"The Shroud of Turin: An Immersive Experience," a $5 million, 10,000-square-foot museum on the chancery campus of the Diocese of Orange in Southern California opened to visitors on Nov. 19, 2025. / Credit: Everett Johnson, Diocese of Orange
Los Angeles, California, Nov 19, 2025 / 16:53 pm (CNA).
"The Shroud of Turin: An Immersive Experience," a $5 million, 10,000-square-foot museum on the chancery campus of the Diocese of Orange in Southern California, opened to visitors Wednesday.
The museum is presented by Papaian Studios in partnership with the Diocese of Orange and Othonia Inc., an international team of specialists dedicated to exploring and sharing the mystery of the Shroud of Turin.
The 90-minute experience introduces visitors to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, with a special focus on the Shroud of Turin, which many believe to be the burial cloth of Christ.
Inspired by the advanced technology incorporated in "Van Gogh Exhibition: The Immersive Experience" and the "Immersive King Tut," the museum features 360-degree projection-room theaters as well as shroud replicas, interactive kiosks, a life-sized corpus, and a variety of artwork.
Jason Pearson of FiveHive Studios, which offers AI special effects and animation services, is a Catholic convert who worked with Othonia, a team of shroud specialists, to design the museum. Among his movie credits is Mel Gibson's 2004 "The Passion of the Christ." He has long had an interest in the shroud and has been a volunteer guide at the Shroud Center of Southern California located at the Santiago Retreat Center, also in the Diocese of Orange.
"Using technology on display like that of the Van Gogh or King Tut exhibits, we're doing things that have never been done before," Pearson told CNA. "Whether it be Jesus walking on water or through the streets of Jerusalem, or in the tomb at the moment of the Resurrection, we make use of sound and projections so that the visitor feels like he's going back into a time machine and experiencing these things himself."
The museum is designed for everyone, Pearson continued, even those who have no religious background at all.
Located on the second floor of the campus' Richard H. Pickup Cultural Center, the museum has three theater rooms. Using surround sound and images, including on the floor, the first room introduces the visitor to the person of Jesus Christ through presentation of 12 stories from his life, but each one is selected to show Christ's connection to the supernatural (e.g. the Transfiguration). The next introduces the visitor to the shroud itself, including proof of its authenticity and what it tells us about the sufferings of Christ. The third is devoted to the Resurrection leading the viewer to ponder a pointed question: Who do you believe the man on the shroud is?
The third theater exits into the museum area, which includes displays of reproductions of items that were part of the passion of Christ, including a flagellum (whip), the crown of thorns and nails, as well as a reproduction of what the tomb of Christ might have looked like.
Other exhibits include an AI presentation of Secondo Pia (1855–1941) who, while photographing the shroud in 1898, discovered that its negative image offered a clearer image of the man on the shroud with a detail in his face that could not been seen by the naked eye. Another traces the history of the iconography of Christ, demonstrating how accurate, when comparing it to the shroud image, many of the icons were. And, one compares the Sudarium of Oviedo, or the facial cloth that covered Christ's face after his death, to the image on the shroud.
Pearson hopes that the museum will be a prototype for additional shroud museums in different regions of the country. Inquiries have been made about establishing shroud museums from places as far away as Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.
One portion of the museum is dedicated to the science of the shroud, and two kiosks allow visitors to ask questions of a digital Father Robert Spitzer, who has extensively researched the shroud over the past 20 years. Spitzer, who has an office at Christ Cathedral, noted that he was pleased with the museum's opening. "It gets the pedagogy right, it's biblically accurate, and they tell me the visual imagery is amazing." (Spitzer has gone blind in recent years.)
He continued: "And while we welcome anyone, we especially hope many young people will come to learn about the shroud and lead many to come to know more deeply the person of Jesus Christ."
Nora Creech is on the leadership team of Othonia and helped develop content for the museum. "We want people to come with an open mind, explore, and ask questions. We want them to ask, 'Who is the man of the shroud?'" she said.
One special target group of the museum, Creech said, is younger people, "many of whom have not been brought up with knowledge of who Jesus is. That is why we seek first to introduce people to Jesus so that they will become interested in his burial shroud."
Pearson agreed and related the story of two young women who visited the Shroud Center and began weeping, asking: "Why hasn't anyone told us about him?"
But while the shroud is important in showing us what Jesus suffered, Creech continued, we also need the Church and the Scriptures "to learn why he suffered."
Orange Auxiliary Bishop Timothy Freyer, who played a key role in bringing the museum to Christ Cathedral, noted that his favorite feature was the reproduction of the crown of thorns, which, contrary to most artistic renditions, was actually shaped like a helmet or cap. He continued: "I've been impressed with the entire exhibition. It is very engaging, and I believe it will be an important tool in helping visitors come to know Christ better."
Also among those excited to see the opening of the museum was Gus Accetta, a physician who has devoted much of his free time to studying the shroud. In 1996, he founded the Shroud Center in Huntington Beach, since relocated to the Santiago Retreat Center and welcoming 25,000 visitors annually.
"It's a wonderful exhibit," he said. It not only looks at the shroud but the whole life of Christ, of which the shroud is just a part."
The Shroud of Turin experience will be on display at Christ Cathedral at least through 2030. The museum is located on Christ Cathedral campus, 12141 Lewis St., Garden Grove, California, a few miles away from Disneyland and the Anaheim Convention Center. For more information, visit the website www.theshroudexperience.com.
