April 98

TO HIS EXCELLENCY
MONSIGNOR GÉRARD DAUCOURT
BISHOP OF TROYES

Maison Saint-Joseph,
Saint-Parres-lès-Vaudes

30 April 1998

Your Excellency,

I write to acknowledge receipt of your registered letter dated 28 April, received on the 29^th, in which you officially notify me of the reply that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith means to give to my administrative recourse, presented on the 5^th and 18^th July against the episcopal decrees dated the 9^th May and the 1^st July of that same year.

According to the pronouncement section of the reply, dated 24 March, "the Dicastery – after having attentively re-examined the complex and delicate question – has decided not to accept the aforesaid appeal and to confirm, for an indeterminate period of time, the measure of suspension a divinis" adopted by Your Excellency against me.

In the first place, you will agree that this text raises a number of questions of interpretation, since it appears only to confirm the measure of suspension and omits any confirmation of the interdict. If one applies the principle of interpreting in a strict sense decisions that impose or confirm sanctions, one would have to conclude that your Decree of the 1^st July 1997 has been amended or at least partially revoked.

But it is also evident that this new decision seeks, yet once again, to elude the necessary trial for heresy, schism and scandal that I have not ceased to demand of the Roman authorities for over thirty years. The new reasons on which the decision of the Dicastery is based – substantially different from those that had been advanced to justify the Decree of the 1^st July – have already been refuted in detail in my previous writings. Nevertheless, they are quoted as if they were well known and recognised facts, whereas no process of doctrinal examination has been employed to contribute the slightest proof of the statements advanced and to allow me to exercise my right to defend myself in the event of a debate.

This series of flagrant illegalities in the manner of making decisions and proceeding, obliges me to refer the current administrative dispute to the consideration of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, in accordance with the right conferred on me by canon 1445 § 2, article 123 of the Apostolic Constitution Pastor Bonus and the Special Norms* of the said Tribunal. I would be grateful if you would be so kind as to communicate my decision to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Furthermore, I would like to remind you that a suspensive effect remains attached ipso jure to the presentation of administrative or judicial appeals against decrees that involve canonical sanctions. For this reason, and since the Congregation has left you the task of informing the faithful "in the manner that appears most opportune to you", I renew my request that the official publication of the documents of the case be deferred until the matter fully ceases to be under judgement, so that any further attack on my reputation and on that of the communities I direct may be avoided.

To finish, I would like to express my hope of seeing this final appeal – by the grace of God and of the Virgin Mary, the Immaculate Conception – allowing us at last to courageously broach the only question that remains throughout all these procedures: the opposition of two religions in the heart of the one Church…

I am Your Excellency’s humble servant,

To our readers and friends

This news from Rome and Troyes reached us just as we were preparing to wrap up our editorial. The main body of this edition had already been printed, especially the pages of our Letter to the Phalange, already despatched to five hundred people. So it seemed reasonable to keep these texts of 23 April in their proper place and to withdraw my editorial for the sake of these more important documents. The actual typesetting was carried out on the 1^st May, the feast of Saint Joseph, after I had seen the article by M. Laville in l'Est-Éclair for 30 April, the matter having been made public by the Bishop of Troyes – as he was entitled to do – before our request for discretion reached him. It arrived on his desk when the newspaper was already in the hands of the people of Troyes. We were desirous of saving what was left us in public opinion and to avail ourselves of the "presumption of innocence" so effectively claimed by terrorists and established blasphemers; but for thirty-two years it is the "suspicion of crime" – and the most odious crimes at that! – that seems to be the rule in our case.

Obviously, a commentary on this Roman text of the greatest importance will be made available to you in the next CRC. But the highest priority is to get this ultimate appeal to Rome within the thirty days. I shall already be bearing its substance and its intention in my heart when I am with you in Turin, prostrate before the Face of my God and kneeling before Our Lady Help of Christians, the Virgin of combat, who will crush the head of the Serpent and vanquish all heresies, for ever!

Although we are subject to the most senseless threats, we will pursue to the end our task of the Catholic Counter-Reformation; and we recommend the multitude of our friends to live through these difficult times with calmness, patience and fidelity to the Holy Roman Church, whatever may happen.

G. N.

Jesus! Mary! our unique love!

