Eucharistic miracles: a historical and scientific overview

The theological context

To understand what is at stake in a Eucharistic miracle, one must start from the Real Presence. At every Mass, after the consecration pronounced by the priest, the host is no longer bread: it is the Body of Christ himself, and the wine has become his Blood. The simplest image is that of an object whose appearance does not change while what it is has changed completely: the substance (what the thing is) is changed, while the species (colour, taste, weight, form of the bread and wine) remain. The Council of Trent defined this at its 13th session, on 11 October 1551:

"The holy Council teaches and openly and straightforwardly professes that, in the venerable sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, after the consecration of the bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is truly, really and substantially contained under the appearance of those sensible realities." Council of Trent, session XIII, decree on the Eucharist, ch. 1 (DS 1636)^[5]

The same decree calls this change of the whole substance of the bread and wine transsubstantiation (ch. 4, DS 1642) and strikes with anathema anyone who would maintain that the substance of the bread and wine remains with the Body and Blood of Christ (can. 2, DS 1652)^[6]. It also gives its reason, which is one of love: the Saviour instituted this sacrament "in which he in a sense poured out the riches of his divine love for men" (ch. 2, DS 1638)^[7].

In the ordinary course of things, this presence remains invisible: the faithful person who receives communion sees a white host and tastes bread. A Eucharistic miracle does not consist in making this presence directly visible. Saint Thomas Aquinas distinguishes the physical prodigy, observable flesh, blood and tissue, from the sacramental presence of Christ, which is apprehended "not by the senses, but by faith alone, which rests on the authority of God" (Summa Theologiae, III, q. 75, a. 1, taken up by the Catechism, § 1381)^[8]. The miracle is an added sign: a miraculous modification of the appearances, given to strengthen faith and to challenge the one who doubts, and not a window opened onto the glorious body of the Risen One^[9].

The four families of phenomena

The recorded cases fall into four large families, sometimes combined:

1. Visible transformation into flesh and blood: the most emblematic family, of which Lanciano (750) is the prototype. The majority of modern scientifically analyzed cases (Buenos Aires, Tixtla, Sokółka, Legnica) fall into this category.
2. Supernatural preservation: the host resists decomposition for years, even centuries, without preservative agents. Lanciano is still exhibited 13 centuries after the events.
3. Levitation: the host or the monstrance containing the host rises into the air without support. Emblematic case: Faverney (1608) where the monstrance levitated for more than 30 hours before hundreds of witnesses.
4. Multiplication: a shortage of hosts during distribution, hosts that appear. Modern cases: Thomaston, USA, 2023.

To these are added singular cases: appearance of the face of Christ in the host (Bordeaux 1822, Saint-André de la Réunion 1902, Chirattakonam 2001), descents of hosts from the air (Naju, Korea, 1994-2002), communions given by an invisible being (bedridden mystics, seers of Garabandal).

Contemporary scientific convergences

Five Eucharistic cases have been the subject of modern scientific analyses by university, hospital or private laboratories. Several examinations were conducted blind, without revealing the origin of the samples to the experts; the extent of this precaution nevertheless varies according to the investigations. The results converge on several points, without being identical:

1. Cardiac origin: the five cases point towards the myocardium, with a particularly documented identification at Lanciano and conclusions of compatibility or probable origin in certain recent examinations.
2. Blood group AB: it was sought and identified at Lanciano and Tixtla; the other three cases do not provide comparable ABO typing.
3. Leukocytes: at Buenos Aires and Tixtla, their state was interpreted as that of living cells at the time of sampling. Fixed slides do not constitute an observation of cells continuing to live or beat during the analysis.
4. Myocardial lesions: the four recent cases describe alterations compatible with acute cardiac suffering. Serafini examines in particular infarction and stress cardiomyopathy; this clinical reading does not automatically extend to the ancient tissue of Lanciano.^[10]

These five cases obviously do not exhaust the category. But their convergence, obtained by different laboratories, decades apart, in four countries and on two continents, constitutes the central argument of the scientific file.

The table below compares, for each of the five cases analyzed in the laboratory, the principal investigator, the commissioned laboratories, the tissue result, the blood group when it was typed and the documented ecclesial decisions. It brings out the recurrence of the myocardial interpretation and the diversity of the methods and complementary results.

Only Lanciano and Tixtla have been the subject of explicit ABO typing, and both conclude to group AB, the rarest of the four groups, which Serafini estimates at about 5% in populations of European origin. It is also the group that the Turin professor Pierluigi Baima Bollone found in 1982, then confirmed in 1984 by immunofluorescence, on the blood of the Holy Shroud of Turin.^[20]

The monk of the desert of Scetis (4th-5th century)

Among the ancient Eucharistic accounts, the Apophthegmata of the Desert Fathers transmit that of an ascetic of Scetis, in Egypt, who held the Eucharistic bread to be a mere figure of the Body of Christ. The chain of the account is named: Abba Daniel the Pharanite reports the words of his master Abba Arsenius. Two elders come to instruct the monk without doubting the uprightness of his life; all three pray for a week to understand the mystery.^[21]

On Sunday, in church, the bread appears to the three monks as a little child. At the fraction, an angel immolates him and pours his blood into the chalice; the old man receives a piece of bloody flesh. He then confesses his faith, and the flesh takes on again for him the appearance of bread:

"I believe, Lord, that the bread is your body and that the chalice is your blood." Apophthegmata of the Fathers, alphabetical collection, Daniel 7, translation from the Greek.^[22]

This account belongs to the monasticism of the 4th-5th centuries. It describes a vision granted to three persons, not a relic preserved for expert examination. Its place in this history is that of an ancient testimony to the Real Presence and to the pedagogy of the sign: the elders explain to the monk that God gives his Body under an appearance adapted to human weakness.^[23]

Lanciano (Italy, around 750): the prototype

Detailed article: The Eucharistic miracle of Lanciano (around 750)

