Spirit Daily
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Fact or fiction?
Renzo Allegri
02/04/05
Blood Type Found In Icons Is Same As In Shroud Of Turin And 'Lanciano Miracle'
by Michael Brown
Second story
The blood analyzed recently from two weeping icons in Italy and found to possess extraordinary, unique characteristics is of the AB blood type -- the same type reported in the well-known bleeding Host miracle at Lanciano, Italy, and also detected on the famed Shroud of Turin.
It was last week that word came from noted Italian author Renzo Allegri [left] that blood genetically analyzed from the weeping icons was tested by a prestigious university and allegedly found to be unique to earth -- unlike any genetic structure in the world blood bank. The odds against it being of the particular genetic structure, reported the researchers, were 200 billion to one.
The implication is potentially astonishing: that the blood came from a source that was not preceded by a similar genetic type and was not inherited (as of course Jesus's Blood, if this was His actual genetic structure, would not have been inherited). Of course, because something is supernatural does not mean the process of discernment is over.
Meanwhile the general blood type is doubly noteworthy because AB occurs in only four percent of the general populace. That it would be the blood type of both the Lanciano Host and the Shroud seems to veer above coincidence.
The event involves two sacred icons that shed tears of blood on two separate occasions. They belong to Padre Pietro Maria Chiriatti, 59, founder of a small Congregation called "The Missionaries of Our Lady of the Quarry," who lives in a modest dwelling in Alberobello, Puglia, Italy.
Let us caution that we are still investigating and confirming this. For that reason, consider such reports preliminary. But they do come from a credible author-journalist. The alleged phenomena first occurred with an icon of the Madonna in 2003, then the following year, in 2004, on a second icon, this one, ironically, a representation of the Shroud of Turin that Father Chiriatti owns.
It was at the Genetics Forensic Laboratory of the University of Bologna, equipped with the most modern sophisticated equipment with that a team of researchers, doctors, and biologists University Professors found the amazing characteristics, reports Allegri. And it came hard on the heels of a similar determination, again by Italian scientists, that blood from another situation, in Citavecchia, is likewise "inexplicable."
"This blood is so rare that it must be considered as almost unique. By calculation, the statistical probability of finding, in the course of millennia, a typology of the same blood type, is almost nil, the mathematical probability of this happening is in the order of 1 in 200 billion possible cases."
It was during the eighth century that a Communion Host now kept in a church in Lanciano is said to have suddenly changed into the actual Flesh and Blood of Christ while a doubting priest -- no longer sure of the Real Presence -- was celebrating Mass. More astonishing still, the evidence remains to this day. Since 1713 the Flesh has been reserved in an artistic silver ostensorium, delicately embossed by an artisan of the Neapolitan school, while the Blood is enclosed in a rich and very old rock-crystal cup at Lanciano in the Church of St. Francis.
Various ecclesiastical investigations have been conducted through the centuries, but none more pertinent than tests carried forth with modern technology. In 1970-71 and again in 1981 there were major investigations by an illustrious scientist named Odoardo Linoli, eminent Professor in Anatomy and Pathological Histology and in Chemistry and Clinical Microscopy, and Professor Ruggero Bertelli of the University of Siena.
The analyses were documented with a series of microscopic photographs and what they showed was that: the Flesh and the Blood were real; the Flesh is striated cardiac muscular material; the Blood was formed in five clots; both the Flesh and Blood have the same blood-type; and that the blood type is AB.
It is a blood-type identical to what a scientist named Baima Bollone and others -- including American scientists -- uncovered in the Holy Shroud of Turin.
In 1978, a team of thirty U. S. scientists, many from the Jet Propulsion Lab in California, came together for the Shroud of Turin Research Project. The Archbishop at the Cathedral of Turin in Torino, Italy, where the Shroud was housed from 1694 to 1993, gave permission for the group to study the relic.
Examinations were made and over thirty sticky-tape samples representative of the body images, blood stains, and non-image areas were taken. Later the group asked a Connecticut professor to do analyses on a small fragment from the shroud samples and concluded it was blood-derived -- and what was more, of a pattern similar to what was also found on the Sudarium of Oviedo, Spain, which is also AB.
The Sudarium -- reputedly the burial face cloth of Jesus -- has no image but does have the fascinating blood stains, which have been analyzed. Both tradition and scientific studies claim that the cloth was used to cover and clean the face of Jesus after the Crucifixion.
So three major Christian relics that are supposed to have Christ's Blood do have blood-derived particles and all three also indicate type AB. To them can now be added the icons, although there have not yet been any tests detailing the specific genetic patterns in the Shroud, the Sudarium, and the Host of Lanciano, to see if they may more exactly match the Bologna findings.
2/7/05
