We have attended Workshop on Advances in Turin Shroud Investigation and we were surprised by the few number of persons in the room of Bari’s University where the Conference was held.
Actually there were no more than 40 persons including speakers, which was later explained to us by the fact that the Conference was not opened to the general public, and we regret the absence of American and English scholars as speakers.
We were disappointed by Professor Bruno Barberi’s statement that he didn’t know when Vatican would grant permission for new tests on the Shroud ( in 2012 Valencia Shroud Congress he opened the possibility of new tests in a near future although he asserted that it would be Pope’s decision).
How can real advances in Shroud of Turin scientific investigation be achieved without new tests?
Nevertheless there were some interesting presentations in the scientific field of image namely a new project of Shroud scanning by Professor Nello Balossino, and description of laboratory experiments by Professors Giovanna de Liso, Lattarulo, Giulio Fanti and Paolo di Lazzaro.
There was also a weird presentation by Professor Valery Shalatonin from bielorussian Minsk University describing the detection of an electric field around a real size replica of the Shroud and it’s biological effects-this was indeed very interesting and a brand new issue.
Outside the scientific field a new historiographical and philosophical approach about Jesus resurrection and the Shroud was presented by french philosopher and historian Professor Tristan Casabianca.
In our humble opinion there were actually few advances in Shroud investigation and one thing is for sure- EVEN IN LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS NAMELY WITH LASER TECHNOLOGY, CORONA DISCHARGE ETC. THE IMAGES OBTAINED ARE FAR FROM THE ORIGINAL
To summarize, although a bit below our expectations it was not worthless going to Bari
The above is being shared with everyone with Maria da Glória’s kind permission.
The proceedings of the conference have been distributed to attendees as a single, 137 page PDF file. I am seeking permissions or links to make this available to everyone, if that is possible. There are some fascinating papers in it. Stay tuned.