Lanciano, a town in central Italy in the Abruzzi, preserves in the Church of Saint Francis the relics of one of the oldest Eucharistic miracles submitted to modern analyses. Tradition places the prodigy around 700-750, at the Mass of a Basilian monk in the church of Saints Legontian and Domitian. Serafini places in 1574 the first written trace that explicitly mentions the miracle, at an ecclesiastical recognition; the manuscript account of 1631 and the marble inscription of 1636 belong to a later documentary stage. The present silver and crystal reliquary dates from 1713.^[24] The 1631 manuscript recounts the celebrant's doubt and then the event:

"Then one morning, in the midst of his sacrifice, after having pronounced the most holy words of the consecration, he was more than ever plunged in his former error, he saw [...] the Bread into Flesh and the Wine into Blood [...]." Manuscript account of 1631, quoted by Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 31.^[25]

The relic, a disc of brown-yellow flesh about six centimetres in diameter and five fragments of coagulated blood about sixteen grams in total, was preserved for twelve centuries in successive reliquaries without any preservative agent.^[26] On 18 November 1970, in the sacristy of the Church of Saint Francis, the Archbishop of Lanciano, Archbishop Pacifico Perantoni, a Franciscan like the guardians of the sanctuary, breaks the seals of 1886 and authorizes Prof. Odoardo Linoli, anatomopathologist and chief physician of the United Hospitals of Arezzo, to take 20 mg of flesh and a fragment of blood of 318 mg; Linoli brings in Prof. Ruggero Bertelli, of the University of Siena, to confirm the myocardial origin of the tissue. He presents his conclusions at Lanciano on 4 March 1971:^[27]

• the blood is true blood and the flesh true flesh;
• the flesh is made up of cardiac muscle tissue;
• the blood and the flesh belong to the human species;
• the blood group is AB, identical in the blood and in the flesh;
• the proteins of the blood are distributed according to the proportions of normal fresh blood;
• chlorides, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium and sodium are present in reduced quantities, calcium in increased quantity.^[28][29]

Linoli also specifies why the hypothesis of a forgery does not hold: only a hand practised in anatomical dissection could have drawn from the heart of a corpse a "slice" so regularly tangential to the wall of a hollow organ; cadaveric remains, and especially blood, would rapidly have putrefied; no salt or preservative appears in the sections. In 1981, new slides drawn from an unused fragment show the endocardium, adipose tissue, arterial and venous vessels and nerve fibres: several characteristic structures of the cardiac wall.^[30]

A false document to set aside: a supposed "report of the World Health Organization" of 1976, which would have confirmed Linoli after "500 examinations", still circulates in devotional literature. It was published by Professor Giuseppe Biondini; Serafini consulted it at the Lanciano sanctuary and describes it as a "poor quality ideological forgery":

"It is a botched document that clumsily mixes serious, well written scientific data, but obtained mainly from Egyptian mummies and not from the cloths of Lanciano, with ramblings in favour of the miracle, written in opaque and pompous Italian." Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 28^[31]

This forgery in no way affects Linoli's analyses, published separately in 1971 in the Quaderni Sclavo di Diagnostica^[32]: one must simply stop citing it, including the final formula often borrowed from it, "science, conscious of its limits, stops before the impossibility of providing an explanation", which belongs to this supposed report and not to Linoli.^[33]

Bolsena (Italy, 1263): the origin of Corpus Christi

Detailed article: The Eucharistic miracle of Bolsena and Corpus Christi

The account of Bolsena places in 1263 the Mass of a Bohemian priest, Peter of Prague, on pilgrimage to Rome and troubled by doubt about the Real Presence. In the Basilica of Saint Christina, the host bleeds onto the corporal, the cloth placed under the chalice. Pope Urban IV, who was staying at Orvieto, receives the relic. This story is represented on the enamels of the reliquary of 1338, then in the frescoes of the Chapel of the Corporal; Raphael paints it in 1512 in the Room of Heliodorus in the Vatican.^[34]

On 11 August 1264, Urban IV institutes Corpus Christi for the universal Church by the bull Transiturus de hoc mundo. The text celebrates the memorial of the Passion and the Eucharistic presence; it does not name Bolsena. The link between the miracle and the feast belongs to the Orvieto tradition. This institution also responds to the impulse given at Liège by Saint Juliana of Cornillon; the future Urban IV had known that milieu when he was archdeacon of Liège. Saint Thomas Aquinas composes the office of the feast, with the hymns Pange lingua, Lauda Sion and Sacris solemniis.^[35]

The corporal is kept in the Chapel of the Corporal of Orvieto Cathedral, in a Gothic marble tabernacle. The great reliquary of gilt silver and enamels, completed in 1338 by Ugolino di Vieri and his companions, is a work of Sienese goldsmithery, now presented at the museum of the Cathedral Works.^[36]

Between 23 February and 27 March 2015, the restorer Ester Giovacchini, assisted by Danielle Yvonne Dusoczky, carries out a conservation intervention. Massimo Roncella photographs the cloth in normal light and in ultraviolet fluorescence. The restoration report describes biological deposits interpreted as blood, distributed symmetrically following the folds; this is an observation of textile conservation, distinct from the histological and immunological examinations of the five medical cases studied below.^[37] Serafini mentions this non-invasive investigation in his afterword, without presenting it as an expert examination comparable to those of Lanciano or Buenos Aires.^[38]

Faverney (France, 1608): the monstrance suspended in the air

Detailed article: The Eucharistic miracle of Faverney (1608)

In the night from Pentecost Sunday to Monday 26 May 1608, the repository of the Benedictine abbey of Faverney, in Haute-Saône, catches fire. Around three o'clock, the sacristan Dom Jean Garnier discovers the smoke and the debris. The pontifical brief and the archbishop's letter exposed on the repository are intact. The young novice Antoine-Gabriel Hudelot, aged thirteen in the account established on the official report, perceives the monstrance suspended, without support, at its height before the fire, about five feet above the base of the grille.^[39]

The two consecrated hosts remain in the monstrance during a prodigy of about thirty-three hours, before a crowd come from the region. On Tuesday 27 May around ten o'clock, during the Mass of Nicolas Aubry, parish priest of Menoux, the monstrance straightens at the moment of the elevation, produces "a little sound like that of a silver blade", then descends onto the corporal prepared below.^[40]

