(LifeSiteNews) — Catholic convert Rob Schneider said he is making a movie about the Shroud of Turin – and that the project helped move him to his conversion.
Schneider, an actor, said he is working on a movie about the burial cloth of Christ used after his crucifixion on the cross. He said it will focus on Joe Marino and his wife. Marino is a researcher who attests to the authenticity of the shroud
The research for the movie “became the broadening of my faith and it became a powerful thing that kind of – I don’t know how else to say it – but it was breathed into me, and then it from there, it was really the beginning,” Schneider told ChurchPop recently.
He has been working on the movie for five years.
“I think we need [faith] and to bring more people to it and not necessarily to preach to them, but to just show the actual sacrifice and to talk about what the core of Christianity is – loving others,” Schneider said during the interview.
Schneider said he hopes the movie brings people to understand the shroud is truly the “burial cloth of Jesus Christ.”
“When I was working on that it was… as an entertainment piece and as a really interesting story,” he also said.
“It’s… a remarkable thing,” he said. “The best description of it I’ve ever heard was it’s the receipt and that’s why it’s been tried to be destroyed many times.”
A 1988 dating by Italian researchers claimed to debunk the shroud’s authenticity, instead placing its origin in the 13th or 14th century. However, Marino, and others, stress that the piece tested was from a repaired portion, and not the original cloth.
“They didn’t put into their equation in the carbon dating that the French nuns had repaired this cloth with newer cloth and it is what the French called an ‘invisible weave,'” Schneider said during the April 16 interview.
“If you can imagine the dedication of these French nuns in preparing the actual burial cloth of their Lord, that they would dedicate absolute perfection in their work and they did,” he said. “And that was where it was tested.”
“And so, they had new cloth and new strands of cloth that were weaved into this 2,000-year-old Egyptian linen. And so that threw off the carbon dating,” he said. “So, each of the pieces that were cut, and the deeper that it went in, the further it went back in time.”
LifeSiteNews previously reported:
Dr. Alan D. Adler, a biochemist and member of the Shroud Conservation Commission, analyzed 15 fibers extracted from the Shroud sample used for the carbon-dating. After a comparison with 19 fibers from various other areas of the Shroud, Adler found such a high degree of pollution on the sample used for radiocarbon dating that he concluded it is not representative of the entire shroud.
Other researchers have studied the shroud and reached conclusions to provide evidence for its authenticity.
A University of Padua scientist dated the shroud to between the years 280 B.C. and 220 A.D.
Other evidence in support of the shroud’s authenticity can be found at the National Shroud of Turin Exhibit.