New museum in California offers immersive experience of the Shroud of Turin

GARDEN GROVE, California — An interactive museum dedicated to the Shroud of Turin, which some believe was Jesus’ burial cloth, opens 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 360-degree projection rooms, replicas of the Shroud of Turin, interactive kiosks and a life-size Christ sculpture, was designed over a three-year period and funded through private donations.

The content was created primarily by Othonia, Inc., a Rome-based group dedicated to examining the shroud, one of the most studied artifacts in history. The original – a 14-foot-long, 3.5-foot-wide fabric (4.3 meters long and 1 meter wide) – is kept in a bulletproof, air-conditioned case located in the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy.

The California museum – covering 930 square meters – contains a life-size laminated visual of the shroud stretched on a wall. It shows a blurry image of a man with Christ-like wounds.

The Vatican has called the fabric a powerful symbol of Christ’s suffering, but has not claimed its authenticity. Many experts support carbon-14 dating of pieces of fabric that place it in the 13th or 14th century, but many believers – among them accomplished scientists – say the results may have been skewed by contamination, requiring analysis of larger samples. Many insist that the fabric contains pollen from Jerusalem and is woven in a pattern unique to the first century.

The cloth, considered a relic by many Christians, was last on display in the spring of 2015. Although the shroud may never leave Turin, the new exhibit will remain at least until 2030 on the Christ Cathedral campus, next to the famous glass tower and shrine erected by televangelist Robert H. Schuller that today houses the Catholic Diocese of Orange.

Bishop Timothy Freyer, auxiliary bishop of the diocese, said he hopes the exhibit will reinforce to visitors the power of God’s love for all.

“My hope is that believers will have a stronger faith, that those who doubt will come to belief, and that people without faith will begin the process of questioning and then come to faith,” he said.

One of the highlights of the immersive experience is a re-enactment of Christ’s resurrection on Easter morning, with museum visitors sitting in the tomb and watching the shrouded body disappear in a flash of light. The exhibition also features replicas of the spear that is said 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 a group that got a glimpse, said seeing these objects up close created a powerful visual representation of Christ’s suffering and sacrifice. Additionally, he said, witnessing the extensive scientific research conducted on the fabric makes the artifact more accessible.

“We are tangible beings, not just of spirit and light,” Rizzo said. “Science really helps make that connection.”

While some scientists have criticized the Christians’ rush to authenticate the fabric, the new exhibit has its roots in just such curiosity. Its main supporter was August Accetta, a gynecologist who opened the Shroud Center of Southern California in 1998 and who has been studying the mystery of the tissue for more than three decades.

Accetta said it was the Shroud of Turin that converted him from agnostic to Catholic. His fascination with Shroud continued after he met John Jackson, a nuclear physicist who in 1978 led a team of 40 scientists in the Shroud of Turin research project. Their study determined that the cloth was not a manufactured 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 believes, like other scientists, that the image was created by a burst of radiation and that a huge amount of energy is required to create the image without burning the tissue.

“On the shroud, you see 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 begin to understand this, let alone replicate it.”

For him, the only explanation – as the interactive exhibition illustrates – is that Christ’s body became light and the shroud simply collapsed, leaving the fine imprint of his face on the white linen.

The Rev. Robert Spitzer, founder of the Magis Center, a nonprofit that uses science to defend the Catholic faith, said the cloth had “perfect bloodstains all the way to the edges,” which doesn’t happen when a shroud is simply removed from a corpse. The spots would have to be spread out and broken up if that was the case, he said. Like Accetta, Spitzer says the etching on the fabric was likely caused by particle radiation.

“And then a 10,000th of a second after the flow starts, phew! These bloodstains transfer perfectly to the fabric,” Spitzer said. “The only explanation is that the body must disappear. I mean, like Frodo’s ring, it disappeared.”

Spitzer added that he does not need a relic to explain his faith because it comes from his belief in Scripture and the resurrection of Christ.

“But it gave me a little deeper insight into God and how He works,” he said.

Nora Creech, Othonia’s U.S. director, said the Rome-based organization was founded by the Rev. Hector Guerra, who dreamed of creating 100 exhibits around the world. He built the first landmark exhibition in Jerusalem and others in Rome, Poland, Mexico and the United States. The latter is the first to present an immersive experience created by a studio based in California.

Creech said they decided to begin the immersive cinematic experience with the story of Christ’s life, from his birth to his crucifixion, and end it with the resurrection and the message that “Jesus is still with us today.”

“One of the quotes from the film is that the cross received Jesus alive and delivered him dead to the shroud. The shroud received Jesus dead and delivered him to us alive in the Eucharist,” she said.

Rudy Dicthtl, one of the scientists who formed the 1978 research team, still remembers every moment he spent touching and holding the fabric in his hands. He said he and the other scientists went into the project knowing they would leave as soon as they saw the fabric was fake or a fabricated work of art. Their research revealed that this was not the case.

“We saw the cloth as something that had the potential to be the burial cloth of Christ,” he said.

Dichtl, a Catholic, said that as a scientist he recognizes that there is little scientific evidence to conclusively say that the cloth was the one that covered Christ’s body.

“But as a Christian,” he said, “I believe it is the burial cloth of Christ.”

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