austraLasia #2437

A new code-breaking thriller by DB
or, Don Bosco and the Body of St Joseph

WHANGEREI (New Zealand): 10th June 2009 -- Move over Dan Brown! A DVD has surfaced, all 118 minutes of it, called 'Don Bosco and the location of the Body of St Joseph'.  Really!  Really, that is, in the sense that the DVD exists and takes us through incredible links between two major paintings in the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians in Turin, a mystic's belief that "one day the body of St Joseph will be found incorrupt to the rejoicing of the Universal Church" (Belgian mystic, Fr Paul of Moll 1824-1896), and more satisfying twists and turns than a licorice factory.
    The DVD is the work of a certain Arthur Skinner who lives in Whangerei, New Zealand.  (Place name pronounced 'Fangerei', for all non-Kiwis). He has spent six years studying the painting behind the main altar in Turin and another painting by the same artist, Tommaso Lorenzoni, of St Joseph, located in a side altar. It is on the basis of his study of every possible symbolic element in the two paintings combined that leads Skinner to believe that Don Bosco is somehow giving us a map where 'x' ultimately marks the spot, and yes, at the end of these 118 minutes, 'habeas corpus'!
    It gets better. While there's no Mona Lisa smile involved, and even less murder, one fact is that MHC is Patroness of Australia and New Zealand. Skinner's DVD displays the two Lorenzoni paintings clearly enough, so you can see all the detail. She is not the Madonna of the Rocks, but Skinner's study allows him to interpret a St Joseph of the rock - the rock is Australia. Fact or fiction? We are talking about the figure of St Joseph in the Main Altar painting in Turin, holding a rock. Take a look next time you view the painting. This much is right. It goes a little further: the two hands of St Joseph, if one traces their outline, are the North and South Island of New Zealand, says Skinner.  As one who has looked at the 'real' painting many times, this is the first time it has become anywhere near obvious to me that the rock is Australia, but now that he mentions it.......  as for NZ, well, a Kiwi, I think, might identify it, so for now we'll accept that claim too. All this is an aside, in the sense that the Aussie-NZ connection does not actually have much to do with the location of the Body of St Joseph. Some will be relieved to know that.
    Assuming that the reader is desperately hoping to get to the point, to 'x', to the body, let's skip a little of the detail.  After all, it is not so easy to get all 118 minutes of complex explanation of puzzles and codes in things we thought we knew well but obviously didn't into a brief news item like this.  The nub of the argument is that Don Bosco (or Lorenzoni?) has built in an intricate symbolism of opposites, and to give Skinner his due, his explanation of these opposites is perhaps the best lesson one will ever have on the painting that Don Bosco placed so much store on and which has been recently and lovingly restored.  The opposites, intended or imagined, seem to be there, once pointed out.
    It all leads to Rome, via some classic artistic code, and this is where we really have to skip lots of details, but the figures in the Turin painting are all depicted inside or outside St Peter's, in positions that one way or another, as Skinner painstakingly points out, mirror the Turin painting, and finally zoom into 'x'. Don Bosco's close connections with Rome, with Pius IX in particular, are not missed in all this.
    So where is the body?  We all know that Don Bosco stands above St Peter, and Pius IX is there too.  What we possibly did not know is that this huge, many-sided column, crowned by St Mark at the top, with St Longinus there too (all these characters are associated one way or another with the Turin painting) way back in time was the location of a small church. 
    Beneath the 'floorboards' of the now totally encased-in-the-column remains of that Church we will find the Body of St. Joseph!  'X' marks the spot, even if we have not been able to do justice to 'x' in all of the above. I'll have to watch the video again to catch how it is that St. Joseph's body ends up in Rome, and it will include the need to read Ezekiel and a couple of other biblical passages, I think, plus some imaginative stretch of the Loreto to Ephesus kind.
    Make what you will of it.  This writer got bored with The Da Vinci Code somewhere between Castel St Angelo and St Peter's, but despite the lack of murder and no little teasers of romance, the trip from Turin to Rome via Australia and New Zealand with another DB has been a real romp.
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Title: australasia 2437
Subject and key words: SDB General Don Bosco and the Body of St Joseph
Date (year): 2009
ID: 2000-2099|2437