Almost 600,000 bookings have
been made to see the mysterious Shroud of Turin, reputed to bear
the image of Christ, when it opens for public viewing in the
spring, officials said Tuesday.
The showing, from April 19 to June 24, will be part of a
larger program that will include a restored painting of the
Lamentation by Renaissance master Fra Angelico, city and church
officials.
Further bookings are possible via the Internet, they said.
The Shroud, which is rarely seen by the public, will be
displayed in the Chapel of the Shroud in the crypt beneath the
Turin's most important cathedral.
Pope Francis has said that he will visit the shroud on June
21.
The city and Diocese of Turin are preparing for inflows of
guests by training some 4,500 volunteers to work with visitors.
The Angelico painting of Christ following his deposition
from the cross and the Shroud itself are clearly linked in
theme, said the Archbishop of Turin, Monsignor Cesare Nosiglia.
"There is no direct relationship, obviously, between a
painting and the image of the cloth," said Nosiglia.
"But the one and the other remind us strongly," of the
passion of Christ, he said.
In March 2013, soon after he took office, Pope Francis was
involved in a broadcast event that showed rare images of the
mysterious holy relic to TV viewers.
Francis delivered the opening message in that unusual event
on state broadcaster RAI, which marked only the second time the
Church has permitted the Shroud to be filmed and broadcast.
In 2010, former Pope Benedict XVI viewed the Shroud of
Turin during a special seven-week display that marked the first
time the Shroud had been seen by the public since it was
restored in 2002.
Before then, it had been on view in 2000 and has been on
display only five times in the past 100 years.
Believers say the linen Shroud was used to cover the body
of Christ after his crucifixion and countless scientific tests
conducted over the years have revealed the outline of the body
of a man embedded in the fabric.
The Shroud is normally heavily guarded in a bullet-proof,
climate-controlled glass case within Turin's cathedral.
Only once before had images of the Shroud been broadcast as
ordered in November 1973 by then-pope Paul VI.
Some sceptics maintain the Shroud is nothing more than an
elaborate fake dating from the Middle Ages, triggering centuries
of debate over whether the image is truly that of Christ, or a
very good forgery.
Radiocarbon-dating tests conducted on the cloth in 1988
suggested it dated from between 1260 and 1390; however, other
scientists have since claimed those results could have been
distorted by centuries of contamination.
That has led to calls for more testing, which the Vatican
has consistently refused.
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