London - Evidence from the Turin Shroud shows that Christ died of a heart attack after suffering intense pain, according to a leading forensic expert.
Prof Pierluigi Baima Bollone, head of the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Turin University, says he has carried out an "autopsy at arm's length" of the person whose image was left on the shroud. According to the Catholic Herald he told a congress of shroud specialists in Turin that the purported burial cloth of Christ showed the final cause of death was the result of a "number of factors". He said: "On top of fatigue, the pain of 19 hours of torture, shock, dehydration and mechanical asphyxiation from being crucified, [Christ] finally suffered from a terminal cardiac ischemia."