From 29 May to 4 June, three commissioners collect 54 depositions under oath, including those of thirteen religious of three orders. Ten theologians examine the documents on 9 June; Archbishop Ferdinand de Rye proclaims the miracle by his mandate of 10 July 1608. On 18 December 1862, Pius IX approves the authorization of a commemorative office; Cardinal Mathieu proclaims it at Faverney on 16 May 1864. Pius X raises the church to the rank of minor basilica by a brief of 8 March 1912.^[41]

The monstrance of 1608 was sent to Paris during the Revolution. Claude-François Longchamp saved the host kept at Faverney; the other, given to Dole in December 1608, was profaned in February 1794. The preserved relic remains venerated in the basilica. The fourth centenary gave rise to a university colloquium whose proceedings appeared with the Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté in 2010.^[42][43]

Bordeaux (France, 1822): the face of Christ in the host

On Sunday 3 February 1822, in the afternoon, in the chapel of the convent of the Ladies of Loreto in Bordeaux, an assembly of religious, altar boys and a few laypeople sees during adoration of the Blessed Sacrament the living face of Christ appear in the exposed host in the monstrance. The face is animated: it bows, smiles, looks at the assembly. Abbé Delort, a priest replacing the founder, Abbé Noailles, that day, testifies in writing:

"The figure was very white and represented a young man of about thirty years, extraordinarily beautiful. He was clothed in a scarf of dark red colour. He bowed from time to time to the right and forward. Struck by this prodigy and unable to believe my eyes, I first thought it was only an illusion; but, as the miracle continued and I could no longer remain in this uncertainty, I signalled to the child holding the thurible to come near me. I asked him if he did not perceive anything extraordinary. He answered me that he had already perceived the same prodigy and that he perceived it still."^[44]

Fourteen written testimonies are collected among the twenty-one identified persons. The founder, Abbé Pierre-Bienvenu Noailles, transmits the file to Archbishop Charles-François d'Aviau du Bois de Sanzay. The ordinance of 15 January 1823 authorizes exposition and benediction of the Blessed Sacrament on several dates, notably Septuagesima Sunday, in memory of the favour received. Bouflet distinguishes this liturgical act from a formal canonical recognition of the miracle.^[45]

Saint-André de la Réunion (1902)

On 26 January 1902, at the end of the eight o'clock Mass, Abbé Henri Lacombe, parish priest of Saint-André de La Réunion, sees a halo around the monstrance, then a face in the exposed host. The altar boys and the faithful come to look; the account describes a Holy Face crowned with thorns, with blood on the forehead and tears on the cheeks.^[46]

The news attracts thousands of people, even from Saint-Denis. Bouflet specifies that some see nothing. The face remains visible until two o'clock in the afternoon, then a crucifix succeeds it; the whole disappears at the Tantum ergo of vespers. Accounts appear in L'Univers and La Croix, then an account authorized by the bishop in 1909. The ecclesiastical authority nevertheless does not open a canonical inquiry: authorized dissemination of the account and a formal judgment on its miraculous character are two distinct acts.^[47]

Tumaco (Colombia, 1906): the tsunami stopped

On 31 January 1906 at 10:36, an earthquake of magnitude 8.8 strikes the coast of Ecuador and Colombia; the tsunami causes hundreds of deaths. At Tumaco, the Augustinian Recollect parish priest Gerardo Larrondo, assisted by Fr Julián Moreno, leads the inhabitants towards the sea with the large consecrated host, after having consumed the small hosts. The account transmitted in his order and in the diocese reports that he traces a blessing before the threatening wave: it stops and recedes.^[48]

The scientific report of Rudolph and Szirtes, published in 1911, provides a precise result: no deaths at Tumaco, while neighbouring localities suffered heavy losses. It also describes the low tide and the protective effect of two islets; houses on the shore were overturned. One must therefore not confuse the absence of victims with an absence of damage. The diocesan commemoration retains the salvation of the population and the Eucharistic blessing; the seismologists' observations describe the physical circumstances of the tsunami.^[49]

Lourdes, Basilica of Saint Pius X (7 November 1999): the filmed levitation

On 7 November 1999, the Mass of the assembly of the bishops of France, in the Basilica of Saint Pius X at Lourdes, is broadcast by Le Jour du Seigneur on France 2. It is presided over by Archbishop Louis-Marie Billé, Archbishop of Lyon, surrounded by Cardinals Jean-Marie Lustiger and Pierre Eyt. Billé would only be created cardinal in 2001.^[50]

At the epiclesis, when the concelebrants invoke the Holy Spirit upon the offerings, the upper host of two large superimposed hosts rises and oscillates. The film shows an interval of about two centimetres, where the colour of the vestments situated behind the paten appears. This sequence precedes the words of the consecration.^[51]

A mechanical explanation has been proposed: under the effect of humidity and heat, the host would have curved while remaining supported at its centre. Defenders of the prodigy oppose to it the changing visibility of the background in the interval. Fr Jean-Baptiste Rinaudo, doctor of sciences, examined the electrostatic hypothesis; his test of rubbing a host with wool did not make the electroscope react. This result rules out the mechanism under the conditions of that test; the film and that test do not by themselves constitute a complete physical inquiry. No ecclesial judgment recognizes a miracle here.^[52] See the detailed file on Lourdes 1999.

Sievernich (Germany, 8 November 2004): the Child Jesus in the monstrance

On 8 November 2004, about four hundred people attend adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Sievernich, in the diocese of Aachen. The testimonies collected in the entourage of Manuela Strack describe a host sliding towards the back of a new monstrance, then put back in place by the priest. Several assistants then say they see the image of the Child Jesus, before the host or upon it, until the withdrawal of the Blessed Sacrament. One witness estimates at about eighty the number of people who saw the child; this number is not that of written depositions recorded.^[53]

On 1 June 2026, Bishop Helmut Dieser institutes a commission charged with examining the events of Sievernich according to the Roman norms of 2024. This opening of an inquiry does not constitute an approval of the accounts.^[54]

Buenos Aires (1996): the blind analysis of Prof. Zugibe

Detailed article: The Eucharistic miracle of Buenos Aires (1992-1996) and the Zugibe analysis

Three successive episodes take place in the parish of Saint Mary (Santa María) in the Caballito-Almagro district of Buenos Aires, in the archdiocese then entrusted to Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, then, from February 1998, to Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the future Pope Francis.

