The one thing visitors won’t see during the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin, Italy, is perhaps the attraction the host city is most famous for – the Shroud of Turin.
But the Catholic Church – which owns the Shroud, the linen cloth many believe Jesus Christ was buried in before his resurrection – announced in 2000 the next public display will not be until 2025. Until then, the Shroud will continue to be stored in the Capella della Santa Sindone (Chapel of the Holy Shroud) inside the Duomo di San Giovanni (Cathedral of St. John the Baptist).
Since being bequeathed the Shroud by ex-King Umberto II of Savoy upon his death in 1983, the Catholic Church has continued the tradition of showing the Shroud only a few times each century, partly because of the damage caused by exposure to light and air, but also for security reasons.
“Imagine especially, how difficult it would be to do this during the Olympics,” said Barrie Schwortz, who since 1996 has run shroud.com, a website devoted to all things Shroud-related. “You’ve got a trillion people coming for other reasons, and the cost to the city for trying to set up additional security would be astronomical.”
Schwortz, a photographer and videographer who lives in Los Angeles, took part in the first scientific examination of the Shroud in 1978 and was the official photographer of the cloth. He since has been sought for his expertise, a concept he finds ironic considering he is Jewish.
“I’ve always thought I’m an example of God’s sense of humor,” Schwortz said, chuckling during a phone interview from his loft in L.A. “Send in the Jew to be the messenger. The sad news is, of course, they always kill the messenger when the news is bad.”
Because the Shroud is so controversial, the news has alternated between good and bad since the beginning. While it is rumored to have been a gift from one of Jesus’ disciples to King Abgar V and kept in Iraq for more than 1,000 years, the first reference to it came in 1355, in Lirey, France, when it showed up in a church and appeared to depict a man wearing a thorny crown, with wounds on his wrists, his front, back and right sides.
It was stolen by French knight Geoffrey de Charny during the Fourth Crusades and stayed in France – scorched but surviving a fire in 1532 – until 1535, when it was taken to Piedmont after an invasion by Savoy troops. It came to Turin in 1578, where, with a few exception, it has since remained.
Italian Secondo Pia first photographed the Shroud in 1898, but it was not until 1978 that scientists were given a shot at it, when the United States-based Shroud of Turin Research Project, of which Schwortz was a member, was given 120 hours to examine the cloth from every angle.
In 1988, the Shroud was carbon-dated and determined to be a fake, a finding that since has been discounted by numerous scientists who maintain the sample and the results were flawed. The Catholic Church, however, has refused to allow the Shroud to be carbon-dated again.
As for Schwortz, who is featured in a documentary titled “Unraveling the Shroud” that is tentatively scheduled to air Dec. 19 on the History Channel, he believes the Shroud is the real deal.
“It took me 18 years of studying the thing, of seeing it with my own eyes, to come to that conclusion,” Schwortz said. “The funny thing is, I don’t have a horse in this race, you know? But there’s one thing, one piece of science that will put this thing to bed, and that would be proper carbon-dating, but that’s not going to happen. Not in my lifetime, I don’t think.”
Travel editor Kyle Wagner can be reached at 303-820-1599 or travel@denverpost.com.
