In an exclusive interview with ChurchPOP, actor and comedian Rob Schneider announced a project he's been working on for the past five years: a movie about the Shroud of Turin.
"Hopefully, this movie about the Shroud will happen because I think it's about faith," Schneider told ChurchPOP editor Jacqueline Burkepile in an interview published on April 16.
"I think we need that and to bring more people to it and not necessarily to preach to them, but to just show the actual sacrifice and to talk about what the core of Christianity is - loving others," he continues.
Schneider then explains that the premise of the movie, which he hopes to begin filming in 2024, is about shroud expert Joe Marino and his wife, "who basically proved scientists tested the cloth in the wrong place."
"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 an 'invisible weave.'
"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.
"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 off the carbon dating. So each of the pieces that were cut, and the deeper that it went in, the further it went back in time.
Schneider then said "the best description" he's ever heard about the Shroud of Turin is that "it's the receipt" for Christians.
"It's such a great story," he said. "Hopefully, it will bring more people into the faith, or at least an openness to what this really is: the burial cloth of Jesus Christ...it's actual tangible proof."
The actor also explains that the process of making and researching for the film impacted his decision to become Catholic. He began working on the film "as an entertainment piece," but it turned into a "broadening" of his faith.
"It became the broadening of my faith and it became a powerful thing that kind of – I don't know how else to say it – but it was breathed into me, and then it from there, it was really the beginning."