Torino is the Italian name for the city of Turin, a city made famous by the Shroud of Turin, which is a perfect example of a religious relic acting like the postcard from 1888. First discovered in 1354, it is believed by many faithful Catholics to be the actual burial cloth of Jesus. On the one hand, it was declared authentic by Geoffroi de Charnay, the dean of the Church of Liery (liar?), France. Like the selling of Indulgences, such a declaration allowed Charnay to begin siphoning extra money out of the pockets of his faithful parishioners and into his own. On the other hand, in 1389, Pierre d’Arcis—the bishop of Troyes, France—sent a report to Pope Clement VII claiming an artist had confessed that the shroud was a “cunningly painted” forgery. The bishop further claimed that the dean of the Lirey church knew it was a fake to begin with, and had used it to raise money anyway. In response, Clement declared the shroud wasn’t the true burial cloth of Christ. Still, he said the Lirey church could continue to display it if it acknowledged the cloth was a man-made religious “icon,” not a historic “relic.” Today, Pope Francis still describes it as an “icon.”[1] Yet for those who “believe,” such a shroud can never be proven to be anything less than proof of the validity of their religious beliefs, even though a central tenant of that same religious belief is that their faith should need no evidence to begin with.
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