When a consecrated host that has fallen or been abandoned can no longer be consumed, the liturgical rule is to let it dissolve in water: the sacramental presence lasts "as long as the Eucharistic species subsist" (Catechism, § 1377)^[55], then the water is poured onto blessed ground. The three episodes of Buenos Aires, like those of Sokółka and Legnica, occur in the course of this procedure.^[56]

First episode (1-10 May 1992): on Friday 1 May in the evening, a minister of communion, Carlos Domínguez, finds two fragments of host on the corporal, before the tabernacle; the parish priest, Fr Juan Salvador Carlomagno, has them put in water. On 8 May, the container contains three blood clots; on 10 May, at the evening Masses, two patens are stained with blood. An oncologist, Dr Isabel Botto, and a haematologist of the Ramos Mejía Hospital, Dr Adhelma Myrian Segovia de Sasot, carry out the first examinations and conclude to human blood.^[57] In her report of June 1992, Dr Sasot notes, at low magnification (×16), a detail she could not film: "on one of the occasions when I was able to observe it, I noticed an area that seemed to beat rhythmically". This unique observation concerns the episode of 1992; it must not be confused with Zugibe's examination in 2004.^[58] Second episode (24 July 1994): at the children's Mass, the minister distributing communion sees a drop of blood flow on the inner wall of the ciborium.^[59]

Third episode (18 August 1996): at the end of the evening Mass, a faithful woman points out to Fr Alejandro Pezet a host abandoned in the base of a candelabrum. Too soiled to be consumed, it is put in water by a lay minister, Emma Fernández, and placed in the tabernacle. On 26 August, the host is transformed into a red substance that grows in the following weeks; on the advice of Auxiliary Bishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a professional photographer, Marcelo Antonini, photographs it on 26 August and 6 September.^[60][61] It is only about a month later that the rest of the matter is transferred into a sealed flask containing distilled water^[62]. The 1996 file is the most developed here; a sample from 1992 was also the subject of analyses. The two series, sent together to the laboratory in October 1999, must be distinguished.^[63]

Having become archbishop, Archbishop Bergoglio authorizes in July 1999 new analyses and approves on 28 September the protocol of Dr Ricardo Castañón Gómez, a Bolivian clinical psychologist, on condition that discretion be kept. On 5 October 1999, before witnesses and cameras, two samples are taken: one from the dry matter of 1992, the other from the wet matter of 1996. The Australian lawyer Ron Tesoriero delivers them in person to the Forensic Analytical laboratory in San Francisco on 21 October. The histological examination would lead to the consultation of Prof. Frederick Zugibe, former chief medical examiner of Rockland County (NY), who receives the slide without knowing its origin.^[64][65]

The first Californian analyses do not immediately deliver a unanimous diagnosis of cardiac tissue: the genetic examinations remain inconclusive, while several histological readings follow one another. Dr Robert Lawrence (Delta Pathology, Stockton) interprets, in a filmed interview of 7 December 2000, the state of the white blood cells as a sign of vitality at sampling.^[66][67] After his examination of 20 April 2004, Zugibe describes in his reports of 15 and 26 March 2005:

• Cardiac tissue, which he places near a ventricular valvular zone
• Leukocytes, including macrophages and acute inflammatory cells
• Degenerative alterations, loss of striations and modification of the nuclei, compatible with cardiac suffering of several days; he envisages in particular a recent infarction or severe thoracic trauma.^[68]

Zugibe interprets the presence of the leukocytes as the indication of a tissue alive at sampling:

"This sample was alive at the moment when it was taken!" Frederick T. Zugibe, words reported by Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 64.^[69]

The consultation of 20 April 2004 was also filmed. In his afterword, Serafini compares the recording with the two written consultations of 15 and 26 March 2005: he describes Zugibe examining a slide under the microscope before Willesee shows him the file of the Buenos Aires events. The video thus documents the meeting and the words; the reports separately give the written medical description.^[70]

His reports concern a histological slide of fixed tissue. They do not report cells seen beating. Informed afterwards of a preservation in tap water for a month, then in distilled water for three years, Zugibe judges this preservation incompatible with the state of the cells he observed.^[71][72]

No declaration of miracle has been published for Buenos Aires. Each episode was reported to the archbishop, who asked for discretion and scientific studies; the files were sent to Rome, and one speaks here of a "Eucharistic sign". On 17 March 2006, Dr Castañón delivers his report to Cardinal Bergoglio, who authorizes adoration in the chapel of the church; this chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, where the sign is kept, was blessed by the cardinal, and the parish exposes it to adoration on the 8th of each month.^[73][74] In May 2024, a decree of the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Archbishop Jorge García Cuerva, takes measures "to protect the Eucharistic sign manifested in the parish of Santa María": the fragments may only be venerated in that parish, whose parish priest is designated guardian.^[75]

Tixtla (Mexico, 22 October 2006)

Detailed article: The Eucharistic miracle of Tixtla (Mexico, 2006)

On Sunday 22 October 2006, at Tixtla (State of Guerrero, Mexico), the closing Mass of a parish retreat organized by the parish priest of Saint Martin of Tours, Fr Leopoldo Roque, gathers about 600 people; the church being too small, it is celebrated in a neighbouring municipal hall.^[76] During communion, Sister Arely Marroquín, one of the two religious distributing the Eucharist, stops, pale, in tears, and shows the preacher of the retreat, Fr Raymundo Reyna Esteban (called "Father Rayito"), a host stained with fresh blood in the ciborium.^[77]

In the following weeks, the Bishop of Chilpancingo-Chilapa, Bishop Alejo Zavala Castro, entrusts the facts to a commission of four priests, which collects seventeen concordant declarations.^[78] In 2009, he entrusts the scientific examination to Dr Ricardo Castañón Gómez, already an actor in the Buenos Aires file, who coordinates between October 2009 and October 2012 examinations entrusted to several laboratories, some without indication of the origin of the sample.^[79] The results include:

