The Greatest Love

AS THE first capital of a newly united Italian nation in 1861, the northern city of Turin was the country’s most important political and cultural centre. It was internationally famed for its elegant parks, piazzas and museums, including the landmark Mole Antonelliana, the tallest museum in the world, now housing the national museum of cinema. A century later, it became known as the powerhouse for Italy’s industrial revolution, home to the Fiat car company and a major aerospace centre. But if you ask most people, Catholic or not, what word they associate with this city, they’ll probably think for a moment and then reply: “The Shroud of Turin.”

 

Controversial relic

 

The subject of much scientific research and heated debate, the Shroud is a 14-foot-long strip of woven linen cloth containing the faint image of a bearded man with wounds corresponding closely to the Biblical accounts of Jesus’ Crucifixion. For many devout believers of different Christian traditions, the ancient Shroud is the burial cloth that was used to wrap the lifeless body of Christ, with the signs of his Passion impressed into the cloth when the body was resting in the closed tomb. For skeptics, on the other hand, it’s an elaborate medieval forgery, though so far no-one has been able to fathom the techniques that were used to produce the striking image, which is much clearer in black and white photo negatives than in the natural sepia colour visible to the naked eye.

 

Public display

 

The earliest historical records of the Shroud date back to the mid-14th century, though there are many legends from earlier periods, just as there are other objects in different areas of the world claimed as part of the burial cloth of Christ. What is certain is that the Shroud was given to the Royal House of Savoy in 1453 and kept in a chapel in the regional capital of Chambéry, where it suffered significant damage during a fire in 1532. Melting silver from the reliquary it was kept in produced symmetrical burn marks on the folded cloth, which were then painstakingly patched up by a group of Poor Clare sisters. In 1578 the Shroud was brought to Turin, where it has undergone other restoration efforts and more recently has been subject to detailed scientific analysis to try and determine its origins. It is currently kept in a bulletproof and climate controlled container in Turin’s Cathedral, where it will go on public display from April 19 to June 24 with the theme: The Greatest Love. Among the several million pilgrims and visitors expected to come and see the Shroud during this rare public exhibition is Pope Francis, who announced last November that he’d be visiting the city on June 21 to mark the bicentennial of the birth of the Italian saint Don (John) Bosco, founder of the Salesian order and champion of poor street children.

 

Mirror of the Gospel

 

This won’t be the Argentinian Pope first ‘encounter’ with the mysterious image, described by his predecessor, Benedict XVI, as “an icon of Holy Saturday” and by Saint John Paul II as “a mirror of the Gospel.” Just ten days after his election in March 2013, Pope Francis released a video message to coincide with the first televised footage of the Shroud in four decades. Reflecting on the closed eyes of the face imprinted on the cloth, the Pope noted how he seems to be watching us and speaking to us in silence. The Man of the Shroud, he said, “invites us to contemplate Jesus of Nazareth,” moving our hearts “to climb the hill of Calvary, to look upon the wood of the Cross, and to immerse ourselves in the eloquent silence of love.”

But beyond this reminder of Jesus’ own suffering and death for our salvation, the Pope also echoed the words of his Polish predecessor describing the Shroud as an icon of suffering in our contemporary world. Although we may never uncover its true identity, Pope Francis said the disfigured face on the Shroud “also resembles all those faces of men and women marred by a life which does not respect their dignity, by war and violence which afflict the weakest.”

 

Stunning images

 

This dual nature, human and divine, represented by the Man of the Shroud goes a long way to explaining why the ancient burial cloth continues to fascinate both scientists and people of faith in countries around the world. The precise anatomical details of the image on the cloth first came to light with the invention of photography at the end of the 19th century. An Italian lawyer and amateur photographer called Secondo Pia was the first person permitted to photograph the Shroud in May 1898 during celebrations marking the 400th anniversary of the cathedral. Using a portable generator and two electric lamps, Pia took several exposures of the faint image, and then carried them down to a darkroom to develop the photographic plates. What he saw as the negative images took shape nearly caused him to drop the plates on the floor, as he stared at the features, the torso and limbs of the man that had barely been glimpsed before. As perhaps was to be expected, he was accused of doctoring or enhancing the pictures, but it was not until 1931 that a professional photographer, Giuseppe Enrie, was given the chance to take some more shots of the Shroud and show that his findings supported the work of Pia more than three decades earlier.

