Italy: 15-03-2013  
Filed under News, The Church in the world

At a press conference on March 1 last, Archbishop Cesare Nosiglia of Turin announced an unusual exposition of the Holy Shroud during the afternoon of Holy Saturday, March 30, 2012, which will be broadcast on television for one hour. A televised exposition of the Holy Shroud first took place on November 23, 1973, at the request of Paul VI. Footage will not be reserved to the Italian TV station RAI, but made available to all broadcasters who request it.

“The idea came from the Year of Faith. (…) I thought for several months with the competent authorities of the Holy See as to whether we could broadcast an exposition throughout the world to all nations, and I was granted the placet of Benedict XVI,” explained the Italian prelate, who saw this as an encouragement of this type of evangelization. “We know the Holy Shroud represents the tortured body of a crucified man,” and if it seems mysterious, it is nonetheless real and concrete and shows the wounds described by the Gospels: “the Shroud reveals the great sacrifice and the sufferings borne by Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God who died for our salvation and that of mankind,” continued Archbishop Nosiglia.

The archbishop of Turin will preside at a special ceremony to expose the Shroud that Benedict XVI called “an icon of Holy Saturday,” when it was last exposed in Turin in May 2010. The Holy Shroud has been exposed four times over the last hundred years. The two last times were in 2000, the Jubilee year, and in 2010.

“The Holy Shroud and the New Evangelization,” such was the theme of a congress held March 1 and 2 at the Pontifical University Regina Angelorum in Rome, as part of the Year of Faith. Under the auspices of the Pontifical Councils for Culture and for Promotion of the New Evangelization, and of the Office for Social Communications of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, it was divided into two sessions: “The Holy Shroud and Kerygma” and “The Holy Shroud and Communication”, led by specialists on the Shroud of Turin. (Sources: kipa-apic.ch – diocese turin – sindone – Vatican Radio – DICI no. 272, March, 15 2013).

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