Saturday, April 25, 1998

Turin prepares for pilgrims and fanatics

By JOHN HOOPER / London Observer Service

TURIN, Italy -- The first exhibition of the Shroud of Turin in two decades is surrounded by one of the tightest security operations in Italy in a generation.

The stained sheet which went on public display Sunday (April 19) for 65 days is either the most brilliant fake of all time -- or the winding sheet of God. Scientists say it's a fake.

The authorities are understandably concerned that it could prove attractive to apocalyptic and millenarian fanatics. A thousand law enforcement agents, including carabinieri and revenue guards, will be on duty around the Turin cathedral while the shroud is on show.

"See those blokes in jeans and jackets?" asked the taxi driver at the airport. "Cops. Every one of them. Armed. Place is swarming with them."

The same is true of the center of Turin, only there they are strikingly visible -- standing alert by big blue trucks, cruising on high-powered motorcycles and on horseback.

Three million pilgrims are expected to visit Turin. Filing through at the rate of 4,000 an hour, they'll get an average of two minutes in front of the shroud.

The shroud, spread out 12 feet above floor level, looks exactly as it does in the familiar photographs.

"We are in the presence of the mystery of the Passion," declared the Rev. Giuseppe Ghiberti. vice-president of the exhibition's organizing committee.

Yet despite his solemn and eloquent words, not least among the many paradoxes surrounding this object is that photography, which revealed many of its aspects, has robbed it of the visual impact it must have had on earlier pilgrims.

A visit to Turin to see the shroud makes little sense for the idly curious. It offers no thrill or spectacle for the spiritual tourist. The sole purpose of entering the cathedral is for an act of worship.

Mario Trematore is among those who believe in the shroud. He was the fireman who, just over a year ago, saved the relic from destruction in a still mysterious blaze that threatened to engulf the casket in which it was stored.

To do this, he had to pound his way with a sledgehammer through multi-layered bulletproof glass. He said he thought he must have been given the strength by God.

"I was at a school run by the Franciscan friars," he said last week as he was leaving the cathedral with other volunteers. "I remember there was a very beautiful poem dedicated to the Madonna. This poem, this Madonna, began: 'Figlio (Son), figlio, figlio, figlio, figlio mio ...' I have often asked myself why that constant repetition of 'Son.' For a mother, a son dying on the cross is a terribly sad and painful event, but in my opinion it is even more sad and painful when it is the other brothers who killed the son. That is the emotion I felt.' "

With that, and a smile, he set off across the street -- as enigmatic a figure as the one outlined on the sheet.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)