The miraculous rescue of the Shroud of Turin

On 12 April 1997, a fire ravaged Turin Cathedral, where the famous Shroud of Turin is kept. The flames were threatening the reliquary, which was under an 8-centimetre laminated bulletproof glass in an airtight case, when Mario, an agnostic fireman, was urged by a "voice" to go rescue the precious object, and he managed to save the Shroud using a simple sledgehammer, which all the experts agreed was physically impossible.

Duomo of the Guarini chapel, where the Holy Shroud is kept, in the Cathedral of St John the Baptist in Turin / © CC0, Daniele Bottallo.

Les raisons d'y croire :

The arrival of Mario, an agnostic, at the scene of the fire is nothing short of astonishing: he was off duty and unaware that the cathedral was on fire until, by chance, his wife noticed the flames erupting, from their window. What's more, he thought the Shroud was a fake. Mario decided to go assist his colleagues, not because he feared for the Shroud, but because, thanks to his training as an architect, he appreciated the artistic value of the Guarini Chapel in the cathedral, where the Shroud was located at the time.

Mario entered the chapel through a raging fire. It seems strange, to say the least, that a young father should risk his life and overcome his fear to save an object that he suspected was a fake!

For the first time in his life, Mario experienced something inexplicable, as soon as he arrived at the scene: a 'voice' gave him a very clear order, which somehow didn't faze him. It was an interior locution, widespread in the annals of mysticism, which has nothing to do with an auditory hallucination. Concise, brief, clear, positive (it neither "judged" nor demanded any crazy action), with no detectable spatial origin, it achieved its goal: to save the Shroud from destruction.

The mysterious voice was real and caused Mario to spring into action. It has since remained engraved in his memory, whereas vocal hallucinations generally evaporate in the short term.

Mario heard the voice say that he would need a "hammer" to crack the reliquary open. The reliquary itself was protected by an eight-centimetre-thick bulletproof glass in an airtight caseshield. This is inexplicable: the fireman knew nothing about the reliquary and its protection. Yet the voice reached him before he entered the relic chapel, proving that it wasn't the result of autosuggestion or illusion.

Mario could not have heard a "natural" voice. The noise caused by a conversation between two people three or four metres apart is estimated at 60 decibels; this figure can rise to 69 or 70 decibels if the subjects move apart or raise their voices. If it had been the voice of a colleague, it would have had to reach between 80 and 100 decibel to pierce through the noise of the fire, and of course, the hypothetical colleague would have had to have actually been at Mario's side in the chapel. Neither of these two conditions was met: Mario was alone in front of the reliquary.
Despite his (bookish) knowledge of the place, Mario found himself in a building that had become a furnace, with no light except that of his headlamp; blocks of stone and burning debris littered the floor. Despite these conditions, he was confident that he could "move very fast" without thinking about his route, his body becoming abnormally "light", his feet no longer "touching the ground".

Mario mentions another incomprehensible fact: the box containing the Shroud, which he carried in his arms all the way out of the cathedral, weighed "almost nothing".

Apart from a few inconsequential injuries, Mario left the cathedral without any scratches or burns: this phenomenon is also inexplicable, despite the protective equipment he was wearing that day. In fact, his stay in the burning building lasted around fifteen minutes.

When he discovered the reliquary, he realised that the "voice" had been right: he would not be able to save the Shroud without breaking through the thick armour. Just then, he spotted a fireman in the half-light trying to break through the rubble with a sledgehammer. This colleague handed him the tool and set off without delay towards the exit.

Mario struck the sledgehammer with all his might, perhaps a hundred times, to no avail. For the third time, the voice called out: "Strike sideways!" At the first blow to the side of the reliquary, the bulletproof glass broke.

When he took hold of the reliquary, Mario heard "a child crying". This was absolutely impossible, because everyone had been evacuated and there had been no one in the building for several hours. He listened carefully and, despite the din of the fire, he distinctly heard identical cries coming from "insidethe Shroud".

A few days later, the manufacturers of the reliquary and several protection specialists revealed to the press that it was impossible for a normal person to open the eight-centimetre-thick encasement with a sledgehammer.

This miracle led to Mario's conversion, and since then he has given lectures all over Italy on the Shroud of Turin.

Synthèse :

On the evening of 12 April 1997, Mario Trematore, a firefighter living in Turin (Italy, Piedmont), was off duty and resting at home.

