GARDEN GROVE, Calif. – An interactive museum dedicated to the Shroud of Turin, believed by some to be the burial cloth of Jesus, opens its doors to the public Wednesday on the campus of Christ Cathedral in Southern California.
“The Shroud of Turin: An Immersive Experience,” a $5 million exhibit in Garden Grove featuring movie theaters with 360-degree projection rooms, replicas of the Shroud of Turin, interactive kiosks and a life-size sculpture of Christ, was conceived over three years and funded by private donations.
The content was created primarily by Othonia, Inc., a Roman group dedicated to researching the shroud, one of the most studied artifacts in history. The original is a fabric that is 14 feet long and 3.5 feet wide (4.3 meters and 1 meter wide). Stored in a climate-controlled bulletproof case kept in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy.
The 10,000-square-foot (930-square-meter) California museum contains a life-size laminated image of the shroud stretched onto a wall. It depicts a weak image of a man with wounds similar to those of Christ.
The Vatican has called the fabric a powerful symbol of Christ's suffering, without claiming its authenticity. Many experts support radiocarbon dating the scraps of fabric from which they date to the 13th or 14th century, but many believers, including some seasoned scientists, say the results may have been skewed by contamination and are calling for larger samples to be analyzed. Many claim that the fabric contains pollen from Jerusalem and is woven in a pattern unique to the first century.
The fabric, which was considered a relic by many Christians, was last time on display in the spring of 2015. While the shroud may never leave Turin, the new exhibition will remain until at least 2030 on the Christ Cathedral campus, next to the famous glass tower and shrine erected by the televangelist. Robert H. Schuller it's now home of the Catholic Diocese of Orange.
The Rev. Timothy Freyer, auxiliary bishop of the diocese, said he hopes the exhibit will reinforce to visitors the power of God's love for all.
“I hope that people with faith will have stronger faith, people who doubt will come to faith, and people without faith will start asking questions and then come to faith,” he said.
One of the highlights of the immersive experience is the reenactment of Christ's resurrection on Easter morning, when museum visitors sit in the tomb and watch the shrouded body disappear in a flash of light. The exhibition also features replicas of the spear believed to have pierced Christ's chest and the helmet of thorns placed on his head.
Philip Rizzo, a parishioner at St. Bonaventure Catholic Church in Huntington Beach who was part of the group that received the preview, said viewing the items up close created a powerful visual representation of Christ's suffering and sacrifice. In addition, he said, the extensive scientific research done on the fabric makes the artifact more recognizable.
“We are tangible beings, not just spirit and light,” Rizzo said. “Science is really helping to make that connection.”
Although some scholars have criticized Christians' desire to authenticate the fabric, the new exhibition arose from such curiosity. Its main proponent was Augustus Accetta, a gynecologist who opened the Shroud Center in Southern California in 1998 and has studied the mystery of the tissue for more than three decades.
Accetta said that it was the Shroud of Turin that converted him from an agnostic to a Catholic. His fascination with the Shroud continued after meeting John Jackson, a nuclear physicist who in 1978 led a team of 40 scientists on the Shroud of Turin research project. Their research determined that the fabric was not a man-made work of art, but contained stains of human blood, and that no known physical, chemical or biological process could adequately explain how the image on the Shroud was formed.
Accetta, like some other scientists, believes that the image was created by a burst of radiation and that creating an image without burning tissue requires enormous amounts of energy.
“What you see on the shroud is four centimeters of anatomically correct information encoded in two microns, which is about half the thickness of a strand of hair,” he said. “We can’t even understand it, let alone reproduce it.”
In his opinion, the only explanation – as the interactive exhibition shows – is that Christ's body became light and the shroud simply collapsed, leaving a subtle imprint of his face on the white canvas.
The Rev. Robert Spitzer, founder of the Magi Center, a nonprofit that uses science to defend the Catholic faith, said the fabric has “perfect blood stains all the way to the edges,” which doesn't happen when the shroud is simply pulled off a dead body. In this case, the stains should be smeared and crushed, he said. Like Accetta, Spitzer says the engraving on the fabric was likely caused by particle radiation.
“And then one 10,000 seconds after the start of the discharge – yay! These blood stains transferred perfectly to the tissue,” Spitzer said. “The only explanation is that the body must disappear. I mean – like Frodo’s ring – it’s gone.”
Spitzer added that he doesn't need relics to explain his faith because it comes from his belief in Scripture and the resurrection of Christ.
“But it gave me a little deeper understanding of God and how He works,” he said.
Nora Creech, Othonia's US director, said the Rome-based organization was founded by the Rev. Hector Guerra, who dreamed of creating 100 exhibitions around the world. He built the first flagship exhibition in Jerusalem, as well as other exhibitions in Rome, Poland, Mexico and the United States. This latest exhibition is the first to showcase the immersive experiences created by the California studio.
Creech said they decided to start the immersive movie-like experience with the story of Christ's life from birth to crucifixion and end with the resurrection and the message that “Jesus is still with us today.”
“One of the quotes in the film is that the cross received Jesus alive and handed him over to the shroud dead. The shroud received Jesus dead and handed him over to us alive in the Eucharist,” she said.
Rudi Dictl, one of the scientists who formed the research team in 1978, still remembers every moment he touched and held the fabric. He said he and the other scientists went into the project with the understanding that they would leave as soon as they saw that the fabric was a fake or a man-made work of art. Their research showed that this is not the case.
“We looked at the fabric as something that could potentially become the burial cloth of Christ,” he said.
Dichtl, a Catholic, said that as a scientist he recognizes that there is limited scientific evidence to definitively say it was the cloth that covered Christ's body.
“But as a Christian,” he said, “I believe that this is the burial cloth of Christ.”
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