• Gene-Ex Laboratory (La Paz, Bolivia), Dr Susana Pinell: presence of human haemoglobin
• Dr Eduardo Sánchez Lazo (Corporativo Médico Legal, Mexico): interpretation of the examinations in favour of an origin of the blood inside the host, which opposes the hypothesis of a simple superficial deposit
• Fibres of probably myocardial origin: the morphology is compatible with cardiac muscle, but altered by autolysis; the immunohistochemical examinations do not all provide the same results
• Blood group AB (as at Lanciano); the Gene-Ex laboratory adds an Rh negative typing, a result obtained for the first time and remained unique, which Serafini holds to be decisive if it were to be confirmed by other analyses (about 1 person in 133 is AB Rh negative according to his calculation)
• Preserved white blood cells: a macrophage containing lipid material is interpreted as the trace of an activity at sampling; the preparation of the slide fixed that state.^[80][81]

In February 2010, more than three years after the event, the engineer Fernando Rodríguez Pérez examines the matter in white and ultraviolet light. Under the coagulated superficial layer, he describes blood of fresh appearance. The observation concerns the state of the layers at the moment of the examination, without measuring a continuous flow during the preceding years. Consulted later, in June 2014, Dr Marco Blanquicett Anaya, a cardiologist in Cartagena, interprets the images as those of a cardiac tissue having undergone intense trauma or an infarction.^[82]

On 25 May 2013, at Chilpancingo, Dr Castañón publicly presents the conclusions of the investigation and delivers two copies to the bishop, one for the diocese, the other for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.^[83] On 12 October 2013, by a pastoral letter, Bishop Alejo Zavala Castro recognizes "the supernatural character" of the series of events linked to the host of Tixtla and declares the case a "divine sign".^[84][85] His successor, Bishop Salvador Rangel Mendoza, chooses to deepen the examination and consults the Congregation, which asks for a diocesan process: the file is designated as the "alleged Eucharistic phenomenon of Tixtla", and three commissions, historical, theological and scientific, are created.^[86] On 15 February 2022, having become bishop emeritus a few days earlier, he specifies that this process is not completed; his successor, Bishop José de Jesús González Hernández, appointed on 11 February 2022, has not published a conclusion since.^[87] The recognition of 2013 and the resumption of the investigation are thus two stages of the same file.

Sokółka (Poland, 12 October 2008)

Detailed article: The Eucharistic miracle of Sokółka (Poland, 2008)

On Sunday 12 October 2008, in the Church of Saint Anthony of Padua at Sokółka (north-east Poland, about 20,000 inhabitants), during the 8:30 Mass celebrated by Fr Filip Zdrodowski, a consecrated host falls at the foot of the altar at the moment of communion. Fr Jacek Ingielewicz, who is distributing communion, picks it up and, finding it soiled, plunges it into the water of the vasculum (small silver ablution vase); the parish priest, Monsignor Stanisław Gniedziejko, has the whole poured into a glass container, locked in the sacristy safe.^[88]

The following Sunday, 19 October, at 8 o'clock, the sacristan, Sister Julia Dubowska, opens the safe: the water is clear, but a part of the undissolved host bears a raised red stain of about 1 × 1.5 cm, similar to a blood clot. On 30 October, on the instruction of Archbishop Edward Ozorowski, the particle is removed from the water and placed on a small corporal; in mid-January 2009, it has dried and adheres to the linen.^[89] The archbishop entrusts the examination to two anatomopathologists of the Medical University of Białystok, Professors Stanisław Sulkowski and Maria Elżbieta Sobaniec-Łotowska. On 7 January 2009, Prof. Sobaniec-Łotowska takes a small fragment, to which a particle of host impossible to detach remains attached; she shares the sample with Prof. Sulkowski, absent that day and left in ignorance of its origin. Their separate examinations, under the optical then electron microscope, lead to the protocol of 21 January 2009, reproduced in a publication cosigned by the researchers in 2018.^[90] Serafini gives the following French formulation of it:^[91]

"It is myocardial tissue, or at least, of all the tissues of a living organism, the myocardium is the one it most resembles." Prof. Stanisław Sulkowski and Prof. Maria Elżbieta Sobaniec-Łotowska, concluding report, quoted by Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 95^[92]

The fibres present segmentation, fragmentation and contraction bands, signs of a muscle still alive but close to death. Above all, the myocardial fibres and the structure of the bread interpenetrate at so fine a scale that no known human instrument or method makes it possible to reproduce such interpenetration: for Prof. Sobaniec-Łotowska, this fact excludes a fabricated artefact.^[93]

On 30 March 2009, the archdiocese institutes an ecclesiastical commission which concludes that the examined host is indeed that of 12 October 2008 and that no manipulation by third parties is possible. On 14 October 2009, the metropolitan curia of Białystok, through its chancellor Andrzej Kakareko, declares:

"The event of Sokółka does not oppose the faith of the Church, but rather confirms it." Metropolitan Curia of Białystok, declaration of 14 October 2009, quoted by Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 97^[94]

The communiqué announces the transmission of the file to the apostolic nunciature in Warsaw.^[95] On 2 October 2011, before some 35,000 faithful, the relic is solemnly transferred to the Chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary in the parish church, where it is exposed to daily adoration.^[96]

Legnica (Poland, 25 December 2013)

Detailed article: The Eucharistic miracle of Legnica (Poland, 2013)

On Christmas Day 2013, at the first morning Mass, in the Church of Saint Hyacinth at Legnica (Lower Silesia, Poland), a consecrated host falls onto the choir carpet during communion. The priest applies the usual procedure: the host is placed in a chalice of water, kept in the tabernacle. On 5 January 2014, the dean of the priests of the parish observes that a half-moon fragment of about 0.5 × 1.5 cm has detached itself from the rest and has become red; two weeks later, it remains at the surface of the water while the rest of the host has entirely dissolved. The bishop, Bishop Stefan Cichy, institutes a commission of four experts.^[97]

On the decision of this commission, fifteen samples are taken on 26 January 2014 from the fragment of host, in the presence of witnesses and photographers. Control elements are added: unconsecrated hosts from the same batch, Mass wine and tap water. The examination begins at Wrocław; a second expert examination is then requested at Szczecin, which receives the slides and the first results as well as part of the fragment preserved in paraffin.^[98]

Conclusions:

