Italy’s Turin Shroud Making One Day Rare Appearance in Pre-Easter Special Video Streaming

THE Turin Shroud, a burial cloth some believe covered Jesus and which has links to a 16th-century plague in northern Italy, was put on special view this Saturday (April 11) via video streaming to inspire hope amongst Catholics during the coronavirus pandemic.

Pope Francis hailed the initiative by the Turin archbishop, saying making it visible meets the requests of the faithful who are suffering through the Covid-19 outbreak.

Archbishop Cesare Nosiglia says he received thousands of requests from persons young and old to be able to view it remotely.
The linen, kept behind bulletproof glass in a Turin chapel, is shown to the public only on very special occasions

As a TV camera showed the 14-foot-long cloth in its display case, the Archbishop said some prayers, noting that Holy Saturday marks the wait for Easter, when Christians believe Jesus rose from the dead.

He said that people today “await to be liberated from the pandemic” causing so many deaths, and said the shroud “opens hearts to faith and hope.”

The archbishop read aloud a letter from the Pope, in which the pontiff expressed appreciation for “this gesture, which meets the request of the faithful people of God, so harshly proved by the coronavirus pandemic.”