The Shroud of Jesus

We are pleased to share an excerpt from “The Shroud of Jesus” by Gilbert Lavoie, M.D. from Sophia Institute Press.

IT ALL STARTED in an old bookstore in downtown Boston. There I picked up a book called A Doctor at Calvary. It was a story that a French surgeon, Dr. Pierre Barbet, had written, and the only reason I picked it up was that I was then in premed, and I thought it would be the surgeon’s version of Jesus’ crucifixion. But it was more than that. It was about Jesus’ burial cloth, of which I had never heard. Seventeen years later, just as I started to read the Boston Sunday Globe, I saw the picture of this same cloth, the Shroud of Turin. It was 1978 and it was then, as a young physician and a young skeptic, that I began this pursuit, always seeking the truth. And in the end, I came to an astonishing realization. It took a lifetime. 

For all who wonder if there is a God at work, if there is a spiritual world, if there is everlasting life, if there is a God who is true, keep wondering and keep reading. 

Please join me on a journey, an adventure I never sought and barely knew I was on. Only in time did I realize its joy. With your own eyes and your own mind, simply look and observe and come to realize what the image and blood marks of this cloth reveal. Now join this old physician for a few hours and start this adventure of discovery by first looking at forensic medical evidence that took me years to fully comprehend. And that is just the beginning of the story. 

The first part of my forty-year journey deals with the forensics of the visual objective reality of the controversial Shroud of Turin located in Turin, Italy, at the Cathedral of San Giovanni Battista (Turin Cathedral) since 1578. It is a linen cloth made from flax, approximately 14 feet by 3.5 feet, that carries a faint image of the back and front of a naked man. It also carries blood marks that are consistent with the scourging and crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth as described in the Gospel of John. Many believe that it is Jesus’ burial cloth, and many do not. …

What I visually discovered about the image of the shroud eventually brought me to the second part of my journey: I began to delve deeply into the study of the Gospel of John. There I found that by placing what I forensically observed on this cloth into the context of Jesus’ life, a door opened into new insights as to what John had written about Jesus. The image on the shroud was the key that opened that door. And then gradually, because of what is visible on the shroud cloth, I began to uncover the message that the shroud holds for us.

Author Bio – Gilbert Lavoie, M.D.

Dr. Gilbert R. Lavoie is a medical doctor, a specialist in internal medicine, occupational medicine, and public health. He has pursued a forensic and scriptural study of the Shroud of Turin for over 40 years. He has published books, a video and articles all related to scriptural and medical forensic studies of the blood marks and image of the man of the shroud. Dr. Lavoie along with his colleague, Tom D’Muhala, digitalized and organized some of the finest photographs of the Shroud of Turin done by Vernon Miller who was the official scientific photographer of the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project. The Vernon Miller photo collection is now available worldwide on the internet at www.shroudphotos.com. 

In the last several years Dr. Lavoie worked with the internationally known sculptor, Pablo Eduardo. Eduardo recently completed a bronze sculpture that is a three-dimensional replica of the image of the man of the Shroud of Turin. This was done in exquisite detail paying much attention to the anatomy of the figure and reveals a whole new way of understanding the shroud image. The sculpture called, The Sign, resides at Ave Maria University. The Sign accompanies Dr. Lavoie’s new book, The Shroud of Jesus And the Sign John Ingeniously Concealed, published by Sophia Institute Press, 2023. The book has been endorsed by Scott Hahn, Mike Aquilina, Rev. Francis Hoffman, the CEO of Relevant Radio, and others.