As Othonia prepares to celebrate 20 years since its first Shroud exhibit, it is fitting to remember Father Héctor Guerra, LC, the priest whose love for the Shroud of Turin helped begin this work. Born in Monterrey, Mexico, on November 19, 1953, Father Guerra later became a priest of the Legionaries of Christ and served in several leadership and teaching roles. The Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum remembers him as a former regional director of the Legionaries of Christ, a teacher, and a promoter of the Shroud exhibitions that began in Jerusalem and Rome before reaching other cities. Othonia’s own history says that Father Guerra dreamed of establishing Shroud exhibits around the world, and that his efforts led to the first exhibit at the Notre Dame Center in Jerusalem in 2006.

Father Guerra’s interest in the Shroud was not merely academic. He believed the Shroud could help modern men and women encounter the Gospel with both faith and reason. In his writing, he was careful to say that the Shroud is not the foundation of Christian faith, nor a magical object, nor something that forces belief. Rather, he saw it as a “bridge” that can lead a person toward Christ, especially in a visual and scientific age. He wrote that the image helps people remember what it represents: love “to the end.” For him, science did not replace faith, but it could open a door. The Shroud, he believed, allowed the message of Christ’s Passion, death, and Resurrection to be presented in a way that speaks to the senses, the mind, and the heart.

That conviction became concrete in exhibitions, conferences, pilgrimages, and education. Father Guerra helped promote the permanent and traveling exhibitions “Who is the Man of the Shroud?” with early locations in Jerusalem, Rome, Sacramento, Lisbon, Den Bosch, Krakow, and Mexico. To give continuity to these efforts, he founded Othonia in 2009 with Father Rafael Pascual, LC, at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome, envisioning it as a center for education, research, and dialogue about the Shroud. Even while undergoing chemotherapy, Father Guerra attended the 2012 inauguration of the exhibition at Anáhuac University in Mexico because, as a Mexican, that opening mattered deeply to him. He died in Madrid on December 11, 2015, but the work he began continues wherever Othonia invites people to look more closely at the Shroud and, through it, to consider the face of Christ.