“As far as I can tell, he was alive.”
“How long did he stay like that, completely suspended in air, just like he was crucified?” Dunaway asked.
“It was only a few minutes,” Ferrar answered quickly, anticipating what was coming next. “But look at this close-up. Hanging there, the priest’s legs looked like somebody was positioning them to be nailed to a cross.”
“That’s right,” Dunaway said. “It looks like the left foot is being placed on top of the right foot and then—what’s this? It looks like the feet are being nailed. I can see the bleeding wound on the left foot on top. I can’t see any nail, but I can see the wound developing. Could that possibly be what is happening?”
“Follow the close-up,” Ferrar said excitedly. “It’s exactly what is happening.”
“I just can’t believe it,” Dunaway said in astonishment. “Are those the nail wounds on his feet?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what is happening,” Ferrar said. “You can see the feet beginning to bleed. When the camera pans back, you can see all the wounds—the forehead bleeding with the crown of thorns, the wrists bleeding from the nails. Underneath those purple vestments, the robes the priest is wearing for Mass, I’m told the scourge wounds opened up again on his body and began to bleed.”
“But the cross is invisible and there is no crown of thorns,” Dunaway pointed out. “There aren’t any nails being driven through his wrists or his feet. I don’t understand how what I’m seeing could possibly be happening.”
“That’s why it’s being considered a miracle,” Ferrar said. “There were about one hundred people in the church at the time attending Mass and they all stood there spellbound, not knowing what was happening. One woman said it looked like Father Bartholomew was experiencing in his own body the passion and death of Jesus Christ.”
Just then the video showed Anne running forward and screaming, as she saw her brother suffering Christ’s passion and death. On the video, her blood-curdling scream seemed to reverberate throughout the cathedral.
“Who’s that?” Dunaway asked.
“I’m told that is Anne Cassidy, the priest’s half sister,” Ferrar answered.
“How long did Father Bartholomew stay levitating above the altar?” Dunaway asked. “It’s incredible—this happened in midtown Manhattan just a few minutes ago.”
“It seemed like an eternity that Father Bartholomew levitated there above the main altar in St. Patrick’s Cathedral,” Ferrar answered. “But it was less than five minutes from start to stop. You’re seeing it on the video just as it happened. I don’t think we edited anything out.”
“How did it end?” Dunaway asked.
“As soon as his sister screamed, Father Bartholomew collapsed to the ground and it was over,” Ferrar said. “It’s on the next part of the video. Let’s watch—you can see it happening.”
“Remarkable,” Dunaway said as he watched the remaining video. Anne screamed and fainted; the police and ambulance personnel rushed into the cathedral.
“I never would have believed it, except for your video,” Dunaway said. “It’s the most remarkable news video I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“I know,” Ferrar said. “I stood there entranced, watching as it happened. We have the best video crew in the business. They just kept videotaping and going for those close-ups while I stood there in disbelief.”
“Is that the end of the video?” Dunaway asked. The program returned to the studio to show Dunaway and Ferrar sitting side by side at a desk on the set.
“Yes, that’s it,” Ferrar said. “As you saw right at the end of the video, the New York police rushed over to surround our video crew. We were told to stop filming and we were promptly escorted outside the cathedral onto Fifth Avenue.”
“Where is Father Bartholomew now?”
“I believe he was taken by the ambulance to Beth Israel Hospital in lower Manhattan,” Ferrar answered. “The man who came to Father Bartholomew’s aid late in the video is his physician, Dr. Stephen Castle.”
“Stephen Castle, the psychiatrist?” Dunaway asked.
“Yes. The other priest who rushed to the altar was Father Marco Morelli, a Jesuit the pope sent from Rome to work with Father Bartholomew.”
“So, you’re saying the Vatican is involved with Father Bartholomew’s case?”
“Yes,” Ferrar said. “I’m told Pope John-Paul Peter I has taken a personal interest in Father Bartholomew and I believe I can confirm that Dr. Castle has been hired by the Vatican to take Father Bartholomew on as a patient.”