• Human DNA identified at Szczecin, after the absence of usable amplification during the first examinations at Wrocław
• Striated muscle tissue, whose appearance is interpreted as closest to the myocardium
• Alterations compatible with agony, according to the experts quoted by the bishop
• At Wrocław, negligible local bacterial contamination, without pigment-producing bacteria; search for fungi by Grocott staining negative.^[99][100]

The official document of the diocese thus summarizes the conclusion of the department of forensic medicine:

"The histopathological images show fragments of tissue containing fragmented parts of striated muscle. The overall image [...] to which the tissue most resembles is that of a cardiac muscle [...] with the alterations that often accompany agony." Diocese of Legnica, official document quoted by Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 108^[101]

In January 2016, the Bishop of Legnica, Bishop Zbigniew Kiernikowski, successor of Bishop Cichy, presents the file to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. On Sunday 10 April 2016, his communiqué is read in the Church of Saint Hyacinth: he makes known there an event which "bears the marks of a Eucharistic miracle" and, "in accordance with the recommendations of the Apostolic See", asks the parish priest to prepare a suitable place for veneration of the relic as well as a register of graces received. The same day, the relic is presented to the adoration of the faithful.^[102] The parish priest, Fr Andrzej Ziombra, accompanies this veneration with regular information and catechesis; since the summer of 2016, the relic is exposed in a side chapel dedicated to Divine Mercy.^[103] He reports several conversions linked to the pilgrimage.^[104]

Spring Brook (United States, 2018): a host destroyed before any analysis

In mid-November 2018, in the parish of Saint Vincent de Paul at Spring Brook (New York State, diocese of Buffalo), a consecrated host falls during a Mass; a deacon places it in a container of water, locked in the tabernacle. On Friday 30 November, the feast of Saint Andrew, the parish priest, Fr Karl Loeb, and an assistant discover that the water has almost entirely evaporated and that, in a corner of the still visible particle, a crescent of intense red has formed, which browns in the following days.^[105]

Informed, the bishop and his auxiliary ask that the remains be destroyed, without examination. The reported reason is that the host was already dissolved and that the sacramental presence had therefore ceased, for it lasts only "as long as the Eucharistic species subsist" (Catechism, § 1377); the diocese has published no communiqué on this point. The parish priest obeys.^[106][107] On the photographs taken on 30 November, part of the particle is still visible; on 6 December 2018, the EWTN programme The World Over devotes a report to the episode, where parishioners express their regret that no analysis was made.^[108] Without a sample, no expert examination is any longer possible: this is why Serafini sets this case aside from his study, like that of Campoalegre (Colombia, 2006).^[109]

Thomaston (United States, 5 March 2023): a reported multiplication of hosts

On Sunday 5 March 2023, at the Church of Saint Thomas at Thomaston (Connecticut, Archdiocese of Hartford), in the parish of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, an extraordinary minister of communion begins to run short of hosts during distribution. According to the parish priest, Fr Joseph Crowley, who was celebrating the Mass, there are suddenly more of them in the ciborium; after the communion of about one hundred to one hundred and fifty people, there remain "as many, if not more". Fr Crowley announces it at the end of the Mass, broadcast live, then recounts it in his homily of 12 March; the hosts concerned are placed in reserve.^[110]

The archdiocese entrusts the examination to its judicial vicar. On 28 March 2023, it publishes a declaration which situates exactly this kind of fact:

"Over the centuries, this daily miracle has sometimes been confirmed by extraordinary signs come from Heaven, but the Church always takes care to examine with prudence the accounts of such signs." Archdiocese of Hartford, declaration of 28 March 2023^[111]

What happened at Thomaston, adds the archdiocese, would constitute, "if it were verified", a sign attributable to divine power alone to strengthen faith in the daily miracle of the Eucharist. In May 2023, the archbishop of the time, Archbishop Leonard P. Blair, refers the matter to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, as the norms provide; no conclusion has been made public since.^[112] The fact joins a family of prodigies already reported in the lives of the saints: in 1848, at the Oratory of Turin, Saint John Bosco was able to give communion to some six hundred and fifty boys with the few hosts of an almost empty ciborium; he himself confirmed it in 1863.^[113]

Chümoukedima (India, March 2024)

At the parish of Our Lady of Mount Carmel at Chümoukedima (Nagaland, north-east India, diocese of Kohima), a Baptist woman, come to Sunday Mass with a Catholic friend, receives communion and takes the host home with her without consuming it. Troubled, she goes to her friend's house; the parish priest being unreachable, the friend calls a Carmelite religious of the parish, and the host is brought back to the church. The parish priest, Fr Johnson Vadakkapurathan, breaks it, places it in a small container of blessed water and places it in the tabernacle so that it may dissolve there.^[114]

On Palm Sunday, 24 March 2024, on opening the tabernacle to take communion to a sick person, he finds the fragments intact at the bottom of the container, covered with a floating layer; he presses with his finger, the layer breaks and, according to his testimony, fresh blood flows from it. The host is exposed to the view of the faithful, then, on 27 March, the Bishop of Kohima, Bishop James Thoppil, takes it into his custody for a more thorough examination. "There is a procedure", the parish priest recalls: it is for the bishop to pronounce; no conclusion has been published since.^[115][116]

Morris (2025) and Cuilapa (2026): two inquiries that show the method

Two more recent reports illustrate the way in which the Church treats these facts. At Morris (Indiana, Archdiocese of Indianapolis), a red colouring observed in 2025 on a host of the Church of Saint Anthony of Padua is entrusted to a laboratory: the archdiocese announces in March 2025 that the analyses found a fungus and three species of bacteria common on human hands, and "no presence of human blood".^[117] At Cuilapa (Guatemala, diocese of Santa Rosa de Lima), a host removed from the mouth of a pupil during a Mass on 30 July 2026 and placed in water is found on 6 August undissolved, with red stains; the diocese keeps it away from the public and recalls that one cannot speak of a miracle before the end of an inquiry.^[118] One concludes to a natural cause, the other is open: it is this discernment, which sets aside what does not hold, that gives their weight to the retained cases.