LETTER TO THE PHALANGE No 64

23 April 1998, Feast of Saint George

Our very dear friends of the Phalangist Communion,

Being obliged to "wrap up" the CRC for April without discovering a single a page to distract you from the noble studies of Brother Bruno and our own serious preoccupations with the most sacred objects of our faith, I took up a blank sheet of paper in order to write to you a real "Letter to my friends", as we used to call them. It is an approach that permits a freer style, open confidences, homespun news, and expressions of gratitude and tenderness that make up for what we are inevitably deprived of by the infrequency of our meetings and of our intimate letters. And I am all the more impelled to this by the fact that some people are concerned about my health – whereas it is nothing more serious than a case of old age, long deferred and now catching up with me after 74 years ("seventy-four years? really, how dreadful!" might say Mamine with her nonagenarian smile).

Please have no fears of any sort about us. Even our financial responsibilities cannot disturb us, so great is your generosity, both past and present, which has allowed us for forty years to support them all without debt or anxiety. You are kind, and our dearest heavenly Father, who has given you such generous hearts, will certainly know how to reward you a hundredfold in the eternal tabernacles, through the Immaculate Conception, the Mother of us all and for ever!

So, to sum up in a few words: we are very well; we have our crosses of course, but they are bearable, whereas on the other hand our opponents are not well at all, as you know. With that said, let us pass on to matters other than our own personal news.

19 March, Feast of Saint Joseph, under a beautiful sun that scattered the morning mist we made a procession at the stroke of noon for the inauguration of a new statue of this Saint, the protector of our houses. The previous statue had been stolen from us during the night of 18 and 19 March 1993, so you may guess who did it and with what malign intentions! We continued to put our trust in Saint Joseph; it took a long time, but we have not been disappointed. By a combination of circumstances, and very appropriately for this day, to our very great joy we were given a new statue. Kind friends had noticed it abandoned by people who had no use for it! May God bless each one of them for acting as our kind providers. "Saint Joseph, thank you!"

Our joy was all the greater in that this feast marked the anniversary of our Appeal to Rome. I had involved myself, along with our communities, in a formidable enterprise for which I was not prepared – if not in dogmatic science, at least in canon law. You are aware of how Providence assisted me under the name of Michael of the Triumphant Immaculate! a brother truly expert in utroque jure. Those were times of great labour and terrible commotion. But at last, on the 1^st August, everything had been completed on our side. The appeals and their accompanying documents arrived at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where they were undoubtedly received. We could do no more now than wait for the pontifical judges to accomplish their task.

The Congregation were obliged to follow the new norms, which now allow appellants ample possibilities for defending themselves. These norms breathe an astonishing concern not to offend anyone, and to convince rather than to condemn. And so it is with a tranquil heart and with our established convictions that we hope for the advancement of this process. We do not seek to urge the process along, since we are in that most favourable situation referred to as a "presumption of innocence", where no sanction, past, present or future, can harm us, while our complaint has not been investigated and brought to a conclusion: Adhuc sub judice lis est.

However, it had seemed to me when I returned from my exile that Someone was whispering in my ear: "All the same, I would so much like to see you excommunicated". And so I prepared myself for this eventuality, handing the matter over to Providence and to the initiative of the Holy See. Obviously a thundering excommunication would be crucifying, and perhaps for me and for all of us (?) an occasion of falling away (!), but it would advance the decisive question, vital for Holy Church : of the two opposing religions, that of the cult of Man and that of the cult of Jesus Christ alone, God made man, which is the path of salvation for us and which is the path of eternal damnation.

Our dearest heavenly Father cannot but desire the triumph of the revealed Truth, even indeed though every dispute within the bosom of the Church had to be bitter! But the period of calm given us allows us to pray, to work in peace, and to sustain humble Catholics in their faith.

As you will have seen on the first pages of our CRC for March, Mgr Daucourt devotes a few moments of his discussion with M. Laville of l'EST-CLAIR to us. He leaves one to think that our case will continue to be sat upon by Cardinal Ratzinger: "The appeal will not achieve anything"; and, moreover, that what we are and what we do has no importance at the diocesan level, and a fortiori, in the view of Rome either: "This problem does not bother the diocese"... It as if we were living in another world: "for the moment there is no dialogue between the Bishop and the Abbé de Nantes". That has gone on for thirty years now. And so the general wish is to avoid any quarrel, it being understood that nothing is to be expected of us, neither brutal attacks, nor a showdown, nor any scandal. Our bishop prays for us every day, and I do not doubt his good intentions.