“The Vatican must think Father Bartholomew is crazy. Why else would a psychiatrist be hired to treat him?”
“I don’t know if the Vatican thinks Father Bartholomew is crazy, or if the Vatican is just being careful,” Ferrar said. “Based on reports I filed over the past few days, Archbishop Duncan is also very deeply involved in this case. The Catholic Church is taking the case of Father Bartholomew very seriously.”
“I can see that,” Dunaway said, appearing suddenly distracted. “I’m being told by the control room that we also have a news clip of a press conference Archbishop Duncan and Dr. Castle held last week. I think we are going to play a clip from that now.”
That evening the network televised an hourlong special report, The Miracle at the Cathedral, hosted by Fernando Ferrar.
Nielsen reports the next day showed the broadcast was one of the most-watched Sunday evening news shows ever, with over ten million people tuning in.
Geraldo Rivera, move over! Ferrar thought as he left headquarters that evening around midnight. He was confident his career was made now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Monday morning
Dr. Stephen Castle’s office, New York City
Day 19
When he entered the conference room, Dr. Castle found the group had assembled. Archbishop Duncan was not there, but Father Morelli and Father Middagh were, as well as Anne. She still looked tense, obviously concerned about her brother.
After Ferrar’s TV reports, Father Bartholomew’s story was the buzz on the Internet. Videos taken from TV coverage of the levitation in the cathedral had received more than fifteen million views online in less than twenty-four hours.
“Father Bartholomew is resting comfortably at Beth Israel Hospital,” Castle told the group as he began the meeting. “If the experience with Father Bartholomew’s previous wounds is any guide, I expect his wounds will heal quickly and that Father Bartholomew will recover rapidly, much more so than would normally be the case with such severe wounds.”
Anne was relieved to hear this, but still, she was not convinced. “Can Father Morelli and I return with you to the hospital this afternoon to see my brother?”
“I’m not sure,” Castle said. “At the end of this meeting, I expect to get a report on his condition and I’ll make a decision then.”
“Okay,” Anne said compliantly.
Castle shifted gears unexpectedly. “At this meeting, I’m interested in learning more about the wounds we see on the man in the Shroud of Turin. As you all know, the world press is widely reporting that Father Bartholomew is now suffering the same wounds Jesus Christ suffered in his crucifixion, now including the crown of thorns and the stigmata in his feet. Pictures of the Shroud of Turin and Father Bartholomew are being juxtaposed on the Internet, on television, and in the print media internationally. Father Morelli explained to us last time that the Shroud of Turin provides a remarkably detailed view of the crucifixion of Jesus as described in the gospels of the New Testament, as well as the practice itself as described in contemporary Roman accounts. What I want to know in this meeting is this: Is there any basis on which we can discredit the comparisons the international news media are making between Father Bartholomew and Jesus? Given what we can learn about Roman crucifixion practices from studying the Shroud of Turin and what we know of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ from the New Testament, is there any basis for saying that what is happening to Father B
artholomew is not what happened to Jesus Christ?”
Father Middagh was prepared for this. “Let’s start with the nail wounds on the feet.”
“Okay,” Castle said. “I’m listening.”
Middagh projected an image from his computer onto the screen at the end of the conference room. “This is a view of the feet and calf area of the legs from the posterior image of the man in the Shroud. Remember, you are looking at a negative image in which left and right appear exactly as they would appear in the body of the crucified man in the Shroud. The image of the left foot shows only the heel area. The images of the feet are on the dorsal side of the body and were formed by blood contacting the Shroud, as we discussed before.”
“In simple terms, what does all this mean?” Castle asked.
“It means the Roman executioners placed the sole of the right foot flat against the upright beam of the cross. Then they bent the left knee and twisted the body so the instep on the bottom of the left foot rested on top of the right foot. One nail appears to have been used to drive through both feet. The wound looks like it is in the metatarsal area of both feet, which would have been just forward of the small cuneiform bones just above the heel. The Roman executioners could have a different calculation with the feet than in nailing the wrists.”
