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Immediately man regained his sight," reads the Gospel according to St. Mark. And like Bartimaeus, a 16-year-old Spanish girl claims to have regained her sight at WYD in Lisbon, during a mass, in Fatima on August 5. Suffering from an eye disease that doctors considered incurable, she would have suddenly recovered after receiving communion.
The girl's family is already talking about a "miracle" but the father refuses to have it recognized. The Catholic Church, for its part, is far from having spoken. Cautious on these subjects, she demanded an investigation of several years in order to attest to the miraculous nature of such an event.
Seven criteria
The examination is primarily medical. The case is entrusted to a commission, composed of believing and non-believing doctors, which must conduct a thorough study. It aims to attest to the inexplicable nature of healing. Concretely, specialists must examine the conditions of this recovery: can a rational and medical explanation be provided? Is healing nothing to do with treatment?
This stage can last several years. Cardinal Prosper Lambertini laid down in 1737 seven criteria for recognition of a miraculous healing in the work De servorum beatificatione et beatorum canonizatione (The beatification of the servants of God and canonization of the blessed), reports our confreres of Aleteia. The disease must be serious, the diagnosis made must be precise and clear, and no treatment must be the cause of the healing process. The latter must also be stable, total and permanent. To prove this, the investigation must last at least five years, which is the legal waiting period to certify a lasting recovery from a serious physical illness.
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In a second step, the file returns to the bishop of the place where the person lives" concerned, explained the journalist of the Figaro Jean-Marie Guénois, specialist in religious issues. Thus, it is no longer up to the medical staff to decide but to the ecclesiastical staff. The bishop must examine the spiritual aspects. It is up to him to decide on the "miraculous" aspect of this particular case. The miraculous dimension may, for example, be rejected if this inexplicable healing has given rise to a personal enhancement of the "miraculous" potential.
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The "miraculous" of Lourdes: a tiny minority
If there is no international census of the number of miracles attested compared to the number of declarations of inexplicable healings, it is possible to get an idea from the case of Lourdes. The Bureau of Medical Findings of Lourdes, created in 1883, recognized only 70 miracles against some 7300 reports of inexplicable healing. That's 1%.
The last one was in 2018. On February 11 of this year, the nun Bernadette Moriau was considered the 70th miraculous of Lourdes. In 2008, the woman then suffering from cauda equina syndrome (a disease affecting the endings of the spine, editor's note) went to Lourdes for a pilgrimage. Three days after her stay in the Hautes-Pyrénées, her pain disappeared and the nun began a walk of nearly five kilometers after stopping her medication.
She then built a solid medical file and approached the Office of Medical Findings of Lourdes. Once the file was validated, it was entrusted to the International Medical Committee of Lourdes (CMIL). The medical commission "lasted almost eight years for the examination of the medical question, with commissions of 300doctors and three commissions of specialists," said our journalist Jean-Marie Guénois. The extent of the research shows the rigor required by the Catholic Church, which does not wish to see miracles multiply in the name of faith and God.