Furthermore, this attitude of total disinterestedness – and even of fundamental benevolence – on the part of both the local and Roman authorities, appears to me to be very favourable to our work of the Catholic Counter-Reformation and therefore for the good of the entire Church. For, once the storm has subsided, either by force of by weariness, by divine chastisements of by miracles of mercy, this complete tolerance, from which we will have benefited throughout these forty years of disorder, will testify to the infallibility and sanctity of the Church which, in the thick of current errors and all types of hideousness, will have left in peace and unharmed this small group of Catholics, faithful, at one and the same time, to the hierarchical Authority, fully acknowledged, and to the unchangeable Truth of our dogmas, without which no one can be saved.

We find proof of the justice of this analysis from the extraordinary fruitfulness of our small communities following this rediscovered "peace of the Church", a fruitfulness that is disproportionate to our poor merits and to our small store of virtue.

But all this, you will say to me, is ancient history. Well, let us move on to yesterday's and today's news, already mentioned in the League for last month. We should not be afraid of repeating ourselves.

I want to mention again – and with just cause! – our unforgettable day of the 8^th December 1997, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. The aim of this triduum, for which we were not expecting so many people, was to consecrate ourselves together to Mary in Her divine Conception and in Her immaculate perfection, so that we might no longer do anything that displeased Her and so that we could draw from Her maternal Hear the indispensable strength to persevere amidst the unbounded and terrifying apostasy of which we were the frightened and injured witnesses.

Unexpected shock! Someone joined us at the very first conference: Father Maximilian-Mary Kolbe! I had planned to refer to his example and to say a few words about his life and his sublime Marian doctrine. But scarcely had I started when he captivated us to the extent of taking over all our sermons and making the preacher and all his assistants follow in his wake. And Brother Bruno’s conference on Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort reinforced all this even more strongly!

And so, on the 8^th December, everyone pronounced their Consecration in such a way that it there was no longer any question of us retaining anything in our lives – God willing! – other than this cult of the Virgin Mary and Her Divine Son, for such is Their good pleasure!

Since then, it is true, we have changed! On every first Saturday of the month and on each of our feasts, our houses are overflowing with people. What is so enthralling in these doctrines of Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort and Maximilian-Mary Kolbe? It is this: once the cult of the Immaculate enflames our hearts, graces of all sizes abound, allowing each to perceive their happy effects. But that is not all; as Father Kolbe explained so well, our crosses are among the most precious gifts of the Immaculate, and our fear of the trials we might undergo is changed into the certainty that they will be salutary for us and bearable, exactly adjusted to the graces and help we will be given (each time with a "small dose of humility"!).

It is this that truly changes lives. Perhaps there are other paths to Heaven. But it was this path that was given us on the 8^th December, and we advance along it with more and more ardour. Conversely, everything in the world seems to us more and more "terrifying" – which is incontestable! So it is providential that we have been led to this refuge and this consolation of devotion to the Immaculate. For ourselves, it helps us to keep our confidence and joy; and it encourages us to pray the Rosary that much harder that the Virgin may obtain from Her Son the salvation of this world in perdition. And finally we pray that hearts may be touched and converted, even the most hardened, as ours were, each of us at his own hour and in his own turn.

Christmas passed out on the balcony, as the saying is. Both literally and metaphorically. We were happy then and even carefree, like children gathered closely around their Mother near the crib, ravished with love for Jesus. During the vigil of that holy night, there came to me, as I was writing, the ultimate understanding I lacked concerning the sublime keystone of the mystery of the "divine circumincessant charity, Eucharistic and Marian". It had always escaped me before, appearing to be inaccessible, and so weakening the whole construction. An immense joy, but one that I had to be reserved about, since I was neither permitted nor able to communicate it to anyone, lest I once more throw the pearls of the Immaculate to those who could not benefit from them. Nevertheless, a definite enthusiasm and an enkindling of heart and speech were its happy effects.

And so, our doctrine of a "circumincessant divine and trinitarian charity", of which the Immaculate Conception would be the universal Mediatrix, was enriched by a great number of new contributions, which I attempted to collate and to perfect during our autumn retreats. But none of these retreats was ever complete, since at that time I lacked the understanding that I was eventually given. Those who took part in the Exercises of Saint Ignatius last February profited from this new understanding, although they may not even have suspected it. And those who are invited next July will give me the opportunity to preach with even more confidence on its infinite richness and sweetness.

Alas, in accordance with the saying Easter by the fireside, the weather during Easter was severe, as it still is today! I hope that Brothers Christian and François-Marie, his assistant, who were outside doing the gardens, will pardon me! It was nothing really… but in our minds, how enslaved we felt! How we suffered!

