The Shroud Codex - Jerome R. Corsi [99]
“What do you mean?” Gabrielli asked, puzzled at the supposed question.
“Maybe somebody could duplicate Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, but that doesn’t prove Leonardo didn’t paint the original.”
“What’s your point?” Gabrielli shot back.
“My point is simple.” Ferrar pressed on. “It’s a lot easier to duplicate something than to create it in the first place. I don’t see that you produced the ‘positive’ from which your negative image with the white highlighting was taken. How did a medieval painter think to create a negative that would not have been recognized as such until Secondo Pia first photographed the Shroud for the 1898 exposition?”
“This is just my first effort,” Gabrielli said defensively. “I will be refining my techniques in the future and producing more examples to show how the Shroud of Turin could have been forged. Remember, I can’t prove the Shroud was forged. I can only prove the Shroud could have been forged.”
“Isn’t that a lot like trying to prove that the Declaration of Independence could have been printed on a modern copying machine?” Ferrar asked, hoping he might get an answer. “Maybe you could get from a copy machine a document that would be indistinguishable from the original, but what would it prove? Just because you can copy a document doesn’t mean the original isn’t authentic.”
“If you recall, I stressed that I used only medieval materials and techniques,” Gabrielli said, smiling in a condescending way. “Copy machines were obviously not around in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries.”
Then, looking to Dr. Castle and seeing him nod with satisfaction, he decided it was time to bring the press conference to an end. “Thank you for coming,” Gabrielli announced. “That concludes the formal part of our news conference for today. Press packages will be handed out in the back of the room as you exit.”
But before Gabrielli could leave, reporters circled him and blocked his escape in their determination to ask him one more question before he got away.
The still photographers roamed about, taking close-up shots of Gabrielli surrounded by the gaggle of reporters, of d’Agostini, who was more than willing to pose alongside Gabrielli’s shroud, and of Gabrielli’s shroud itself. The video crews moved through the crowd with their handheld cameras, getting the fill-in footage they would need to give the press conference some background context. Almost immediately, one of the reporters with a cell phone camera scooped the television reporters by posting a video of the press conference on the Internet.
Within the hour, video of Gabrielli’s news conference was being seen by millions worldwide, both on the Internet and on television.
The headlines from a largely nonbelieving and predictably cynical world press were much as expected: ITALIAN SCIENTIST REPRODUCES SHROUD OF TURIN AND SCIENTIST PROVES SHROUD OF TURIN IS A MEDIEVAL FORGERY seemed to capture the general tenor of the stories going forth that afternoon from the conference room in Bologna.
On the airplane ride back to Rome, Castle was amused at how right Gabrielli was. He had two Shroud supporters with him in the persons of Fathers Morelli and Middagh. Despite Archbishop Duncan’s initial effort to sell Father Morelli to him as a devil’s advocate Jesuit, Morelli admitted he had crossed over long ago, convinced the scientific evidence weighed in favor of the Shroud’s authenticity, despite the carbon-14 dating.
Middagh and Morelli did nothing to hide their displeasure at having to listen to an hour or more of talk from Gabrielli, who they thought lacked expertise in Shroud research.
“The Shroud of Turin Research Project discredited Walter McCrone,” Middagh said.
“Gabrielli all but admitted today that the traces of iron oxide on the Shroud are minimal,” Morelli added in an irritated tone. “Besides, the straw yellow color of the body image on the Shroud doesn’t match the color of any forms of ferric iron oxides that are known to exist.”
“Science by press release,” was how Middagh summed up Gabrielli’s performance before the international media. “He’s a