world, some exhibited for the first time.  It gave a significant space to the history of the Veronica, which in past centuries was considered the "image of Christ for the universal church" (cf. Gerhard Wolf, Exhibition Catalog, Electa, Milan, 1999, p. 217). Paradoxically, the revered image re-emerged only through the memory of the medieval pilgrimage to Rome, the dream and reality of the ancient pilgrims to Rome.

Cover of the Catalog for the Exhibition on Pilgrims to Rome and Jubilee:  The Medieval Pilgrimage to St. Peter's (350-1350)

The Veronica broke out of its oblivion after centuries of silence, not without the persistence of the ambiguity about whether or not the extraordinary image exists today. All this while the comparison between the very contents of the exhibition showed the diversity of the images inspired by Veronica (true icon) before the sixteenth century from that of subsequent reproductions, especially since the nineteenth century, circulated by the Vatican itself, where Veronica was represented with eyes closed.

In the same autumn, on 23 October 1999, the exhibition "Penuel: The Face of the Lord: The Shroud of Turin and the Veil of Manoppello: a single Face " was inaugurated in Manoppello with 27 panels in which Sr. Blandina Paschalis Schloemer exhibited her studies conducted in the convent of Dahlem, Germany. In those months the collaboration with the Shrine was remarkable, both for the realization of the exhibition and to assist journalists and television crews, thanks to the involvement of the team of the "Jubilee Communication Project". I also became a photographer.

There was no lack of critics who wrote that it was a tourist promotion operation, simply because these were the kind of things for which I was responsible in the Abruzzo region. I have always felt it was my duty to spread the thesis of Fr. Pfeiffer and therefore the knowledge of the Holy Face, regardless of any effect on tourism, which for that matter was all but impossible in a location not easily accessible and almost completely devoid of hotels and restaurants. All this with very few financial resources, with no comparison whatsoever with the tried and tested organizational machine of the Shroud, in a city like Turin, which for the planned exhibition of 2000 was equipping itself with a budget with the equivalent of more than 5 million dollars (see La Stampa, a daily newspaper in Turin, of March 13, 1999). There were no less important budgets to support subsequent exhibitions. But the issue goes far beyond the economic aspect, Turin being able to count on university institutions, research centers, scholars, publishing houses and the media. Something not even remotely comparable with the small provincial reality of Manoppello. 

Emblematic are the reflections of Saverio Gaeta who after the first short study in 2005, developed further research on the Holy Face after the visit of Benedict XVI (2006), observing frankly - about the hostile attitude of sindonologists - that " it seemed a challenge of a David against the Goliath of the army of sindonologists, who neglect to investigate for themselves the veil of Manoppello, because it disturbs the apparent consolidated conclusions concerning the burial cloths of Jesus" (cf. The Enigma of the Face of Jesus," ed. Rizzoli, 2010). All this without considering that both Fr. Pfeiffer and Sr. Blandina were - and are - to be considered sindonologists.

Meanwhile, another exhibition event - the most important - was being prepared, for the conclusion of the Jubilee year. The organization was being handled directly by the Vatican Apostolic Library and its internal departments.

Catalog for the Vatican exhibition "Il Volto di Cristo"  (The Face of Christ) published by Electa, Milano – 
showing painting by Andrea Mantegna, "Sorrowful Christ", 1493 (partial)

The theme "The Face of Christ" had become central to the Jubilee that was coming to an end.

In early October, the publishing house that was editing the catalog for the exhibition contacted Padre Germano by telephone. A letter followed with a request for a photographic slide of the 18th-century monstrance of the Holy Face. The Shrine, on the advice of Fr. Pfeiffer, in addition to the requested slide,  showed the willingness to also allow  the exhibition of the monstrance itself, the original of the “Relatione Historica” by Fr. Donato da Bomba and the painting depicting the Holy Face, by Fr. Alfonso Maria da Torino di Sangro from 1857. The publishing house having not given any reply, a polite request for clarification was made to  the curator of the exhibition, Professor Giovanni Morello, head of the Vatican Apostolic Library. On November 29th, Prof. Morello responded by apologizing for the misunderstanding with the publishing house and that there was no more time for any activity just a few days before the opening of the exhibition, scheduled for 9 December 2000.

Letter to Fr. Germano from the Publisher of the catalog for the Vatican exhibit

Quite unique circumstances, which suggest the presence of different orientations among the various experts involved, second thoughts and fears about openings considered perhaps excessive towards the Holy Face.   Incidentally Fr. Pfeiffer was part of that core of experts.

Visiting the all-important exhibition it was discovered that there was being displayed the 13th-century antique frame that encompassed the Veronica, part of the Treasury of St. Peter’s.  It was encased between two broken panes of glass. A tangible sign that the image – like that of Manoppello – was visible on both sides. Evidently some of the organizers thought to link the ancient reliquary of Veronica with that of the Holy Face, of which numerous mentions were also present in the descriptive parts of the weighty catalog.  We know that sometime later permission for television footage of the antique frame of the Veronica requested by various television stations was denied. 

Reliquary in the Treasury of St. Peter's Basilica showing two shattered pans of glass which formerly enclosed the Veronica 

At the conclusion of the Great Jubilee, in his letter Tertio Millennium Ineunte, John Paul II wrote that: "If we wanted to trace it back to the essential core that leaves us I would not hesitate to identify it in contemplation of the face of Christ:  considered in his historical features and in his mystery." No mention of the face of Christ had been made in his previously referenced letter Tertio Millennium Adveniente of 10 November 1994

In those years straddling the second and third millennia, extraordinary events happened which saw people and circumstances converging randomly, from different paths, along the return into history of the figure of Christ and his Face, in the prophetic horizon outlined by John Paul II.

Other aspects remain to be explored from that period, including personal events that I have yet to understand myself, that I never thought, in that distant 1998, that I would be so directly involved in the mission of making known the Holy Face.

Antonio Bini at the presentation of the documentary “The Mystery of the Face of Christ” (May 2000). with the German journalist  Christa Kramer to his left

Finally, I would like to recall the message of the then archbishop of Cheti-Vasto, Eduardo Menichelli, who left the diocese in autumn 2004 to go on to the new archdiocese of Ancona-Osimo. To my greeting, the archbishop, now a cardinal, responded by thanking me "with great esteem", urging me: "May you continue at Manoppello always with love and generous commitment".

Archbishop Eduardo Menichelli of Chieti (later named Cardinal) with a Capuchin friar in Manoppello in the 1990's

Not that there was any need for it, having committed to do it in any case, though it gave me pleasure to have confirmation of his strong bond with the Holy Face and of how he appreciated my discreet and constant cooperation with the Capuchins.

("The Fabbrica of St. Peter’s according to its proper laws will continue to look after all that pertains to the Basilica of the Prince of the Apostles whether for the preservation of the adornment of the edifice as well as for the internal discipline of the caretakers and of the pilgrims that are given access to visit the temple." from the Apostolic Constitution (1998) Pastor Bonus)