Police cars are positioned in front of Turin's Cathedral a day before the display of the Holy Shroud, the long linen with the faded image of a bearded man which has been the object of centuries-old fascination and wonderment, in Turin, Italy, Friday, April 9, 2010. That testing didn't explain how the image of the shroud - of a man with wounds similar to those suffered by Christ - was formed. His balanced instruction reflected a Vatican tiptoe around the issue of just what the cloth is, calling it a powerful symbol of Christ's suffering while making no claim on its authenticity.Ī Vatican researcher said late last year that faint writing on the linen, which she studied through computer-enhanced images, proves the cloth was used to wrap Jesus' body after his crucifixion.īut experts stand by carbon-dating of scraps of the cloth that determine the linen was made in the 13th or 14th century in a kind of medieval forgery. In a major papal pronouncement about the shroud, the late pope asked experts to study it without preconceptions using "scientific methodology" while keeping in mind the "sensibility of the faithful." "A challenge to the intelligence" is how John Paul II defined the cloth in 1998 when he journeyed to Turin to view it. Taking off the patches allowed the linen to be fully extended and let restorers smooth out creases in what for centuries had been a rolled-up cloth, making for what restorers hope will be better preservation. Since the linen's previous showing a decade earlier, restorers have removed patches sewn on by nuns in 1534, two years after a fire damaged the case then holding the it, Shroud Museum director Gian Maria Zaccone said in an interview with Associated Press Television News. But, as city officials recently put it, in a nod to the "importance to the economy and employment" of this city that is automaker Fiat's hometown, they allowed that is being billed as the "first showing of the new millennium." The shroud went on display in 1998 after a 20-year-wait and then in 2000 during Millennium celebrations.Ĭhurch officials resisted putting the cloth on display when tourists poured into Turin in 2006 for the Winter Olympics. But recent decades have seen much shorter intervals. Traditionally, the public gets a peek at the 14-foot-long, 3.5-foot-wide cloth only once every 25 years. That number doesn't include Pope Benedict XVI, who will fly up to Turin, Piedmont's capital, in northwest Italy, on May 2 for a day trip to pray before the shroud.
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