World

Thousands Flock To Turin, Italy

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

August 12, 2000 / 4:02 PM EDT / CBS

The controversial linen which some Catholics believe is Christ's burial cloth went on display on Saturday as Church officials said there may be future tests to unravel its enduring mystery.

The fragile Shroud of Turin, which some scientists believe is a fantastic medieval fake, will remain on display in the Turin Cathedral until Oct 22 -- the longest period that it has ever been visible to the public.

The yellowing cloth, measuring 14.5 feet by 3.9 feet, bears the inexplicable image -- eerily reversed like a photographic negative -- of a crucified man.

CBS News Correspondent Sabina Castelfranco reports the first to view the shroud were thousands of young people from around the world in Italy for next week's World Youth Day celebrations with Pope John Paul in Rome.

It shows the back and front of a bearded man with long hair, his arms crossed on his chest, while the entire cloth is marked by what appears to be rivulets of blood from wounds in the wrists, feet and side.

The display, the first of the new millennium, will open to the general public on Sunday. The shroud, which is usually kept rolled up in an ornate silver casket, has only been displayed four times in the entire 20th century.

The last exhibit, in 1998, attracted two million visitors and the linen is not expected to be exhibited again until 2025.

Carbon dating tests carried out by laboratories in Oxford, Zurich and Tucson, Arizona in 1988 caused a sensation by indicating that the shroud dated from between 1260 and 1390 - implying it was a fake and could not be Christ's burial cloth.

But scientists are at a loss to explain how the image was left on the cloth. Most agree it could not have been painted or printed.

Some scientists have said the 1988 tests may have been faulty and that the results may have been corrupted by bacteria encrusted on the shroud over the centuries.

Many in the scientific community have called for new dating tests using techniques not available 12 years ago.

At a news conference before the shroud went on display in a glass case filled with inert gas, Monsignor Giuseppe Chiberti said he had been authorized by his bishop "to gather proposals for new tests."

"The Church is not afraid of science," said Turin Archbishop Severino Poletto, official custodian of the shroud, which is believed to have been brought to Europe from the Middle East during the Crusades in the mid-14th century.

"I believe science must follow its course as far as new tests an investigations are concerned," explained Poletto. "They do not depend on me but on the Holy Father, because (the shroud) belongs to the Holy Father. I am only the custodian. There is no doubt that the Church has no fear from science because our faith is not based on the shroud."

The Catholic Church does not claim the shroud is authentic but the Pope, who viewed it in 1998, has said it should be a powerful reminder of Christ's passion and of the sufering of people in the world today.

Pope John Paul II has asked the scientific community to keep an open mind about the linen as they try to unravel the mystery of how the image could have been left on the cloth.

Italy's former royal family, the Savoys, brought the shroud to their seat in Turin in 1578 and remained its owners until 1983 when ex-King Umberto II bequeathed it to the current Pope.

The shroud narrowly escaped destruction in 1997 when a fire ravaged the Turin cathedral. It was saved by a courageous fireman who risked his life.