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 act as a defender of the Shroud’s authenticity, but to approach studies on the nature of the artefact in a scientific and critical manner, whilst always upholding the necessary multidisciplinary approach that is characteristic of research into the Shroud. Scholars of the Shroud – chemists, physicists, historians, etc., who investigate the Shroud – are in fact researchers and experts in specific fields of knowledge who apply their methods and knowledge to the investigation of the artefact, in accordance with the request made by Saint John Paul II on 24 May 1998 “The Church urges that the study of the Shroud be undertaken without preconceived positions, which take for granted results that are not such; with inner freedom and thoughtful respect both for scientific methodology and for the sensibilities of believers” in order to explore its characteristics and, as far as 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.