This appears on the Shroud of Turin Web Page

If you’ve ever watched a TV special about the Shroud, if you’ve ever read a book about the Shroud or read an article about it, if you’ve ever listened to a relevant podcast, or even talked about the Shroud over a beer, you have undoubtedly come across the name Barrie Schwortz. Barrie worked tirelessly as a leader and organizer of conferences and meetings for many years. Barrie served as an unbiased archivist of documents and photographs. Mostly, Barrie was an all-around inspiration for the world of Shroud researchers and dabblers. If you were looking for pictures of the Shroud, scholarly citations, or academic papers, you have probably clicked on the Shroud of Turin Website. We simply knew it as Shroud dot com.  Barrie created the website more than 25 years ago and until recently edited the site and wrote comprehensive, must-read summaries with each frequent update.

When Barrie created the site, there were less than 10,000 websites in the world. Today, there are more than 200 million active sites. Without a doubt, within this cyber vastness, Barrie’s website is the most extensive, visible, and heavily used website on the Shroud. He counted more than fifteen million hits from well over a million people. That’s a lot.

I talked to Barrie for the first time in 2001. I had just heard of the Shroud of Turin and called him out of the blue to ask a question—a sort of what-gives kind of question. The call lasted three hours, during which time Barrie explained why the Shroud was so important and why it might be authentic. His scientific and historical knowledge about the Shroud was encyclopedic, his willingness to help boundless. His objectivity was admirable to the point of frustration, something for which we can all be thankful. He was a consummate professional in every respect.

Barrie was part of the STURP team that went to Turin in 1978 as the Official Documenting Photographer. Since then, he traveled all over the world lecturing about the Shroud. He appeared on almost every major cable and broadcast network, including CNN, PBS, BBC, and Vatican Radio.

Not too long ago, while giving a lecture on the other side of the world, Barrie told a reporter for the New Zealand Herald, “The irony of my life is how much time I spend, as a Jew, trying to educate Christians that this could well be a relic of Jesus.”

The last time I heard Barrie give one of his educational talks was in 2013 in Savannah, Georgia, at the beautiful Catholic Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist. His lecture that evening was an expanded version of a TED talk he had given earlier that year at the Pontifical University inside Vatican City.

Barrie has enriched the lives of countless people throughout the world.

I shall miss him. We will all miss him.

We shall meet again, good friend. Godspeed.

Shroud of Turin