Distinct from public miracles with a preserved relic, another category of Eucharistic phenomena touches the lives of saints and mystics. The French historian Joachim Bouflet, in his Encyclopédie des phénomènes extraordinaires dans la vie mystique (three volumes, Le Jardin des Livres), records several hundred cases in the Catholic tradition^[119].

Saint Francis of Assisi: the sheep that adores (13th c.)

Saint Bonaventure reports in the Legenda maior (VIII, 7) that a sheep offered to Francis at Saint Mary of the Portiuncula accompanied the brothers to church. During the office, it bent its knees before the altar; when the Body of Christ was elevated at Mass, it bowed, with legs bent. The biographer sees in it a call addressed to the faithful: the humble animal teaches them respect for the sacrament.^[120]

Saint Anthony of Padua: the mule on its knees (13th c.)

The Benignitas, a life of Saint Anthony composed around 1280, situates in the region of Toulouse a challenge thrown out by an adversary of the Real Presence. He will deprive his mule of food for three days, then present it with oats while Anthony holds the Blessed Sacrament. If the animal leaves the fodder to adore it, he will believe. The account describes the mule bending its knees before the host, then the conversion of its master.^[121]

The Rigaldina, at the beginning of the 14th century, transmits a version with a horse; the Rimini tradition then situates the prodigy in that city. At Padua, a fresco of 1515, attributed to Girolamo Tessari, represents it in the Scuola del Santo, neighbouring the basilica.^[122]

Mother Yvonne-Aimée de Malestroit: the photographed host (1941)

On 16 September 1941, Mother Yvonne-Aimée de Jésus (1901-1951), superior of the Augustines of Malestroit, is staying at La Brardière, in the Orne, with Fr Paul Labutte. In a small wood, she cries out that a host is profaned and pierced with a punch, then asks her angel to bring it to her. Labutte describes a light passing above the trees; on a young fir tree, they find a small host pierced at its centre and bloodied. The Parisian origin of the profanation is indicated by Yvonne-Aimée; the priest testifies to what he then sees in the wood.^[123]

"The host was standing upright on the branch." Paul Labutte, testimony quoted by Joachim Bouflet, Encyclopédie des phénomènes extraordinaires dans la vie mystique, t. II, pp. 199-200.^[124]

Yvonne-Aimée photographs the host; Labutte transports it on a leaf to the hermitage, where he finds the torches already lit.^[125]

Another document makes it possible to compare the observations: René Bolloré attests under oath that, on 10 January 1928, at Malestroit, he sees Yvonne-Aimée seize a bloody host, her hands about fifty centimetres from her face. He attaches a sketch, describes the blood on the hands and reports that the chaplain places the host on a corporal to carry it to the chapel. The next day, he sees it adhere to the cloth. Here again, the Parisian provenance comes from the words of Yvonne-Aimée, distinct from his own material observations.^[126]

Garabandal: visible communions given by an angel (1962)

In the night of 18 to 19 July 1962, at Garabandal, Conchita González comes out in ecstasy before the crowd. She had announced that the host, ordinarily invisible to the assistants at the communions she said she received from an angel, would become visible. The witnesses describe her tongue first empty, then the appearance of a white host. The engineer Alejandro Damians films the last moments on 8 mm film: about seventy frames are at the origin of the often reproduced image.^[127]

This document concerns a precise episode; it does not constitute an overall judgment on the apparitions. The note of Bishop José Vilaplana, Bishop of Santander, of 11 October 1996, takes up the finding that the supernatural character of the events is not established (non constat de supernaturalitate).^[128]

Naju (Korea, 22 September 1995): Julia Kim

On 22 September 1995, near Naju, Bishop Roman Danylak, apostolic administrator of the Ukrainian eparchy of Toronto, concelebrates a Mass with two priests. In his sworn testimony, he reports having seen the host received by Julia Kim, also called Julia Youn, change into flesh and blood.^[129]

This favourable testimony must be distinguished from the judgment of the Ordinary: on 1 January 1998, the Archbishop of Gwangju, Archbishop Victorinus Youn Kong-hi, delivers a negative judgment on the phenomena. On 21 January 2008, Archbishop Andreas Choi Chang-mou publishes a decree concerning Julia Youn, her supporters and the celebrations in the unauthorized place of worship; he warns of the excommunication incurred by those who preside there or participate in the sacraments against the prohibition. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith supports the diocesan position in 2008 and 2011. Naju must therefore not be presented as an approved miracle.^[130]

Thérèse Neumann: Eucharistic inedia (1898-1962)

Thérèse Neumann (1898-1962), the stigmatist of Konnersreuth, is known for prolonged inedia and her daily communion. A surveillance organized by the Bishop of Regensburg in July 1927 gives circumscribed measurements: four nurse religious of Mallersdorf, under the direction of Dr Otto Seidl, watch her from 13 July at 12:30 to 28 July at 1 p.m., that is fifteen complete days. The report totals about 0.33 gram of host and 45 cm³ of water; her final weight returns to the 55 kg of the beginning, after intermediate falls.^[131]

This fifteen-day observation is a punctual control within a much longer life. Her cause of beatification was opened on 13 February 2005; the title of Servant of God does not in itself constitute a recognition of each reported phenomenon.^[132]

Hosts that fly: Marthe Robin (20th c.)

Marthe Robin (1902-1981), founder of the Foyers de Charité, is the subject of testimonies of priests saying they had seen the host leave their fingers to go towards her mouth. A file of the diocese of Lille takes up these accounts and describes an immediate disappearance on contact with the mouth, without providing a count of the witnesses.^[133]

On 7 November 2014, Pope Francis authorizes the decree recognizing her heroic virtues. This decree concerns her Christian life; it is not a particular judgment on the displacement of the host.^[134]

The preceding accounts bring together testimonies, expert examinations and ecclesial decisions of different nature. One question remains: what is the solidity of these analyses worth, compared from one file to another? This is precisely the object of the work of Dr Franco Serafini, an Italian cardiologist, in Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus. Les miracles eucharistiques à l'épreuve de la science (Artège, 2025, 304 p.)^[135]. Far from a simple apologetic collection, the work applies to each file a clinical grid: provenance of the sample, chain of preservation, blind or non-blind character of the analysis, independence of the laboratories, negative controls, effective publication of the results and methodological limits. Serafini explicitly lays claim to this discipline:

"It was necessary to seek out the original articles and publications, eliminating the enormous quantity of material that often embellishes the devotional account of the miracle, but which then turns out to be inexact or false material." Dr Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 18^[136]

This requirement leads the author to set aside from his scientific corpus several reputed cases: Betania (Venezuela, 1991), for lack of a published inquiry report; Campoalegre (Colombia, 2006) and Spring Brook (United States, 2018), because the host was destroyed before any complete expert examination.^[137] He recalls that a sample taken from a consecrated host always requires the approval of the bishop of the place^[138]. It is this same discipline that makes it possible to measure what the four best instructed cases, Lanciano, Buenos Aires, Tixtla and Sokółka, really establish, and what a more prudent reading must qualify.

