The Church doesn’t affirm the authenticity of the Shroud with any Magisterial authority, however, she treats it as a relic of the Passion. There is a large body of forensic evidence to support that conclusion, from the pollen local to Jerusalem found upon it, the art history which shows “the face” appearing in art as early as the 6th century, when a cloth called the Mandylion (or Image of Odessa) was venerated as the face of Christ. In our own day, the Shroud’s mysterious negative image of a man who suffered what the Gospels describe Christ suffered has yet to be explained, despite almost fifty years of exhaustive scientific investigation. For an article by Fr. Dwight Longenecker that discusses many of the facts regarding the Shroud., see: READ MORE