The highly acclaimed Shroud Encounter will be at St Rose of Lima, 46 Church Hill Road, on Saturday, November 4, at 6 pm, and Sunday, November 5, at 1 pm.

Admission is $10 for adults, with children under 18 free. Saturday will feature “CSI Jerusalem — The Case of the Missing Body” and Sunday will feature “Seven Secrets of the Sacred Shroud.”

Both presentations are big screen events using over 200 images exploring many aspects of the mysterious Shroud of Turin. The program is a production of the Shroud of Turin Education Project, Inc and will be presented by international expert Russ Breault.

Breault has been featured in several national documentaries seen on CBS, History Channel EWTN and Discovery. He has been interviewed for Good Morning America and ABC World News Tonight and was a consultant for CNN’s Finding Jesus series.

He has presented at numerous colleges and universities including Duke, West Point, Johns Hopkins, Penn State, and many others.

Breault has been researching and lecturing on The Shroud of Turin for over 30 years. He has participated in over a dozen international research symposiums since 1981 and three public exhibitions in Turin, Italy (1998, 2000 and 2010).

He is a longtime member of the Shroud Science Group, an international consortium of scientists and scholars dedicated to further research. He is also the president and founder of the Shroud of Turin Education Project Inc, the mission of which is to “advance the knowledge of the shroud to a new generation.”

The Shroud of Turin is the most analyzed artifact in the world yet remains an unsolved mystery. The 14-foot-long linen cloth has been in Turin, Italy, for over 400 years and bears the faint front and back image of a 5’10” bearded, crucified man with apparent wounds and bloodstains that match the crucifixion account as recorded in the Bible.

Millions of people over the centuries have believed it to be the actual burial shroud of Jesus. The historical trail tracks back through Italy, France, and Asia Minor (Turkey), and may have originated in the Middle East according to botanical evidence.

A team of nearly 40 scientists in 1981 concluded it was not the work of an artist. They found no visible trace of paint, pigment, dye or other artistic substances on the cloth. The blood is type AB with human male DNA as determined in 1995. Skeptics have mounted numerous attempts to show how a medieval artist could have produced the image, but all have been inadequate to fully explain how it was formed.

The Shroud was largely dismissed in 1988 when three carbon dating labs indicated a medieval origin. Chemical research published in a peer reviewed scientific journal in 2005, however, showed that the single sample cut from the outside corner edge may not have been part of the original Shroud material.

In violation of the sampling protocol, only one sample was used for dating and was cut from the most handled area of the cloth, an area that should have been avoided. The sample may have been part of a section that was repaired sometime during the Middle Ages. Many scientists now believe the carbon dating result is inconclusive.

Adding more doubt to the carbon dating tests, as published in 2013 by scientists with Padua University in Italy, new chemical and mechanical analysis performed on a dozen other linen samples up to 5,000 years old indicate a comparative date range for the Shroud of 280 BC to 220 AD.

The mystery continues. National Geographic called it “one of the most perplexing enigmas of modern times.” Shroud Encounter will cover all aspects of the history, science, art, and theories of how the image may have been formed.

Monsignor Robert Weiss, pastor of St Rose of Lima Parish, says the weekend presentation “is the kind of event that comes along once in a decade and is a testament to our beliefs as Christians. We welcome all who want to explore this mystery with us.”

All the details, including a biography of the speaker, can be found at strosechurch.com.