of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary, or the saints seen in a light, a shadow, or a discoloration. The most infamous example is the 2004 sale for $10,000 of a grilled-cheese sandwich that bore the likeness of the Virgin Mary. Science classifies such imagery as a form of pareidolia, a false perception of an image due to what is theorized as the mind’s oversensitivity to perceiving patterns. Whereas the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe miraculously “painted” on the tilma of St. Juan Diego in 1531 on Tepeyac Hill in Mexico is perhaps the greatest prodigy in the history of the Church after the time of the Gospels, there is only one instance of a naturally occurring stain resembling the Virgin Mary that has ever been approved by ecclesiastical authorities. On January 17, 1797, in Absam, Austria, a permanent image inexplicably impressed on a glass window was declared miraculous by the local bishop.
An instance of a bleeding host or statue needs to be treated with a different level of attention and intervention than a case of a person who allegedly bleeds from the wounds of Christ. In the case of the Eucharistic miracle, the host is typically confiscated by Church authorities to perform scientific tests that can easily ferret out a hoax from an authentic miracle. In some rare cases, actual human blood or heart muscle has been found to be present with the host.
In cases of the stigmata, by which a person is allegedly joined in suffering with the crucified Christ, blood oozes from the person’s hands, feet, side, and forehead. These persons are kept under close medical observation to see the spontaneity of the bleeding and to ensure that the persons are not self-inflicting the wounds with sharp implements or acid. If there is no scientific explanation for a person’s stigmata, the Church will not publicly declare the authenticity of the occurrence, as it is tantamount to the canonization of a living person in the eyes of some of the faithful. Some of the Church’s greatest saints, such as Francis of Assisi and Catherine of Siena, have been stigmatics, but the wounds themselves are not a guarantee of holiness.
Those who bear the wounds of Christ are still subject to the same temptations and failings as the rest of us, but when a stigmatic publicly falters, there is the potential for great scandal. One of Catholicism’s great modern saints, Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, as mentioned in the last chapter, exhibited these wounds but was censured by the Vatican and prohibited from publicly saying Mass in order to allow Church authorities to assess the many miracles and phenomena that surrounded him.
In the case of incorruptible bodies that are preserved in some state of perfection well beyond the time of death, the former Sacred Congregation of Rites had given official recognition to several preservations as miraculous. In general the Church has been reluctant to use the incorruption of a body as a miracle in a sainthood cause, with the notable exception of St. Andrew Bobola, whose corpse survived rough handling during several translations and still remained perfectly fresh for more than three hundred years.23
The Vatican is generally very cautious and can be extremely slow to approve miracles of any sort. For example, in 2008 the Church finally gave formal recognition to the 1664 apparitions in Le Laus, France, and the first formal approval of an apparition in the United States came in 2010, when the visions experienced by Belgian farmworker Adele Brise in 1859 in Wisconsin were solemnly approved. In the 1947 case of Bruno Cornacchiola, a poor Italian tram worker who received a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary on his way to assassinate the pope, the Vicariate of Rome approved the cult of the Virgin of Revelation very quickly that same year, but a definitive judgment, either positive or negative in regard to the supernaturality of the vision, has still not been made. With modern communication technologies, more advanced record keeping, and a wider geographical impact of claims of private revelation resulting in larger pastoral concerns, the Church has moved more swiftly in recent times.
In the early Church, there were no scientific inquiries into the events in question. Not only were there no brain-wave monitors or video cameras to track eye movement during supposed visions or tests to determine whether the blood or tears on a weeping statue were human, no formal investigation of any sort was universally required in the discernment of the miraculous claims. As part of the process, the faithful might gather to pray at the site, and the parish priest, or even better, a bishop could be involved, but it wasn’t the norm. Trustworthy testimony and a miracle were typically the main elements that built a case for visions or other events to be accepted as authentic. In a form of popular approval throughout Europe, shrines arose, including the Slipper Chapel in Walsingham, England, where Catholics and Anglicans alike commemorate the apparitions experienced by a noblewoman in 1061, and, as was mentioned earlier, Our Lady of the Pilar Basilica in Spain, legendarily the site of history’s first Marian apparition experienced by St. James in A.D. 40 while Mary was still alive.
It is not uncommon in early stories of miraculous visions or holy images for a formula to be present in one of several variations: Our Lady appears to one or more people (or a miraculous statue is discovered), she requests that the visionary tells the town to return to a life of practicing the Faith, a miracle (most typically healing) is given to prove the authenticity of the Virgin’s presence, and finally she requests that a shrine be built in commemoration. The location of the requested shrine is often indicated symbolically — the collected statue might miraculously return overnight three times to the spot where it was discovered. This was the case in the foundational legend of the Santuario de Chimayó in New Mexico, known as the Lourdes of the Southwest and home to the healing dirt that has been a part of thousands of cures. The location for the shrine was chosen because a supernatural light was said to have shone on a crucifix that was unearthed and taken to the local parish church some miles away. Three times it miraculously returned to its original discovery spot, giving the faithful confidence to build a shrine there.
In other such legends, the image became so heavy that it could not be moved. In the year 641, villagers of Soviore, Italy, buried their statue of the Madonna and fled toward the Mediterranean escaping the advancing Lombard hordes. A hundred years later, on July 7, 740, the parish priest was hunting at dawn, when he noticed a dove fly into a hole. Unsuccessful at uncovering the spot, he returned the next day with three helpers with shovels, and they unearthed a wooden statue. When the priest tried to carry it home, it was too heavy to move, so he left it there. On the following day, people found that the statue had moved to the top of a nearby chestnut tree. When it repeatedly returned after being moved, the villagers built a chapel at that spot.
The most famous legend of a weight-gaining holy icon is that of the wonder-working Polish image of Our Lady of Czestochowa. Hussite raiders looted the castle where the icon was housed, but during the getaway the image became so heavy that the horses could no longer drag the cart carrying the goods. The thieves removed the image and slashed it with a sword in frustration before tossing the icon into a ravine. The iconic scar present in every reproduction of the Black Madonna of Jasna Gora faithfully reproduces the scar on the face of the original image. Eventually, however, miracles and revelations perhaps intended for the universal Church were no longer evaluated by a parish priest or a community of the faithful, and more standard guidelines were drawn up. The revelations accorded to mystic St. Birgitta (Bridget) of Sweden were considered at the Councils of Constance (1414–1418) and Basel (1431–1449). She had received in ecstasy hundreds of infused locutions relating to a wide range of topics, including tips for everyday living, calls for reform in the Church and in Sweden, and even the Crusades. She dictated her messages in Swedish to two spiritual directors and a bishop, who recorded them in Latin. Because of her high profile and contact with the popes on political matters, her revelations were treated with special care and attention.24
The proliferation of alleged messages from myriad seers inspired greater Church involvement in discerning the words of mystics. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, the faithful were growing anxious over the increase in itinerant prophets with messages of doom.25 The Fifth Lateran Council (1512–1517), called by Pope Julius, reserved the approval of new prophecies and revelations to the Holy See. Following the explosive and scandalous exposing as a demonic fraud the famed Spanish mystic Sr. Magdalena de la Cruz in 1544, the Council of Trent sought to return investigations to the local level and authorized bishops to investigate and approve such phenomena before public worship could take place.