Indeed things had begun to look ominous after Septuagesima, when the hymns and games of Candlemas came to an end. Was there not question of new cruelties being inflicted on the holy Seer of Fatima? And were not injurious lies and monstrous errors spreading, even from Rome itself! apparently emanating from the seer and betraying her Third Secret, the secret on which depends the future of the Church and the whole of humanity? I see in this a "trial balloon", launched by Rome, to prepare people’s minds for a false Secret that would be accepted by all the apostates on the planet. And who, then would resist, except for the Portuguese people?

At the same time, did not the television channel Arte announce for Holy Week a new series of episodes of its CORPUS CHRISTI programme, which had already scandalised hundreds of thousands of simple trusting souls, who were totally disorientated by this blow? We were therefore obliged to take up the chase by obtaining these videos and their text so that we might study them and refute them as soon as they were screened. What a race we had during that frightful Lent!

And as if that were not quite enough bitterness already to make the cup overflow, we now began to discover on all sides a certain secret understanding between groups, movements, newspapers and members of the clergy, regarding the forthcoming display of the Holy Shroud. It was all done in order to sow doubts about the Shroud's authenticity and to scare off its last devotees by reviving the frightful memory of the carbon-14 dating, as though it were a point chalked up for science!

Without doubt, our retreat for Holy Week was all the more fervent because of this. The divine lights of the Scriptures presented to us during those days by the Church, the preaching and conferences given one after another by way of a commentary on the Gospels and the Passion and as a refutation of the impieties spread by the television, took us as it were out of ourselves and led us to the truly unique and sorrowful Heart of Jesus and Mary. But after this, we experienced the anguish of the total apostasy of a Church that says nothing and lets the faith of its priests and faithful weaken and die. What is more, it confounds and poisons the pure hearts and innocent souls of the faithful. All this added its own weight to our daily crosses…

And it is indeed for this reason that I write to you so earnestly. For we are on the eve of our pilgrimage to Turin, some of us physically, some in our hearts only. There we will see, venerate and adore the true and authentic "Soudarâ" of our Saviour. And we know that the world around us is in some way challenging us to proclaim our scientific certainty concerning this Shroud and our divine faith in Him who still shows Himself there, through His Precious spilt Blood, through the wounds of His most Holy Body, and finally through the unique look of His Holy Face!

Let us make reparation for this godless world and for our Church which is perhaps soon going to be corrected… and let us thank God for the signal grace received of being, during these days of darkness, the faithful adorers of His Son and Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Abbé Georges de Nantes.

THE LEAGUE

FOR THE HONOUR OF GOD

BEFORE TURIN

To ask for the grace of a fruitful pilgrimage from our Mediatrix: TRIDUUM OF PRAYERS.

• 1 MAY. PHALANGIST PILGRIMAGE TO NOTRE-DAME DE CHARTRES. Joyful Mysteries. Meet at Saint-Piat at 7am. Possible return to Maison Saint-Joseph on Saturday. But one must book.

• 2 MAY. Monthly retreat for the 1^st Saturday of the month. Sorrowful mysteries. Exercises of reparatory devotion.

• 3 MAY. Glorious mysteries. High Mass at 11am. Montly news conference. Finishes at 6pm.

AT TURIN

• 9 MAY. There will be 1,083 of us. We will be in excessive numbers everywhere: at the Cathedral to venerate the Holy Relic, in the canteen for breakfast, and in the coaches for travelling. It is the victory of the Holy Shroud!

In no way moved by the efforts of its adversaries – carbonari and arsonists, whose antichrist crime we have denounced and will continue to denounce unceasingly – we reject the prevaricating and improbable explanations that seek to reconcile the 1^st and 14^th centuries so as to cover this crime with a veil of impunity. For in our hearts we are certain of the genuineness of this Cloth, the truly authentic proof of the sorrowful death of Our Lord and of His glorious resurrection.

The CRC will publish a special edition to establish and make known the current state of the vexing question of the carbon-14 dating, the greatest act of treachery in the history of the Church, but also to proclaim our faith and our love, and to give an account of our pilgrimage and of the graces received by us and by the crowds throughout the fifty-three days of the display.

PENTECOST

• 30-31 MAY and 1 JUNE: THREE CRIMES.

