Before being selected as the site of the 2006 Winter Olympics, the Italian city of Turino was probably best known to Christians as the location of the Shroud of Turin. The Shroud, with its image of a first-century crucified man, is believed by many to be the burial cloth of Christ and will doubtless be on the minds of more than a few of the estimated 1.5 million Olympic tourists.
Unfortunately, the Shroud won't be on display during the Olympics, since its next scheduled public viewing will be in 2025. However, tourists may view a full-length photographic reproduction just inside the door of the Cattedrale di San Giovanni Battista Duomo (Cathedral of St. John the Baptist), where the Shroud has been kept since 1983. A Museum of The Holy Shroud west of the Cathedral on Via San Domenico offers a short film on the cloth's markings and numerous books and photographs taken when the Shroud was last unveiled in 2000.
Sindonologist
"The Shroud is in such excellent shape, it's almost unbelieveable," said Los Angeles liturgical artist Isabel Piczek, a noted sindonologist (Shroud expert), who was one of nearly one million --- including 112,874 visitors from 170 countries --- who visited the Cathedral during the two-and-a-half-month Shroud exhibition in 2000.
It was Piczek's second of three Shroud viewings. The first time was in 1998 with a group of sindonologists during the 100th celebration of the first photos taken of the Shroud by amateur Italian photographer, Secondo Pia. After Pia's film negatives showed startling detail of the faint image on the cloth, noted Piczek, people realized there was "more to the Shroud" than most imagined. "The photos showed an image of a flesh and blood man," she declared.
In 2002, she was with a group of 42 scientists and experts allowed to view the amber-colored, herringbone weave linen burial cloth. "The Shroud has a tremendous impact on people," said Piczek. "I have seen scientists break down and cry upon seeing it. Even Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) said something grabbed him when he saw it. It creates converts very easily."
According to Piczek, the Shroud is displayed within a framed glass, climate-controlled, 18 feet long-by-4.5 feet wide rectangular box housed in a metal sarcophagus located underneath the Turin cathedral's royal balcony. Motorized gears lift the encased Shroud to an upright position during exhibitions.
She hopes to glimpse the Shroud again soon while attending the 500th anniversary of the Guardian Association of the Holy Shroud with other sindonologists in Turin on May 4, the Shroud's feast day established by Pope Julius II in 1506. Shroud caretakers may arrange for a private viewing in honor of the occasion celebrating a half-century of continuous guardian protection.
So. Calif. Shroud Center
August Accetta, MD, founder of the Shroud Center of Southern California in Fountain Valley, said interest in the Shroud has grown tremendously since he opened his center in 1996 for exhibition and research. Funding 70 percent of the $2,000 monthly rent out of his own pocket, Accetta believes scientific evidence is compelling that the Shroud is Christ's burial linen.
"I do believe it's Jesus' burial cloth based on all scientific data combined with the process of elimination because no evidence exists for a natural explanation for the causality of the Shroud image," said Accetta, a parishioner at St. Bonaventure Church in Huntington Beach. He has published four peer-reviewed papers on the Shroud focusing on nuclear imaging.
On the shroud center website, Accetta explains the Shroud image exhibits 3-D anatomical structures "clearly not in contact with the cloth, e.g., thus suggesting a type of autoradiograph (X-Ray). Medical radiation imaging has, by far, come the closest to reproducing the totality of the image. Yet, the Shroud image remains an unduplicatable mystery."
"As a medical doctor, there's no question the image came from a real body," said Accetta. "Forsenic experts know the body was only in the cloth for 36-40 hours --- it left the Shroud in an unnatural way…there's no evidence of mechanical force separation." Accetta said other facts, including the advanced age of the cloth, pollen traces linking it to Jerusalem and the image's facial similarities to early icons of Jesus bolster the belief that the body in the Shroud was Christ's.
Accetta, who returned to the Catholic faith of his youth in 1997 after years of studying the Shroud, is planning for an international Shroud conference at U.C. Irvine's Bren Center in the spring of 2007. Cosponsored by American, French and Mexican scientific Shroud groups, conference organizers hope to draw experts from over 30 countries and a few thousand participants.
"There's enormous evidence for the body being that of Jesus Christ," said Accetta.
The Shroud Center of Southern California is open from 1-4 p.m. every Sat. and Sun. and on weekdays by appointment. It's located at 8840 Warner Ave. on the second floor of the Warner Plaza Building in Fountain Valley. Requested donation: $8 adult; $3 children 12 and under. For further information on the Shroud, log on to www.shroud.com. |