 

Professor Zaccone

 

Two decades later a team of American scientists were given permission to carry out a detailed examination of the material, but came up with no reliable evidence of how the image had been produced. Ten years later, in 1988, small samples of the Shroud were given to three laboratories at Oxford University in England, the University of Arizona in the United States and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. All three used the latest carbon dating techniques and agreed that the cloth originated in the Middle Ages, between 1260 and 1390. The value of those findings, however, has since been contested by a number of experts, who have cast doubts on the methodology used to analyse the relic. The fabric of the Shroud is highly diverse in nature according to its position on the relic, but the small samples that were analysed were all drawn from the same marginal area of the cloth. However, according to the scientific director of the Shroud Museum, people who come to visit the ancient icon are not really drawn by the question of whether or not it can be scientifically proved that it dates from the first century. Professor Gian Maria Zaccone says that in recent decades the Shroud’s spiritual appeal seemed to be overshadowed by concerns about proving the authenticity of its origins. Yet he points out that it was Pope Paul VI who, during a previous televised exhibition of the Shroud in 1973, spoke of its significance for the Church, which goes well beyond any scientific results.

 

The Shroud Museum

 

During his visit to Turin in 1998, a hundred years after Secondo Pia took his first photographs, Saint Pope John Paul II continued to develop the relationship between science and faith, saying “the Church has no specific competence to pronounce” on the scientific questions, but instead “entrusts to scientists the task of continuing to investigate” the mysteries of the “sacred linen.” For the believer, the Polish Pope went on, “what counts above all is that the Shroud is a mirror of the Gospel” and an “image of human suffering.”

Professor Zaccone told me, “Providentially for believers, the Shroud was placed along the path of history so that humanity may be challenged by it. It was given to us so that we may look at it with the eyes of the body and contemplate it with the eyes of the mind. Without human beings the Shroud could not exist in all its complexity and completeness. In any case the Shroud would be of no value at all if it were not, as Saint Pope John Paul said, ‘the mirror of the Gospel,’ in other words, if it did not point in such an extraordinary way to Christ: without Christ the Shroud simply would not exist. To look at the Shroud through the eyes of faith means to meditate, through it, on the great mystery of the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ: the fundamental elements of the Catholic faith.”

However, the way this cloth points to the life of the Son of God is also the reason, Professor Zaccone went on to say, why academics over the past century have encountered problems and been accused of letting religion interfere with their scientific research. The director of the Shroud Museum cites the example of the agnostic French professor Yves Delage, who, in 1902, first described the formation and characteristics of the image on the cloth to the Science Academy in Paris, but was criticised for arguing in favour of its authenticity.

 

Numerous attractions

 

The museum, staffed mainly by volunteers, contains both scientific and historical objects and artefacts related to the past five centuries of the Shroud’s presence in Turin. They include 3D images and photographs of microscopic traces of pollen and textiles that have been extracted from the cloth and studied to try and better understand its origins. Among its most treasured possessions is the original casket in which the Shroud arrived in the city in 1578, as well as the 16th-century silver reliquary in which it was stored until 1998. Visitors can also see the original camera with which Secondo Pia took the first photos of the cloth, together with numerous engravings, artworks, books, plus a multilingual and multimedia presentation illustrating the ‘photographic history of the Shroud.’

 

Pilgrim of faith and love

 

As scientific director of the museum, Professor Zaccone says the exhibits are not designed to “convince anybody of anything,” but that they can be an aid to believers in deepening their faith.

He sees his job as one of exploring what the Shroud of Turin has meant for people down the centuries since its first recorded appearance, and to help others understand the significance of this tradition of popular piety and devotion. He says it’s vital to see that we too are “heirs of this tradition” and members of “a great global community” which has seen, witnessed and discovered a unique spiritual experience, contained within “this extraordinary image” of the Man of the Shroud.

The visit of Pope Francis to Turin, Professor Zaccone concludes, will be a moment of shared contemplation and another chance to deepen our understanding of the mysterious icon. That view is echoed by the Archbishop of Turin, Cesare Nosiglia, who is the official custodian of the Shroud. During a press conference announcing the Pope’s trip, he said the Holy Father comes as “a pilgrim of faith and of love.” Like his predecessors did, the Archbishop said, “Pope Francis confirms the devotion to the Shroud that millions of pilgrims recognise as a sign of the mystery of the passion and death of Our Lord.”

Visitors to the city who wish to see the Shroud during its public exhibition should go to the multi-lingual website www.sindone.it where they can find out more about the museum and book a free visit to the cathedral for individuals and groups.