“Our team went to Turin to answer one simple question: How was the image formed?” said Barrie Schwortz in a CNS interview. “Ultimately, we failed.”
The team could tell what it was not, “not a painting, not a photograph, not a scorch, not a rubbing,” he said.
“But we know of no mechanism to this day that can make an image with the same chemical and physical properties as the image on the Shroud.”
The Shroud was exhibited in Turin on Holy Saturday as part of the celebrations for the Year of Faith. Schwortz was the documenting photographer for the 1978 project.
“It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I’m a Jew and involved with probably the most important relic of Christianity,” he said.
He explained that he and the other members of the research team came from various faith backgrounds.
They had to set aside personal beliefs and focus on the cloth itself rather than any religious implication it might carry.
“We were there to gather information, to do empirical science and do it to the best of our abilities,” he said.
“It doesn't have anything to do with my personal religious beliefs. It has to do with the truth.”
The 14-foot piece of linen has a full-length photo negative image of a badly bruised man on the front and back.
The scientific team spent five days analysing the chemical and physical properties of the cloth.
In 1988 carbon testing dated the cloth to the 12th century, leading many to believe that it was a medieval forgery.
But in 2005, chemist Raymond Rogers, a member of the 1978 research team, rejected that claim.
He said the sample used in the carbon testing was from a piece of cloth used to mend the Shroud in the Middle Ages and that the methodology of the testing was erroneous.
Whatever the origin, for Schwortz, “this is a document that precisely coincides with the Gospel account of what was done to the man Jesus.”
Details about the Shroud can be found at the technical database, www.shroud.com.