ROMAN Catholic priests who visit the Shroud of Turin will be able to absolve any woman in the city from the sin of abortion, the Archbishop of Turin said last night.

The decree was made by Cardinal Giovanni Saldarini before a mass at the San Domenico Cathedral, to celebrate the first public display of the shroud for 20 years. The exhibition will run until June 14 and is expected to attract more than three million pilgrims.

The cardinal's announcement means that any Roman Catholic priest based in, or visiting, Turin and the relic can absolve women of "the sin of abortion" during the time that the shroud is on display.

"Voluntary abortion" normally belongs to a rare category of sins which carries automatic excommunication. Usually the intervention of a bishop would be required to obtain absolution.

Under the decree abortion can be treated as an ordinary sin which can be cleansed by the sacrament of confession, a move expected to produce a rash of women who have never spoken before of their sin.

Last night Turin looked likely to become as much a haven for souvenir vendors as a pilgrim's paradise, with sellers stock-piling tasteless goods. T-shirts and Swatch-style watches, which feature an image of the face of Christ like the one said to be on the shroud, are just two of them.

The 14ft shroud, last shown in 1978, is displayed in a £300,000 bomb and fire-proof casket. Weighing more than 4,000lb and moved by a special trolley weighing another 5,000lb, it has a computer-regulated micro-climate and uses inert argon gas to protect the delicate relic.

Pope John Paul II, who first saw the shroud in 1978, is expected to visit the cathedral on May 24. He will have a special kneeler for the viewing but other pilgrims will have less than two minutes.

Yesterday a mass was held to mark the opening of the exhibition which also celebrates the 100th anniversary of the first photograph being taken of the shroud. The picture fuelled the controversy which has raged since the shroud's existence was first recorded in 1339.

In 1988, however, a team of scientists questioned the authenticity of the shroud after carbon dating showed it was only 600 to 700 years old. But new books, television documentaries, and theories about the sacred cloth continue to abound. And still the faithful come.

They believe that the shroud was used to wrap the body of Christ after the Crucifixion and that it then made a trip from Jerusalem to Odessa, to Constantinople to Chambery, in France, and finally arrived in Turin in 1578.

The Roman Catholic Church in Britain last week said it had no "official" view of the shroud. A spokesman said: "If people want to believe in the shroud they can. If they do not, it is in no way blasphemous. We see it as an icon, an aid to spirituality." Cardinal Saldarini says cautiously that the Shroud "is not Christ but a sign pointing to Him".

In Italy anticipation over the display has reached fever pitch. Advertisements featuring Baroque music daily interrupt radio programmes to tell anyone listening that Turin is proud to be putting on show the Shroud of Christ; its image has flooded television and newspapers; and the national railway corporation is offering a 15 per cent discount on return journeys to Turin to anyone with a ticket for the shroud.

News coverage has focused heavily on fresh claims that the 1988 carbon dating could be flawed and other theories that claim cotton fragments match those which existed at the time of Christ.

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