Studying the slide, Castle followed the explanation clearly.
“As we discussed before,” Father Middagh went on, “the nails had to go through the small bones in the wrist, not the palms of the hands, because the hands nailed to the cross had to carry most of the weight of the body. The feet were different. The feet nailed to the cross did not have to carry body weight, but a crucified man would need to push down on the feet in order to lift himself up so he could breathe. In a way, the metatarsal region of the foot is more like the palm of the hand. If a man were crucified upside down, the feet would have to be nailed through the small cuneiform bones above the metatarsals. But the Romans needed to leave that region of the foot intact so the crucified man could push down with his legs to lift his body up. Basically, the nail in the feet just rode back up toward the heels as the crucified man lifted up to breathe.”
“The pain had to be excruciating,” Castle said.
“It was,” Middagh said. “In fact, the word ‘excruciating’ derives from the Latin ex crucis, which denotes ‘from being crucified.’ The point of crucifixion was to make the death painful beyond description. Most people who were crucified died of suffocation. The weight of the body hanging down on the arms tended to fix the muscles needed for breathing in an inhalation state. To exhale, the crucified man had to pivot his weight down against the nail in his feet to allow the diaphragm to force the air out of his lungs. The nail in the feet rubbing on the bones in the feet would cause searing pain. In the process of breathing, the man’s elbows would flex, causing the wrists to rotate around the iron nails, resulting in burning pain along the damaged median nerves leading to the thumbs. Eventually, the muscles tired and cramped, and the crucified man died of cardiopulmonary asphyxia.”
Castle quickly grasped the anatomy of crucifixion. “What does the frontal view of the man in the Shroud show about the feet?”
“The feet in the frontal view are less distinct in the Shroud,” Middagh said, “so you won’t see much from the slide. From the ventral view, the bloodstain on the left foot is clear. The left foot was the foot placed on top, so we can see where the nail pierced the metatarsal area, about two-thirds of the way up the foot toward the heel from the toes. In the dorsal view of the man in the Shroud, we saw more clearly the sole of the right foot that rested flat against the cross. Hidden in the Shroud images of the feet are the parts of each foot that were inside after the left foot was crossed on top of the right. In other words, we don’t have a very good image of the bottom of the left foot or the top of the right foot. But we can clearly see from the ventral view that the left knee is bent and the body rotated from the hip to accommodate the left leg resting partially on top of the right leg. Crucified this way, the lower part of the body would have been twisted somewhat away from the left, with the knees protruding most likely to the right. The crucified man’s back would have rubbed against the wood of the upright beam of the cross each time the man lifted his body up or down in the process of breathing. In doing so, the scourge wounds on the back would have been reopened and rubbed raw.”
In his mind, Castle quickly reviewed the many painted images of crucified Christ that he had seen in museums around the world. What Middagh was describing differed from the painted images in several important aspects. “So you don’t think, then, that the feet of the man in the Shroud were nailed to any footrest that he could have used to support his weight?”
“The Shroud shows no evidence of a suppedaneum, or footrest,” Middagh answered. “You’ve got to remember the precise way Roman executioners fixed a man to the cross depended upon how long the Romans wanted the man to live. The arms and legs could be tied to the cross, which would prolong the time the man had to suffer. A footrest or even a little seat or sedile was fashioned as a block of wood and nailed to the upright crossbeam so the man could rest his buttocks. Again, these niceties prolonged the death. A fully adult man crucified this way could last two or three days, possibly longer, providing he had not been scourged to within an inch of his life and that he had been tied to the cross instead of nailed. With a suppedaneum and a sedile, breathing was easier and the problem became dehydration and thirst, with the crucified man more likely to die from a combination of thirst and exposure, rather than asphyxia.”
“The problem in Christ’s crucifixion was that the Roman executioners were up against the Sabbath,” Morelli interjected. “To comply with Jewish law, Christ had to be dead and buried by sundown. In Jerusalem, two thousand years ago, much more so than today, everything in the Jewish community was expected to come to a total standstill once the sun went down on Friday.”
