Pope Benedict Speaks of the Face of Jesus

"We can certainly say that God gave himself a human face, the Face of Jesus, and certainly, from now on, if we truly want to know the Face of God, all we have to do is to contemplate the Face of Jesus! In his Face we truly see who God is and what he looks like!"
General Audience
St. Peter's Square
September 6, 2006

"this book is...my personal search for the face of the Lord"

foreward to his book Jesus of Nazareth
September 30, 2006

Referring to Pope John Paul II
"The meaning of his life...brings us always to the Face of Christ, supreme revelation of the mercy of God. To contiually contemplate that Face: this is the heredity which he has left us, and that we take to ourselves and make our own."

Regina Caeli
Castel Gandalfo
March 30, 2008 Feast of the Divine Mercy

Correction regarding Capuchin Friars Website

The official website of the Sanctuary of the Holy Face in Manoppello is www.voltosanto.it

May the Light of Christ, Risen on the Third Day, Banish Every Doubt and Fear

Important Websites Regarding Holy Face of Manoppello

As I mentioned previously in my blog, Germans and Italians have dominated the study and promotion of the Holy Face of Manoppello, at least until recently. And certainly without the several websites which they so lovingly have produced, very little information would be available.
So I feel greatly obligated to give credit to them.

First of all to the official website of the Capuchin Friars Santuario del Volto Santo in Manoppello (Shrine or Sanctuary of the Holy Face) www. voltosanto.it which has information in Italian, German, English and Spanish. It is essential reading for the development of a correct understanding of the Holy Face as well as for a chronological review of the activities of the last few years at the Shrine, including the visit of Pope Benedict XVI on September 1, 2006

Also the website www.voltosanto.com, produced in Germany, which has some English material, but is noted above all for the beautiful and exquisite photography of the Holy Face of Manoppello, as well as the Church, Altar and countryside of Manoppello. Click on bildergalerie to arrive at this photography.

Another German website with some English material is www.volto-santo.com. Here you will find a wonderful gallery of works of art depicting the Holy Face as well as a definitely inspiring comparison of the Face on the Holy Shroud of Turin to that of the Holy Face of Manoppello.
Click on bilder to see this gallery. On the home page of this website is a link to an incredible, almost unbelievable video on Youtube, produced in Poland it seems, showing the Resurrection of Jesus as the linchpin and catalyst for the production of the images on the two cloths of Turin and Manoppello.

Historic First Visit by Journalist inside the Pillar of St. Veronica at St. Peter's Basilica

For years journalists and historians had been requesting permission from Vatican officials to be able to see close-up the Veil of Veronica image which is kept in the Pillar of St. Veronica and displayed once a year from the balcony of the same pillar high above the floor of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. This request had always been met with either polite refusal or stony silence. Among those who had been frustrated was the British author, Ian Wilson, who describes his long and fruitless attempt to be given permission to see the Veronica in his book published in 1991, Holy Faces, Secret Places.

However in 2005, in an amazing turn of events which has strangely attracted little attention on the part of english speaking peoples, the German journalist Paul Badde was the first to be allowed to see the image with the permission of Cardinal Marchisano, President of the Fabbrica of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican. Mr. Badde describes this unique and historic visit in his book, first published later that same year in German entitled Das Muschelseidentuch and then in a later 2006 edition retitled Das Gottliche Gesicht, which appeared in an Italian translation in 2007 with the title La Seconda Sindone (The Second Shroud). It is not an exaggeration to say that Mr. Badde's visit to see the image in the Vatican, and his reporting of what he saw on this visit, made possible, and even inevitable, the even more historic visit by Pope Benedict XVI on September 1, 2006 to the Shrine of the Holy Face of Manoppello to gaze upon that most wonderful image of the face of Jesus.

Mr. Badde's chapter entitled "Nelle Segrete del Vaticano" gives a classic description of the physical and emotional journey which he made through the Vatican bureaucracy and the actual massive pillar to see the Vatican copy of the Veronica. Here in my own english translation (unfortunately of the Italian translation of the original German with all the limitations that a secondary translation is prey to) is Mr. Badde's description of what he saw on the Vatican's Veil of Veronica in early 2005. The quote is from p. 190 of La Seconda Sindone

"I went down on my knees to be able to observe it better. I got up, moved to the left, to the right. Next to all the other precious objects present in the room, I almost had to force myself to look at it, because absolutely nothing at all could be seen on it. Nothing that could attract one's attention or curiosity or aesthetic sense. The contrast with the rest of the marvelous treasury could not have been more stark. The icon is covered in glass. Underneath the glass is seen an object in decomposition: a stained fabric, dark dirty grey without any human characteristics, any design or color. The only feature that it has is conferred on it by the masque with three points of layered gold: two points for the hair and one for the beard. Its cover is like the one on the Mandylion of Edessa, which Ellen and I saw some time ago in the Sacristy of the Sistine chapel, or as which we saw in Genoa...and it is clearly an imitation of the other two venerable images. The object can be called a face only and exclusively because of that covering...and for no other reason. One can't recognize there traces of an image or painting, nothing of nothing. Of a face or even only of the hint of a face it is not possible to speak. It is in no way reconcilable with all the ancient representations of the Veronica, and not even with what was always said of it, even through the mouths of its most acerbic opponents and worst critics. It's not a 'klaret linn', a white handkerchief, as Luther scornfully called it."

Seeing the Burial Cloths of Jesus - Clues for Belief in the Resurrection

"They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first; he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place. Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed." (John 20:4-8)

quoting from the Saverio Gaeta's book: L'altra Sindone, Mondadori, 2005, p. 19 (translation mine)

"Three simple words in the eighth verse 'he saw and believed' but enough to give rise in these 2000 years to innumerable biblical studies and exegetical interpretations... It is not enough to affirm as in various quarters it is proposed, that the absence of the body of Jesus had motivated the knowledge of the resurrection: on the contrary, at this point it would have been more obvious for John to share the opinion of Mary Magdalen regarding a theft.

In his Gospel John makes use of fully six verbs to indicate the act of vision: blepein, horan, opsomai, theasthai, theorein, and idein. And it is this last word that he adopts in chapter 20, verse 8, "he saw (eiden) and believed", a verb that, also in the other usages, "seems to suppose not a mere visual perception, becoming rather almost synonomous with 'believing". (*) In the brief affirmation there is almost a doubling of the concept, as one might say, as if John had wanted to reinforce to the maximum the significance of the three words."

* Ravasi, G., "Un Volta da contemplare", in Il Volto dei Volti: Cristo, edited by the Instituto Internazionale di Ricerca sul Volto di Cristo, Vol. VI, Editrice Velar, Gorle (BG) Italia, 2002, p. 43.

University Scientists Publish Article on Holy Face of Manoppello

Two university professors, Jan S. Jaworski of the University of Warsaw in Poland and Giulio Fanti of the University of Padua in Italy, have published the results of their research on photographs of the Holy Face of Manoppello in an article appearing in English entitled "3-D Processing to Evidence Characteristics Represented in Manoppello Veil". It is recommendable for several reasons, first it gives an extensive bibliography of the available literature on the Holy Face, second it takes seriously the judgment of most experts that the fabric of the Holy Face is indeed marine byssus, third it begins the process of painstakingly looking at the image with the same ingenuity that has been dedicated to research on the Shroud of Turin, fourth it emphasizes the fact that there are two sides to the image of the Holy Face which are not mirror images, and fifth it is highly commendable for the fact this article is published in English. Congratulations to the authors for their groundbreaking work. This article is available at www.shroud.com/pdfs/jaworski.pdf