HUNTINGTON BEACH — It's been called the "linen enigma," and the "most intensely studied artifact of modern science." Detractors label it an "obvious fraud," and some religious scholars weigh in with a more generous "pious forgery."
Now, a local gynecologist has brought the mystery, the history and the nasty disagreement surrounding the Shroud of Turin to Orange County--more than 6,000 miles from the town where the real thing lies protected in an Italian cathedral.
Dr. August David Accetta, who harbored a years-long fascination with the cloth that some believe to be the burial shroud of Jesus, has poured $100,000 of his own money into the Shroud Center of Southern California, which opened eight months ago.
The small exhibition space and nonprofit research center tucked away in a Huntington Beach office park features a definite point of view: all research and photographic images on display support arguments for the shroud's authenticity.
But Accetta--a chemist by training who has launched his own research into the life-sized smoky image of a man on the shroud using nuclear medicine techniques--insists his center isn't hunting for converts.
"We really need to emphasize what we can demonstrate," he said. "I've always felt that if you couldn't demonstrate something, it was just your opinion.
"When I got started on this, I really didn't care," Accetta added, still dressed in surgical pants as he offered a quick tour of his center. "But I read 200,000 hours of peer-reviewed research and 95% of it is in favor of the shroud being authentic. What I found was the public is being misinformed and I made an attempt to create a center that would generate accurate information."
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 were produced by a crown of thorns, lacerations on his back, stigmata on his hands and feet, and a severe wound on his right side.
The cloth has been zealously studied.
Fibers were torn off with tape in a 1978 round-the-clock, five-day expedition. Photographic replications of its markings have since been tested with nearly every form of science imaginable--from NASA machinery designed to detect the topography of Mars to X-ray replications that convinced supporters that the image of a crucified man inside the shroud burned through it in a sudden burst of energy.
