The Shroud Codex - Jerome R. Corsi [113]
Morelli saw the wisdom of the pope’s argument and he made the necessary arrangements without further discussion.
Welcoming the group to one of the Vatican Library’s many conference rooms, Francesca Coretti looked very much the part. Castle judged her to be about fifteen years younger than him, in her late forties. She was attractively thin and strikingly dressed, with her knee-length gray dress complementing her elegant shoulder-length black hair and her jet-black eyes. The straight lines of her nose and chin were nicely set off with the round large lenses of her scholarly looking gold-frame eyeglasses. Coretti had received her doctorate in medieval art history from the University of Milan. She was one of the most highly regarded staff professionals at the Vatican Library, trusted by the pope for her painstaking investigations and honest judgments.
In keeping with the décor of the Vatican Library, the conference room Dottoressa Coretti selected provided a colorful background with a ceiling decorated with magnificently hand-painted frescoes that illuminated scenes of papal history.
Surveying the room, Ferrar’s camera crew picked up a corner from which they thought they could cover the meeting. To capture the flow of the meeting, one of the crew broke out the mobile camera, deciding to roam the room during the meeting to get different perspectives on the discussion and close-ups as needed. Ferrar had in mind using this footage as part of a TV documentary he planned to put together when he got back to New York.
As the group settled into the conference room, Coretti singled out Father Middagh, shaking his hand and greeting him warmly. “We are all looking forward to the publication of your magnum opus on the Shroud. When is the publication date?” she asked enthusiastically.
“We are planning to publish Behold the Face of Jesus as a two-volume work,” Middagh answered. “The first volume will be issued in January, with the second volume to follow a year later.”
Turning her attention to the group, Coretti began by making a dramatic statement: “We can trace the history of the Shroud of Turin back to the time of Christ. The mystery that a living likeness of Jesus Christ survived the crucifixion began even before Christ died.”
This statement got Castle’s attention. “How’s that?” he wondered out loud, not having heard this before.
“The legend is that a woman named Veronica wiped the face of Christ with her veil as Jesus carried the cross to Golgotha,” she said, “and that Christ in gratitude supernaturally left an imprint of his face on the veil. Veronica is a name derived from the Latin word veritas, for ‘truth,’ and icon for ‘image.’ So the very name Veronica signifies ‘true image’ in Latin. The Sixth Station of the Cross, still celebrated today in Catholic churches throughout the world, is dedicated to Veronica wiping the face of Jesus on the way to Golgotha. The Via Dolorosa is the path traditionally marked out through the Old City of Jerusalem as the route Christ took on the way to his crucifixion. The Sixth Station of the Via Dolorosa is located on the site reputed to have been Veronica’s home at the time of Christ’s crucifixion. The story is that Veronica came out of her house, saw Jesus suffering, and took pity on him by wiping his face with her veil.”
“Is there any reason to believe the story of Veronica is true?” Castle asked. “That the name derives from the Latin for ‘true image’ makes it sound like the story is apocryphal, that the character of Veronica was made up around the idea that a likeness of Jesus survived after his death.”
“Clearly, whether or not Veronica existed is debatable, despite the Stations of the Cross and the