By Monsignor Noel C. Burtenshaw

Once and for all, let us be absolutely certain about one thing. The Shroud of Turin is in Turin. In five hundred years, it has left the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Turin, Italy, only once. That was during the German occupation of World War II. It was taken to a monastery on France for safekeeping during those years.

However, in Peachtree Center in downtown Atlanta, for scholars, students, devotees and skeptics alike, you have the next best thing. You have the best exhibit of Shroud material the world has ever seen.

"It's amazing," says Father Kim Dreisbach, a leading force in Shroud study. "All kinds come in here to see the exhibit. Of course, the media are here with all their questions trying to unfold whatever mystery is left. The devoted who simply want to kneel down and be in the presence and pray. The skeptics who wag their heads and the skeptics who once wagged their heads, but now wonder."

They all look at the photos -- 150 of them -- the statements of the scientists, the results of the research and the impressive replica of the Shroud and are then ready to hear more about claims of so many like Father Kim Dreisbach. This piece of linen cloth, back there in Turin, is the binder that covered the dead body of Jesus of Nazareth after His crucifixion. Father Dreisbach, who is pastor of the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation in Atlanta, likes to tag the Shroud in this way. "I'll use the words of Father Anthony of the Monastery in Conyers. The Greek Church took care of it for 800 years, then we (the Roman Church) took it from them and have had it for the last 1,200 years. But in reality, it belongs to everybody. It is God's love letter to us in Linen."

The Shroud of Turin is a piece of herringbone linen 14 feet long. Linen of this kind existed and was used for burial in the Middle East going back thousands of years. If this cloth covered Jesus, it would be 2,000 years old. "And that's no problem," says Kim Dreisbach. "We have funeral cloths that are five and seven thousand years old."

The problem with this burial cloth is the image that is stamped on it. It is the image of a bearded male who has been tortured, beaten from face to legs, whose head has been pierced by sharp instruments and finally who has died by crucifixion.

None of this evidence is disputed. "The blood on the cloth is real," says Father Dreisbach. "In fact it is post mortem blood. This man was dead when they put the cloth over him. Experts agree he was lashed and crowned with thorns. The wrist wounds and the feet wounds are from the nails of crucifixion." So there is no doubt about the evidence.

The question is this. How did the image get onto the linen cloth at Turin? A bevy of genuine experts -- many of them relishing the job of disproving the claims of the Church -- along with their modern magical beam machines have gone in with the blessings of the Church and have come away stymied or as faithful believers. No one is sure. The facts are these:

• Most Crucified people were thrown into lime pits. They were criminals and did not get a burial cloth or a tomb. The gospel says that Jesus was buried in a rich man's tomb.
• Some have claimed the image is a vapor image. If you put a leaf in a book and reopen the book some time later, the image will be on both pages. But not a clear image. Vapors record unevenly as if smeared. The Shroud image is perfect.
• The image was painted on the cloth. The scientific results say no. Experts of all or no faiths say no. Where are the brush tracks? There are none.
• The blood is real. Post mortem experts including one from the Los Angeles police department agree this is no fake blood. It is human.

So how did the image get onto the Shroud? Modern science has no answer.

"Questions about the Shroud," says Father Dreisbach, “really took off in 1898 when an Italian named Segundo Pia photographed it for the first time. His discovery was unbelievable. When he held up the negative to the light, he found it was not a negative at all. He saw what we would call a positive photograph. He saw the image of the Shroud. This means that the image on the Turin linen Shroud is a negative."

You might say someone deliberately arranged it in this way to make us believe it was the burial cloth of Jesus. Well, that someone would, first of all, have had to be an expert in photography -- 2000 years ago.

It is simply marvelous. As you stand there in the space where Brentano's Book Store used to be in Peachtree Center, all these historical facts settle and unsettle in your mind. One expert has said, "If the Shroud is a fake, it will be an impossibility to discover how it was done. This is the burial cloth of Jesus." The French agnostic Yves Delage once said, "If this were the cloth of the Pharaoh, we would believe without difficulty. But lack of faith gets in the way of science. This cloth covered the dead Jesus."

There is one test left to be tried on the Shroud. That test, called Excellerated Carbon 14 Dating will tell the age of the linen, accurate to 150 years. In order to complete this test, a small portion of the Shroud must be burned. "Permission to do this test," says Father Dreisbach, "has been given. However, there is only one machine in the world that can do the test. Three tests, independently done, have been requested. Within two years, other machines will be available. Once the age of this linen cloth has been established, the reasonable doubts well be over. However, many will never believe."

The Atlanta exhibit will be there in Peachtree Center until January 31, 1983. And if Kim Dreisbach has his way, the exhibit will be there longer, much longer. "We want to keep it here for good," says Kim. "We want to expand it and make it available to all. It's a glorious mystery -- one to be studied and hopefully accepted."

There is no doubt in the mind of Father Kim Dreisbach. That is clear as he lovingly leads tour group after tour group around this unique exhibit.

You can see that he is clearly reading aloud God's love letter to the world -- in linen.