by D. Trull
Enigma Editor
dtrull@parascope.com
On April 19, 1998, the Shroud of Turin went on public display for the first time in 20 years. This is only the fourth open exhibition of the controversial holy relic in this century, following rare showings held in 1931, 1933 and 1978. The event was timed to mark the 500th anniversary of the consecration of Turin's San Giovanni Cathedral. On April 11, 1997, almost exactly one year before the exhibit's opening, the Shroud emerged unscathed from a fire that gutted the cathedral. Extensive repairs on the cathedral were recently completed, and the Shroud returned to its longtime home just four days before going on display.
The 14-foot-long, 4-foot-wide linen cloth is mounted in an airtight enclosure between two glass panels, with sophisticated computer systems regulating the temperature and humidity inside. The Shroud's current exhibition will be brief, running for eight weeks through June 14, being on display each day from 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Admission is free, but there are only a limited number of reservations available. Before the exhibit opened, more than 800,000 people had called a special toll-free number to request tickets. A total of about 2 million visitors are expected. To keep the crowd traffic flowing, visitors are being permitted to view the Shroud for only two minutes. One spectator who will be exempt from this limitation is Pope John Paul II, who is scheduled to visit on May 24, with the exhibit closed to the public for the day.
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The Shroud of Turin: Messiah Memorex? |
The controversy over the Shroud's authenticity has raged over the past century, and still very little is known about the artifact for certain. Scientists have determined that there are traces of actual blood in the fabric, belonging to a male human being, type AB. Marking on the Shroud's image match the description of injuries Christ suffered on the cross, including a crown of thorns and a wound in the side. The image is resistant to heat and seems to be indelible, and it remains a mystery how it was imprinted into the cloth. It was not simply painted or printed as some have suggested, and attempts to reproduce an image with similar properties have been unsuccessful.
Recent months have brought forth new claims that the cloth is genuine. Much of the current debate centers on a series of carbon-dating tests conducted in 1988 by scientists in Oxford, Zurich and Tucson, Arizona. Those tests concluded that the cloth's age could be dated back to between 1260 and 1390, which led to a new consensus among experts that the Shroud of Turin was a medieval hoax.
Believers in the Shroud have long disputed the findings of these tests. Many have argued that the carbon-dating procedures could have been thrown off by contaminants that have collected in the fabric over the centuries, such as the substantial smoke damage it sustained during a disastrous fire in 1532. Others have suggested that the cloth sample used in the tests was taken from a corner of the Shroud that has been repaired many times over the years, and thus was not representative of the original Shroud's age. It has even been postulated that some metaphysical energy discharged from Christ's body during the Resurrection could have transformed the Shroud's composition enough to confound scientific tests.
Now there is further evidence to indicate that the Shroud dates back to the time of Christ. Dr. Leoncio Garza-Valdes and Professor Stephen Mattingly, microbiologists at the University of Texas, have announced their findings that bacteria impregnated into the Shroud's fibers have distorted past attempts at carbon-dating. Along similar lines, author Ian Wilson has written a book entitled The Blood and the Shroud, whose hypothesis is that a buildup of fungi in the cloth contaminated the 1988 test results.
Another foreign substance found in the Shroud is being touted in and of itself as proof of the cloth's authenticity. Professor Avinoam Danin, a botanist at Hebrew University in Israel, has discovered that pollen and traces of plant life found in the Shroud's fabric are a match for flora unique to Jerusalem at the time of Christ. Twenty-seven of the 28 plant species identified in the Shroud are indigenous to the Holy Land, a combination that Danin says could not be present in the cloth unless the Shroud came from that area.
These new suggestions that the Shroud may truly be the burial cloth of Christ have figured heavily in the promotional publicity heralding the 1998 exhibition. News reports have lavished coverage on the arguments against the carbon-dating tests as part of a Turin Shroud media frenzy in Italy. Images of the Shroud are plastered everywhere, and vendors are hawking T-shirts, wristwatches and other tacky souvenirs bearing the ghostly face of Christ. Italy's national railway corporation is offering a 15 percent discount on round trips to Turin to passengers with a ticket for the exhibit.
And it's not just the secular community that's getting in on Shroudmania: a high-tech "multimedia work" depicting the Shroud's image has gone on display at Turin's San Domenico church. The archbishop of Turin, Cardinal Giovanni Saldarini, has expressed dismay over the hype and commercialization surrounding the Shroud exhibit. He noted his disapproval of seeing the face of Christ being "put on a par with... a Pink Floyd concert." Yet it just so happens that Saldarini has taken the extraordinary step of announcing a "Shroud special" of his own: he decreed that any Roman Catholic priest who visits the Shroud can absolve women of "the sin of abortion" during the time that the shroud is on display. Voluntary abortion ordinarily requires the intervention of a bishop to obtain absolution, but during this limited-time offer, it's absolve all you want, apparently. Forgiveness good while supplies last.
As one final tidbit of Shroud weirdness in the news, several efforts are currently underway to create a fictional account of the cloning of Jesus Christ from DNA samples in the Shroud of Turin. In this age of Jurassic Park and Dolly the sheep, it was inevitable that this story would be told. There are plans for a film production in Britain, with the project tentatively titled Clone. But the Internet has already beaten Hollywood to the punch: an online "cyber-novel" called Wonder Child details the speculative saga of the Shroud enabling a genetically-engineered Second Coming.
For more details on the 1998 exhibition, consult The Shroud of Turin Web Site, an unofficial but authoritative site featuring complete information on the exhibit and advice on how to attend. If you're disappointed because you won't be able to make it during the two-month showing, don't give up hope: the Shroud is scheduled to go on exhibit again in just two years. It will be displayed as part of the Roman Catholic Church's celebration of the year 2000, which has been decreed Holy Year in observance of the dawn of Christianity's third millennium.
Sources: The Shroud of Turin Web Site; Associated Press reports; Electronic Telegraph reports.
© Copyright 1998 ParaScope, Inc.
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