Saturday THE FALSE SECRET OF FATIMA

Sunday THE BLASPHEMOUS GOSPEL

Monday THE DEICIDE ATTACK AGAINST THE HOLY SHROUD

This session of the Phalangist Communion will aim to involve us more in the threefold Crusade – Marian, Eucharistic, and Trinitarian – against the errors and impieties of this time of apostasy, and for the conversion and sanctification of our brothers, through the Mediation of the Immaculate, the Mother of us all, for ever!

There will follow a calm but fervent month:

• 6 and 7 JUNE, monthly retreat for the first Saturday of the month.

• 14 JUNE, solemnity of Corpus Christi.

• 21 JUNE, solemnity of the Feast of the Sacred Heart.

Then the camps will disperse, Maison Saint-Joseph acting as a base camp responsible for the logistics and general administration.

• 20 - 25 JULY: Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius.

"What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world,
if he should come to lose his soul?"

To ask the question is to give the answer... by enrolling for this retreat conducted in a new manner, already tried out last February. It unites the rigorous Ignatian method with the Salesian gentleness, taking account of the aspirations of the young people, eager to contemplate their great "problems" of the future.

RETREAT CAMP: THE HIDEOUS 18^th CENTURY
AND ITS ADMIRABLE SAINTS
OF THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION

• Friday, 21 August – Tuesday, 1 September

HOLY SHROUD DOSSIER

Le Monde / Thursday, 18 April 1998

An incontestable dating, according to the carbon 14 specialists

AMONG all the analyses of all the studies carried out on the shroud of Turin, the carbon 14 dating is by far the most capable of shaking the convictions – generally solidly established – of the upholders of the genuineness of this relic. Its results, made public on 13 October 1988 by Cardinal Anastasio Ballestrero, Archbishop of Turin, are definite: the linen used to weave this cloth was harvested at the end of the 13^th century or at the beginning of the 14^th century. More precisely, between 1283 and 1385.

How was this conclusion arrived at? Dating by radiocarbon is based on the degree of carbon 14 in the sample to be analysed. Formed in the upper atmosphere when cosmic rays interact with nitrogen, this radioactive isotope (a particular type of atom) of carbon is absorbed (in the form of carbon gas) by all living organisms, vegetable and animal. At the death of an organism, it is no longer renewed and its amount begins to reduce at a very precise rate: it diminishes by half every 5,570 years. One can thus date all organic matter by this device.

Very widely used by archaeologists, this technique has acquired a reliability that has continued grow over these last few years with the appearance of new instruments. This remarkable credibility does not however prevent certain controversies between archaeologists and physicists from continuing to exist (Le Monde for 15 April). The scientific authors of the analysis of the shroud – researchers from three independent specialist laboratories at Zurich (Switzerland), Oxford (Great Britain), and Tucson (United States), who worked under the direction of Michael Tite of the British Museum – attribute, for their part, a confidence level of 95% to their dating "margin". This coincides with the historical studies which make the first appearance of the shroud date back to 1355, at Lirey, near Troyes.

TWO RESEARCHERS WHO HAVE THEIR DOUBTS

This has not prevented members of the International Centre for Studies on the Shroud of Turin (Cielt) from developing a virulent counter-offensive. Referring to "methodological errors", they particularly question the appropriateness of the fragments of cloth submitted for examination. Taken from the fringes of the cloth, outside of the image of the crucified, these samples are alleged to be unconvincing specimens.

An American researcher, Leoncio Garza Valdes, and a Russian academic, Dimitri Kouznetsov, for their part stress that possible pollution could have falsified the dating results. The former considers that bacterial or viral deposits could have formed on the linen fibre a sort of bioplastic coating capable of contributing a supplement of carbon 14. And according to a thesis expounded by the second in 1993, at the Cielt congress in Paris, the fire in the chapel at Chambéry, which in 1532 melted the silver casket and damaged the cloth, could have "isotopically charged the shroud with carbon 14". In both of these cases, the cloth would thus have appeared to be more recent that in fact it is.

These doubts are not at all shared by Jacques Évin, the director of the centre of radiocarbon dating (CNRS, University of Lyons-I) and the organiser of the third international congress on carbon 14. The two hundred specialists of this technique, who had come from thirty countries to discuss its latest developments, seem to share his opinion. Although several contributions dealt with the controversies raised by certain datings, not one of these made any mention of the dating of the shroud.

For Jacques Évin, this is not surprising. "This result, obtained by the best processes of analysis, after a sample-removal effected in perfectly normal conditions, was published by the scientific review Nature. The methodology used and details about the isotopic analyses carried out by the three laboratories on the fragments of cloth have been amply described in this article, which incontestably establishes this result", he emphasises.