Shortly after 10pm, when it was already dark, Mario was intrigued by the reddish glow he saw behind one of the windows in his flat. He went closer and discovered, in the darkness that had fallen on the city, a huge blaze a few hundred metres from his building.

The fireman made enquiries and learned that Turin's Cathedral of St John the Baptist was burning. The fire was so terrible that a large part of the building seemed to have been lost, in particular the Guarini Chapel, built in the 17th century, in which the Shroud of Turin is kept. The disaster caused by the flames was very serious: it would take twenty years of work to restore the place to its former glory.

At the time, Mario was an agnostic and knew nothing about the Holy Shroud, which he believed to be a fake. All he could remember was the Our Father, which he had vaguely learnt as a child.

But he loved and knew the Guarini chapel, which he had studied during a university course. Without waiting, he decided to help his colleagues who were trying to contain the fire, wearing only a hiking jacket, and rushed to the fire brigade already in action.

When he arrived at the scene of the fire, he was seized with a sense of dread: "I'd never seen a fire like that. I was terrified, I thought I was going to die. I really regretted coming. I wasn't interested in the Shroud", he later explained.

It was then that he heard a mysterious voice, the source of which he did not know, but which he thought was perfectly clear and energetic: the voice of a living being. It said: "You must save the Shroud! You can do it!"

Mario seemed to freeze. Panic was all around. Huge blocks of marble fell onto the cathedral square. The heat was frightening; the risk of the dome of the chapel collapsing very high.

Mario's "voice" acted as a trigger: he asked three colleagues to follow him into the blaze from a distance. He had already entered the cathedral without thinking any further.

Mario found himself alone in the Guarini chapel. His only equipment was a pair of cutters and pliers, and he knew nothing about the protective encasing of the Shroud, in particular its eight-centimetre-thick bulletproof glass. The voice called out again: "You need a hammer!"

Without waiting, Mario emerged from the chapel and had a truly providential encounter: one of his colleagues was arriving with a sledgehammer. Mario seized the tool and went back to the reliquary.

Mario hit the protective glass with all his might. Nothing happened. He started again, twice, ten times, perhaps "a hundred times", he would later add, to no avail. All around him, the furnace was devouring everything. In a few moments, he would die in the middle of the Shroud Chapel.

For the third time, the voice came: "Strike from the side!" Mario obeyed, and with the first blow managed to crack the glass. Without waiting, he grabbed the grabbed the wooden and silver casket containing the Shroud and headed for the exit. That's when he heard the cries of a young child. How could a child still be in this hellish place? It couldn't be! But then he realised that the crying, which was very real, was coming from "inside the Shroud" !

Inexplicably, his fear turned to joy. He ran across the nave, the encasing in his arms. Or to put it another way, he "flew outside". His body and the heavy box he was carrying had become unusually light. When he reached the outside, a crowd of five thousand people cheered him like a hero.

It took him a week to recover from his exertions. But he emerged unharmed, without burns or trauma, from a fifteen-minute stay in a huge inferno.

A few days later, the makers of the reliquary's bulletproof encasing and several protection experts held a press conference at which they stated that it was impossible for a human being to break through the eight-centimetre-thick armour with a sledgehammer and that, in this case, the feat seemed "miraculous".

Miraculous, too, was Mario's conversion, and since that day he has become a fervent Catholic and an unbounded admirer of the Holy Shroud, about which he gives lectures all over Italy. "The encounter with Christ, through the recovery of the Shroud, was an extraordinary experience and enabled me to enter into an intimate relationship with him," he tells those who ask.

Patrick Sbalchiero

Au-delà des raisons d'y croire :

No one has been able to account for the following facts:

Mario's speedin a very dangerous environment,
the extreme lightness of his body,
his imperviousness to heat and flames during the long minutes he spent in the cathedral (despite his professional equipment),
the voice that, three times, told him precisely what he must do,
the child's cries whose source he located inside the reliquary,
and his sudden conversion, which is not the expression of an emotional shock or the effect of autosuggestion, but a radical and definitive change in his vision of the world and his life.

Aller plus loin :

Aleteia's article "Fireman who saved the Holy Shroud from the 1997 fire tells the story"

En savoir plus :

Aleteia article: " Il y a dix-neuf ans, un pompier sauvé le Saint Suaire des flammes", 24 November 2016.
Didier van Cauwelaert, L'Insolence des miracles, Paris, Plon, 2023, p. 222-226.