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WHO WE ARE

The International Center for Shroud Studies has been active for almost seventy years, and all of them have been spent spreading the messages of the Shroud throughout the world. The International Center for Shroud Studies was established on December 23, 1959 with the name of the International Center of Sindonology , today renewed in its terms, but not in its contents and mission, to keep up with the changing sensibilities of the time.

The organization for the diffusion of the cult and devotion to the Shroud, the Confraternity of the SS. Sudario , understood the need for a center like the CISS – at the time CIS – and with this initiative wanted to continue and develop the legacy of the Cultores Sanctae Sindonis , an association founded in 1937 by the Confraternity and dissolved in 1959.

The aims of the CISS are first and foremost scientific: the coordination of studies on the Shroud , the commitment to its knowledge and the collection and conservation of everything concerning the Shroud .

Its mission is not to be a defender of the authenticity of the Shroud, but to scientifically and critically address studies on the reality of the find, always safeguarding the necessary multidisciplinarity, peculiar to the approach to the Shroud. Shroud scholars - chemists, physicists, historians, etc. who question themselves on the Shroud - are in fact researchers and experts in specific branches of knowledge who apply their methods and knowledge to the investigation of the find, not with the intent of certifying its so-called authenticity but with the aim of deepening its characteristics and, where possible, its origin.

For this reason, the CISS has equipped itself with a Scientific Commission composed of members whose requirements are essentially proven competence in their own research field and complete internal freedom from preconceptions and conditioning towards a predetermined outcome, be it the affirmation or denial of the Shroud's belonging to the funerary objects of Christ.

Insights

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