Church opens Shroud of Turin 

to public view

        The Catholic Church in Turin, Italy, will exhibit the Shroud of Turin, a linen relic millions have believed to be the actual burial cloth of Jesus Christ, from April 10 through May 23, the fifth public exposition since 1898 and the longest in the shroud's modern history.
        The official website created by the Archdiocese of Turin for this year's exhibition estimates 2 million people will travel to Turin to view the shroud.
        Pope Benedict XVI is scheduled to visit the shroud May 2.

        The Shroud of Turin bears a full-body, back-and-front image of a crucified man that very closely resembles the New Testament description of the death of Jesus Christ.

         In 1988, the Vatican permitted laboratories at the University of Oxford, the University of Arizona and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich to subject small samples cut from the shroud to radiocarbon dating analysis.

         The conclusions of the three laboratories that the shroud dated from A.D. 1260 to 1390 led many to believe it is a medieval forgery.

PHOTOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS has shown the reddish-brown image on the Shroud of Turin to be a negative image.