It is not astonishing that the exactitude of this result should be questioned, "so surprising does this date seem to those who think they see other proofs elsewhere of a much greater antiquity of this cloth and even of its genuineness", continues Jacques Évin. He considers, nevertheless, that these criticisms are "often raised by people who seem to be ignorant of the elementary principles of the depletion of carbon 14", and he emphasises that scientists who "put in doubt the stability of this method" are "not very well informed".

"For us, radiocarbon specialists, and for me in particular, a specialist in the carbon 14 dating of archaeological objects, the mediaeval dating of the shroud of Turin is not in any doubt", concludes the French expert. However, he is keen to emphasise, "it does not contribute anything to our knowledge of the way in which the image was formed".

J.-P.D. and H.T.

WE AGREE WITH YOU, MONSIEUR JACQUES ÉVIN

1. Concerning the dating of the Holy Shroud

We are old acquaintances, are we not? What you know of about the Holy Shroud, you got from Brother Bruno, and what he knows of the "trustworthiness" of the instruments, he learned from you. It was in agreement with you that we stated – but only in 1986 (CRC no 224, p.27, French ed.; no 192, p.26, English ed.) – that the new instruments were trustworthy and that one could now date the Holy Shroud with "a reliability of 95%", to use your words, and thus obtain "a five star result".

You have thus set yourself up before the entire world as the guarantor of the radiocarbon dating of the object on which is focused the eager attention of Catholics and – it must be stated – the instinctive or reasoned detestation of that other world, a materialist, atheist, secular, scientistic, and antichristian world, desirous of burning the object.

We too have confidence in your marvellous equipment, which has been perfectly mastered at Tucson, Zurich and Oxford. Indeed, having followed with eagle eyes the progress of the tested samples, we have applauded the excellent result of the three laboratories in their four datings. Each dating was of an unprecedented precision, and the principal one, the Holy Shroud, at Oxford "hit the bull's-eye! Average date (in years BP, before present): 1964 ± 20. Calendar dates: 68% reliability for 11-64 AD, and 95% reliability for 9 BC - 78 AD" !

It is marvellous; it is prodigious. Here we have the wherewithal to convert the world to Jesus Christ, crucified and resurrected, in a manner of speaking, on the control equipment terminals, televisions and magnetoscopes of the planet. You know this just as well as we do. And you know that the samples in tube 1, labelled "Holy Shroud", were transferred to tube 3, labelled "Egyptian mummy" where their traces, so to speak, still remain in the form of formal analytical records.

Detailed proof of all that I have just stated can be found in various publications by Brother Bruno (books, pamphlets, videos), and especially in the last special edition of the CRC (Easter 1997) to which we refer our readers. These irrefutable proofs are now accessible in English from the Internet site found at: http://freespace.virgin.net/crc.english [ed. this web site].

As for the legend about the year 1355, which you ignorant physicists believed – since you would not believe the least statement of the Gospels – on the word of this old Canon Ulysee Chevalier, a modernist in the style of a Renan or a Loisy, learn from us that it is historically untenable and that sample "number 1" failed to fit the bill because of the excessively clumsy scheming of the illustrious Tite, who right from the beginning made you march like a poodle in search of this 14^th century cloth, which neither he nor you could find.

2. Concerning the stupidities of "CIELT"

We also agree with you about the pseudo-defence of the Shroud's authenticity by this what's-its-name organisation, which invents quite ridiculous hypotheses in order to get the alleged ¹⁴C dating to agree with the date fixed on by the canon and, miraculously, with the date of the authentic Shroud of the years 20-30 of our era. You spell all this out complacently, giving yourself the satisfaction of knocking down an Aunt Sally. It impresses the crowd who applaud you, but you win nothing from it. These people work on your behalf. They work against us alone... we who are your only lucid accusers.

3. Concerning the silence of the two hundred specialists (200 !)

As regards the most interesting study object of their speciality, which was at the centre of their first two International Congresses on carbon 14 dating, you will have to explain yourself. Especially since the traitors of CIELT have already observed the same orders in their Congress at Nice.

As a recycled Catholic, you will not be able to render a greater service to the secular and antichrist world to which you belong than by preventing your fine and noble machines from working on our behalf and in accordance with our conclusions about your acts of treachery. Excellent machines, crooked operators.

Georges de Nantes.