Sister Blandina's evidence

In September 1997 I was hospitalized. In front of my sick-bed, hanging on the wall, there was a picture with the consoling, protective image of “Christ of Recklinghausen”. I noted some differences between this icon and the Shroud of Turin. Recovered, I took it to make a print and I observed some peculiarities afterwards noticed in all the other icons. Exactly when I began to paint these typical icons I fell in with the Veil of Manoppello. I observed that all the same peculiarities were in the Holy Face, but not stylized, nearly as in a photograph. I compared the main icons with the Veil: they are all inspired by the Holy Face of Manoppello and the Holy Shroud of Turin. In 1990 I began to compare the Shroud with the Veil. I was not prepared to this spiritual discovery. It happened in 1979: I knew the Holy Shroud of Turin and my mind refused other emotional discoveries". But I got knowledge of that Face and something new and wonderful happened “In the course of the whole day my mind went towards those eyes, that look so particular. I had to attend to some patients, to my work.
During my rounds in the hospital that look always remained in my mind and those eyes fixed on me”. So I began the twenty-year work regarding the relation between the Holy Face of Manoppello and the Holy Shroud of Turin: a lot of comparisons and experiments with the religious iconography of west and east. While she is speaking she has in her hands, and she looks hard at them, some enlargements arrived that morning from a reliable photographic laboratory. Then she smiles satisfied: it is what she was looking for: now she has a new work to do for what she names “a splendid adventure” which never ends because day by day she obtains new material in confirmation of her arguments. It is, at the same time, the satisfaction of Sister Blandina who is a scientific researcher, keen on art and, above all, a nun: in fact this is her choice of life. “When I was a little girl, my dream was to become a painter or an expert of art. Then I followed my vocation and I entered the Trappist Order.” In the nunnery she followed a course of pharmacology but, at the same time, she began to know the world of the religious iconography, complying her old passion for painting. Regarding the comparison between the Holy Face and the Holy Shroud, Sister Blandina declares that she applied the scientific severity as a chemist besides her knowledge as an expert iconographer.

At the end of the very interesting conversation, the last obligatory question: which kind of experience was that for her life? “It is an existential question – she smiles first, then replies serious, unhesitatingly – we are talking about God and I can’t speak as if I were speaking about common emotions. This knowledge has repercussions on my life: now I can know the Face of Christ I chose to follow. I feel a strength pushing me forward and I can’t do anything … This strength orders me to continue on the way of the research and I must follow this voice… I only can declare that this strength never left me. It is a living image.
I always hoped to find the smallest difference questioning these certitudes, these evidences, but it never happened. By putting together the two images, we can see they are the same image, the Image of Christ. Every age has its own style but the Veil of Manoppello does not belong to any particular style and this is an evident mark that the Veil is not a simple work of art. The Image, besides the others, has an exceptional peculiarity: it seems a diapositive imprinted on the Veil, a negative film fixed on the very thin fabric.
Admiring the Holy Face, we remember the Word of St. Irenaeus: we can’t see God but God sees us and He can decide to become visible when He decides, how He decides and to whom He decides. The essential work was to locate the reference – points. I located at least ten of them: left eye–cavity, right eye-cavity through the “little drop” bordered in the ambit of the iris, right part of the nose on the vertical side, the little circle on the upper lip etc. … till I obtained the perfect overlap of the two effigies. So my perception of truth was rewarded and I could give evidence of the oneness of the Images mysteriously impressed on the Holy Shroud of Turin and on the Veil of Manoppello: it is beyond doubt that they are the same Relic of Our Lord Jesus Christ who rose again from the dead three days after his Deposition from the Cross”.

Evangelium secundum Ioannem 

20 - 6: Venit ergo et Simon Petrus sequens eum et introivit in monumentum; et videt linteamina posita
20 - 7: et sudarium, quod fuerat super caput eius, non cum linteaminibus positum, sed separatim involutum in unum locum.