New Center Focuses on the Shroud of Turin

It’s been called the “linen enigma,” though detractors label it an “obvious fraud,” and some religious scholars weigh in with a slightly more generous “pious forgery.”

Now, an Orange County gynecologist has imported the mystery, history and nasty disagreement surrounding the Shroud of Turin more than 6,000 miles from where the real thing remains in an Italian cathedral.

Dr. August David Accetta, who admits to an obsession with the cloth that some believe to be the burial shroud of Jesus, has used his own money--about $100,000, he says--to open the Shroud Center of Southern California.

The small exhibition space and nonprofit research center, tucked away in an office park in Huntington Beach, has a definite point of view: All research and photographic images on display support arguments for the shroud’s authenticity.

Accetta, trained as a chemist, also has launched his own research into the shroud, using nuclear medicine techniques.

“When I got started on this I really didn’t care,” Accetta said, still dressed in surgical pants as he offered a quick tour of his center. “But I read [extensive] research. . . . What I found was the public is being misinformed.”

The yellow linen that surfaced in the hands of a Frenchman in the 14th century shows a dusky image of a man, with marks on his head that believers argue was produced by a crown of thorns, lacerations on his back, stigmata on his hands and feet and a severe wound on his right side.

It has been zealously studied.

Fibers were torn off with tape in 1978. Photographic replications of its markings have been tested with nearly every form of science imaginable--from NASA machinery designed to detect the topography of Mars to X-ray replications that supporters say proves that the image of a crucified male burned through the shroud in a sudden burst of energy.

But the object of debate, reverence and parody has also been carbon-dated, and those tests showed that it originated in the Middle Ages, some time between 1260 and 1390--far after the death of Jesus, in other words.

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Still, to Accetta and fellow believers, the carbon-dating did not end the debate.

“To use the buzz phrase, it was garbage in, garbage out,” said Accetta, who argues that the wrong part of the shroud was sampled and that dating failed to take into account fire damage to the cloth and other potential contamination.

The Orange County physician is a relative newcomer to the so-called “shroud crowd,” about 100 self-taught experts worldwide who dedicate themselves to examining the cloth, said Dr. Alan Whanger, a physician and retired professor from Duke University who himself has conducted research on the shroud since the late 1970s.

“I was very pleased that Dr. Accetta decided to do this,” said Whanger, who attended the opening of the shroud museum last May. “You sort of have to see it to believe it. Most people, what they recall is the carbon-dating fiasco.”

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A small gift shop in the center’s office features shroud memorabilia such as videos, literature and photos. A second room runs through the chronology of shroud research--framed photographs of the enlarged image of the mystery man’s face, X-ray overlays that show how close the image comes to matching a human skeleton, and more.

A third room features a big-screen television for shroud videos, but the main display lies in the largest room: four photographic full-sized replicas of the 14.3-foot-long shroud in back-lit view boxes, showing it from all angles.

All of it was previously stored in the Huntington Beach home that Accetta, 37, shares with his wife and two daughters, ages 3 and 1. “My 3-year-old can see an image and say, ‘Look daddy, that’s Jesus,’ ” he said with a laugh.

Accetta, who built the view boxes himself, said he spends 20 hours a week at the center without compensation. While he plans to apply for grants soon, so far the funding has come from his own pocket, with some donations from sympathizers. He is conducting his research with four others: a nuclear medicine physician, a particle physicist, a forensic pathologist and an imaging analyst.

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Accetta was raised as a Roman Catholic but says he was agnostic for eight years. His obsession with the shroud dates back five years, he says, when “something clicked.” He says he “thinks about it 24 hours a day,” and often talks up his sideline with other doctors, but not with his patients. “I try to keep it separate,” he said.

The shroud first surfaced in Lirey, France, in 1357 and was immediately touted as the burial cloth of Jesus, though not without controversy even then. It was sold to Italy’s royal Savoy family, which moved it in 1578 to the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin.

Despite the carbon-dating tests, believers tout studies of pollen grains on the shroud that place it in Jerusalem in the 1st century. And some say “blood” on the shroud has been proven to be real, not the paint or pigment other researchers claim that it is.

Skeptics, meanwhile, offer a harsh assessment of the believers’ research.

“It absolutely does the public a disservice,” said Joe Nickell, a senior research fellow with the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal in Amherst, N.Y.

“The evidence is very clear that this is just a graven image, to use a religious term, and is not suitable for worship,” he says. “To attempt to use science to justify this fake amounts really to a rape of science.”

Mainstream academia has in general also steered clear of the latest debates and tests of the cloth’s veracity.

“Most liberal Catholic and Protestant scholars see the Shroud of Turin as sort of a pious forgery,” said Ben Hubbard, chairman of the religious studies department at Cal State Fullerton. “I guess people find some comfort in these kinds of things and I respect that, but I think it’s all a little obsessive. They’re trying to give a scientific facade to something that is a matter of faith. . . . If you can prove the resurrection with a shroud, is that really faith?”

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The church, meanwhile, takes no formal position on its authenticity, noted Msgr. Lawrence J. Baird, spokesman for the Diocese of Orange, but has supported research by scholars from 92 disciplines. “A lot are negative and say it’s a forgery. The church will stand finally by whatever is decided upon by these scholars,” Baird said.

Authentic or not, the Vatican will put the shroud on public display--it has been viewed only a handful of times this century--in April 1998, and again in April 2000.

Accetta says about 1,500 visitors have seen his small museum, which is open most weekdays from 2 to 6 p.m.

“If this was the image of Muhammad, I’d change my religion in a minute,” he says. “I don’t believe in providence. I don’t believe in fate, yet I’ve found myself drawn into this. It’s much easier for me to accept the miracle at this point than it is to prove it a forgery using science.

“A lot of my friends don’t understand. But hey, if I could put it down, believe me, I would.”