POPE Benedict XVI appeared to give an outright endorsement of the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin Sunday, calling the cloth an icon "written with the blood" of a crucified man.During a visit to see the Shroud, the Pope didn't raise the scientific questions that surround the linen and whether it might be a medieval forgery.
Instead, he delivered a powerful meditation on the faith that holds that the Shroud is indeed Christ's burial cloth.
"This is a burial cloth that wrapped the remains of a crucified man in full correspondence with what the Gospels tell us of Jesus," the Pope said.
He said the relic should be seen as a photographic document of the "darkest mystery of faith", that of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection.
The 4.3-metre-long, one-metre-wide cloth has gone on public display for the first time since the 2000 millennium celebrations and a subsequent 2002 restoration.
Kept in a bulletproof, climate-controlled case in Turin's cathedral, it has drawn nearly two million pilgrims and tourists.
However, experts stand by carbon-dating of scraps of the cloth that determine the linen was made in the 13th or 14th century.
SIC: II