Its home since the 16th century: The Shroud of Turin in the Turin, Italy, cathedral on Saturday. The icon featured prominently in Pope Francis’ Easter address. (AFP/Getty Images)
Something remarkable happened in Rome this week at the intersection of faith and science: Pope Francis’ televised Easter message to the world included footage of the Shroud of Turin — which many believe to the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, although its authenticity is disputed.
The pope didn’t take a position, calling the sacred object an “icon,” not a “relic” — an important distinction in Catholic theology. Rather, he simply observed, “This image, impressed upon the cloth, speaks to our heart. This disfigured face 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.”
But science also weighed in, with the news that researchers now believe that the shroud — brought to France from the Crusades sometime in the 14th century and housed in Turin since the late 16th century—most likely dates from the 1st century AD. It’s not, as earlier researchers claimed, a forgery from the Middle Ages.
The shroud is a 14-foot rectangular woven cloth that bears the faint image of a crucified man, both front and back. The man has all the wounds suffered by the biblical Christ at the crucifixion, including the crown of thorns, the scourging, the nailed wrists and feet and the wound in the side.
Barely visible to the naked eye, the genuine image was revealed only accidentally, in 1898, when Italian photographer Secondo Pia was allowed to photograph the shroud for the first time. In developing the negative plates, Pia discovered to his shock and amazement that the reversed image on the cloth was now fully visible.
Since then, the shroud has been an object of veneration for some and an object of derision for others.
The case for its authenticity was dealt a serious blow in 1988 when, after much wrangling with the Vatican, a team of scientists was permitted to snip off and destroy for radio-carbon testing a small piece from a corner of the shroud. The results, announced with great fanfare, seemed to prove that it dated only from 1260-1390, and thus couldn’t be real.
But questions quickly arose about the piece of fabric that had been tested. Critics said the results were inaccurate, because the piece of cloth was not an original part of the shroud, but a repair and reweave done after it sustained some medieval fire damage.
The latest results seem to bear them out. A team from the University of Padua, based on infrared radiation analysis, has determined that the shroud dates from the period 280 BC to 220 AD — i.e., right at the time when Jesus is said to have lived.
Then there are its unearthly properties: Scientists still have no explanation for how the shroud’s image was imprinted on the cloth (it’s not painted on), and have been reduced to speculating about some sort of spontaneous radioactive event that fused the image with the fibers.
For now, the Vatican is taking no official position on the shroud’s authenticity; its designation as an icon (an image) rather than a relic (a sacred artifact) attests to that. Still, Pope Francis’ public appearance with the shroud on Easter indicates its symbolic importance to the former Cardinal Bergoglio.
It also fits right in with what is emerging as the centerpiece of the Argentine pope’s ministry: a fierce identification with the poor and downtrodden, and a restoration of the Catholic faith to its humble mendicant origins.
Already, Francis has spurned the luxurious papal apartments for a simple hotel suite, and has given the papal summer retreat, the Castel Gandolfo, to his retired predecessor, Benedict XVI, to use while his new residence is being readied.
The shroud, said the pope, “lets a pure and calm energy shine through and it seems to say to us: “Trust and don’t to lose hope.” Whatever the truth about the shroud ultimately turns out to be, that’s a message everybody can agree on.