“That’s right,” Middagh said. “From the evidence of the Shroud, there was no footrest or seat on the cross. The man’s body was allowed to hang free, supported only by the nails in the wrists and the nail in the feet. The other variable was that the man in the Shroud shows evidence of a brutal scourging, back and front, from his shoulders to his heels. Crucifixion itself was meant to be a relatively bloodless process. The Roman executioners were expert in placing the nails so as to avoid piercing an artery. If they made a mistake and pierced an artery, the man could die in a matter of minutes. Making that mistake, a Roman centurion would have faced severe punishment for incompetence. But by scourging a man just short of the point where the scourging itself killed him, the time the man lived on the cross would have been shortened. This is what looks like was done to the man in the Shroud.”
“If all else failed,” Morelli added, “and the crucified man was living too long, the Romans typically took what amounted to a sledgehammer and broke the man’s legs below the knees. With the legs broken, the only way the man could breathe was by raising and lowering his body by using his arms and pivoting against the nails in his wrist. As you can imagine, breathing like this would barely work at all and the pain of even trying to do so would have been unbearable. Once the legs were broken, death tended to come a few minutes later. Typically, those crucified died from a combination of pulmonary asphyxia and cardiac arrest.”
Middagh added a point of clarification. “In the case of the man in the Shroud, the legs show no sign of being broken. Instead, the right side shows evidence of having been pierced by a Roman spear. This follows the accounts of the crucifixion in the New Testament and in Christian tradition that the legs of the two criminals crucified with Christ were broken, but Christ was spared this indignity. Thinking that Christ was already dead when sundown was approaching, a Roman centurion named Longinus took his spear and pierced through Christ’s side to his heart. This would have left no doubt Christ was dead.”
So far, what Middagh was describing confirmed what Castle had observed at Beth Israel of Father Barthol
omew’s wounds. The feet wounds looked like punctures from the top of the feet, as indicated by the skin forced down into the wound on top of each foot. The trauma evidence was that the left foot had been on top of the right, with a straight line evidencing the wound from the left foot through to exit Father Bartholomew’s right foot. The skin on the sole of each foot was pushed out, as Castle would have expected to see from an exit wound caused by a nail or a spike.
“The ancient Romans had crucifixion down to a cruel science,” Morelli added. “Sadists were particularly adapted to the work and Roman executioners who weren’t good at what they did usually didn’t last very long. Roman executioners were particularly good at taunting and tormenting the condemned as they were scourged, beaten, and crucified. With Christ’s case, there was ample opportunity for humiliation, as evidenced by the crown of thorns.”
“What does the Shroud tell us about the crown of thorns?” Castle asked Middagh.
“The blood flows on the forehead of the man in the Shroud appear to be from puncture marks that would be consistent with a crown of thorns. Particularly noticeable is the long blood flow above the left eye that seems to form the number 3. The puncture wounds and bloodstreams are also visible in a circle around the head in the dorsal image. Moreover, if you look closely, you will see matting on the hair on the top of the head, both in the frontal and posterior views of the man in the Shroud. This would suggest the crown of thorns was actually a cap of thorns that was beaten or hit into the scalp to cause fairly profuse bleeding. As you know, wounds to the scalp tend to bleed heavily.”
Studying the Shroud, Castle could clearly see the same types of scalp wounds that Father Bartholomew suffered yesterday. His scalp wounds were from punctures and the punctures were on the top of his head, not just in a circle around his head at the level of his forehead.
“In the frontal view, you can clearly see the blood flows from the scalp wounds soaked down into the hair,” Middagh went on. “Again, these blood flows occurred while the man in the Shroud was living and they were transferred directly onto the Shroud as bloodstains. The blood from the crown of thorns is distinct from the image of the man and was transferred onto the Shroud before the image appeared. Again, we know this because there is no body image formed under the blood flows on the head. The blood flows from the crown of thorns are more evidence the man was placed in the Shroud directly from the cross and shortly after he died.”
The Shroud Codex Page 20