Shroud of Turin an 'icon written with blood'

The shroud "speaks with blood, and blood is life," the pope said after viewing the cloth on public display in Turin's cathedral.

Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday paid homage to the Shroud of Turin, believed by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, which he described as an "icon written with blood".

The shroud "speaks with blood, and blood is life," the pope said after viewing the cloth on public display in Turin's cathedral for the first time in a decade.

"The shroud is an icon written with blood, the blood of a man who was whipped, crucified and wounded in the right rib," the pope said. "The image imprinted on the shroud is that of a dead man, but the blood speaks of life."

"Every trace of blood speaks of love and life," the pontiff added in his "meditation" on one of the most revered objects in Christendom and also one of the most disputed.

The Roman Catholic Church has never pronounced on the authenticity of the shroud, and Benedict purposely referred to it as an "icon" instead of a "relic".

The Shroud of Turin was discovered in the French city of Troyes, southeast of Paris, in the mid-14th century.

The cloth became an overnight international sensation in 1898 after amateur photographer Secondo Pia obtained a negative image with far more striking features than those of the natural, sepia-coloured positive.

No one has come up with a scientific explanation for the image, and no one has managed to replicate it.

Radiocarbon dating analysis in 1988 determined that the fibres in the cloth date from the Middle Ages, sometime between 1260 and 1390, but those findings have in turn been challenged with suggestions the samples were contaminated.

Some two million people are expected to view the shroud over six weeks that began on April 10 in this northern Italian city.