Actor Rob Schneider, who recently converted to Catholicism, announced he’s working on a new film about the Shroud of Turin.
A printing (right) and a negative (left) of the Shroud of Turin. Photo Credit: אסף.צ, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
If you are unfamiliar with The Shroud of Turin it is believed to be the burial shroud that wrapped the body of Jesus Christ after his Crucifixion. In 1988 a carbon dating test that was done on the shroud cast doubt that the Shroud was authentic.
According to Schneider the film will focus on research done by Shroud expert Joe Marino and his wife that showed that the carbon dating test was done on a piece of cloth that had been repaired by French nuns centuries after Christ’s Crucifixion.
Schneider shared he’s been working on the film for five years and “it’s a true story about Joe Marino and his wife who basically proved that the scientists tested the cloth in the wrong place and 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 a ‘French invisible weave.'”
“And 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. And that was where it was tested,” he elaborated. “And so they had new cloth and new strands of cloth that were weaved into this 2000-year-old Egyptian linen. And so that threw the carbon dating off. So each of the pieces that were cut, the deeper that it went in, the further it went back in time.”
Schneider concluded, “So this person Joe Marino was able to really come to a new understanding of why that dating was wrong.”
Comedian Rob Schneider performs for Joint Task Force Guantanamo Troopers at the Camp Bulkeley Lyceum, May 30, as part of a two-day tour hosted by Morale, Welfare & Recreation Guantanamo Bay. (National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Alexandria Hughes/112th MPAD/JTF GTMO PAO)
The actor then shared, “I’ve been trying to make this for years. It’s getting closer now. And I’d like to make it in 2024. It’s such a great story that hopefully it’ll bring more people into the faith or at least an openness to what this really is, the burial cloth of Jesus Christ. It really is. It’s actual tangible proof.”
“When I was working on that, it was working as an entertainment piece and a really interesting story and then it became a broadening of my faith and it became a powerful thing that, I don’t know how else to say it, it was breathed into me. … It’s a remarkable thing and like I said really 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,” he finished.
Earlier in the interview, Schneider expressed, “Hopefully, this movie about the Shroud will happen because I think it’s about faith. And I think we need that and to bring more people to it. Not to necessarily preach to them, but to just show the actual sacrifice and to talk about what the core of Christianity is, is loving others.”
Rob Schneider speaking with attendees at the 2023 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona. Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
What do you make of Rob Schneider making a film about the Shroud of Turin?
There are some good mini-documentaries about the Shroud on Youtube. When I first heard, many years ago, that there were issues with the carbon dating, I was doubtful. But the evidence for the Shroud in some of these documentaries is pretty amazing.
I could see Angel Studios picking up this movie for distribution.