Lanciano: a solid result obtained by a method of another era

The investigation of 1970-1971, entrusted to Prof. Odoardo Linoli, leads to the identification of a striated muscle tissue compatible with the myocardium and of a human blood of group AB. The telegram sent by Linoli on 11 February 1971 summarizes its enthusiasm:

"New research affirms the presence of a striated muscle tissue in the heart. Alleluia." Prof. Odoardo Linoli, telegram of 11 February 1971, quoted by Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 39^[139]

Serafini recognizes the qualities of this work, clearly stated objectives, negative controls mentioned, cutting-edge methods for the time, preserved photographic documentation, but also points out its structural limit: the whole investigation, from sampling to interpretation, rests on a single expert.

"The investigation is entirely in the hands of Professor Linoli. There is no control committee." Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 43^[140]

There is therefore, for Lanciano, neither a chain of custody in the modern sense, nor a second independent laboratory, nor an initial analysis conducted blind, unlike the protocols put in place forty years later in Poland. From the 15.85 grams of preserved haematic matter, Linoli takes 318 milligrams: the cells, twelve centuries after the events, are no longer morphologically recognizable one by one, but the human nature of the blood is established by chromatography and by the Uhlenhuth reaction, and electrophoresis reveals a distribution of proteins "perfectly physiological"^[141]. Serafini nevertheless warns that dilution and thirteen centuries of preservation make these biochemical conclusions much less reliable than the simple qualitative identification "human blood, myocardial tissue", a nuance that popular summaries most often omit. The false "WHO report" of 1976, noted above, obviously does not enter into this evaluation.^[142]

Buenos Aires: a succession of diagnoses before the final certainty

The Buenos Aires file is often summarized as a direct and unanimous identification of cardiac tissue. The documentary reality is more progressive. On the samples of 1992 and 1996 sent in October 1999 to a Californian laboratory, several experts succeed one another with different readings: Dr Robert Lawrence first envisages a keratinized epidermis; Drs Ellis and Lay propose a neighbouring reading; Dr Walker leans towards unspecified muscle; Prof. Linoli, consulted at a distance, proposes myocardium.^[143] It is only on 20 April 2004, during an examination conducted blind on an unidentified slide, that Prof. Frederick Zugibe, former chief medical examiner of Rockland County (New York), arrives at a precise diagnosis, documented by video:

"It is cardiac muscle tissue, coming from the left ventricle, in proximity to a valvular zone." Prof. Frederick T. Zugibe, quoted by Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 149^[144]

The final report of March 2005 specifies an inflammatory and degenerative myocardial tissue, loss of striations, nuclear pyknosis, predominant macrophages, acute inflammatory cells, a picture that Zugibe himself dates:

"It is possible to estimate the duration of the cardiac suffering at several days from the moment of sampling, because of the prevalence of chronic inflammation cells and the type of cardiac cellular changes described above." Prof. Frederick T. Zugibe, report of March 2005, quoted by Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 155^[145]

Zugibe envisages a recent infarction, a thrombosis or severe thoracic trauma; Serafini, for his part, favours the hypothesis of a stress cardiomyopathy (called "takotsubo"), provoked by a massive discharge of catecholamines, rather than a classic infarction, without excluding the latter as a differential diagnosis. On the vitality of the tissue, Lawrence then Zugibe interpret the state of the leukocytes as the indication of a sample alive at the moment of sampling. They judge this state incompatible with the ordinary conditions of survival of these cells in water; their examination of a fixed slide does not show cells continuing to beat for three years.^[146] To Mike Willesee who asks him how long these leukocytes would survive if the tissue were placed in water, Zugibe answers:

"They would dissolve in a few minutes and would no longer exist." Prof. Frederick T. Zugibe, interview of 20 April 2004, quoted by Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 64 and 157^[147]

The rigour of this conclusion owes much to the traceability of the sample, which Serafini describes as a "clear, uninterrupted and recorded chain of custody"^[148], a standard that Lanciano, for lack of comparable archives for the 8th century, obviously cannot claim.

Tixtla: converging indications, a prudent myocardial identification

At Tixtla, the analyses conducted between 2009 and 2012 confirm the presence of human haemoglobin, red and white blood cells, a positive reaction to myeloperoxidase and to glycophorin A, as well as a blood group AB, found independently in two laboratories. The Bolivian laboratory Gene-Ex of Dr Susana Pinell Prado goes further and reports in November 2010 an Rh negative typing, a unique result, which Serafini holds to be remarkable if it were confirmed by other analyses:

"If one does the calculations, only 0.75% are AB Rh negative, that is about 1 human in 133." Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 202^[149]

The most striking index of vitality remains the observation, under the microscope, of a macrophage containing lipid material. Serafini interprets it as the trace of an active phagocytosis at the moment of sampling; the histological preparation then stopped cellular life and fixed that state on the slide:

"At Tixtla, a macrophage is even caught in the act at the moment when it is active, that is while it is phagocytosing [...] lipid material!" Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 157^[150]

The probably myocardial origin constitutes here a conclusion of compatibility: the morphology is degraded by autolysis, and two expected immunohistochemical markers, desmin and myosin, prove negative on the slides examined in Guatemala. Dr Eduardo Sánchez Lazo affirms for his part that he obtained a complete immunohistochemical confirmation, without publishing the detail of the markers employed^[151]. A clarification is finally necessary on an objection widely disseminated by an Australian documentary of 2017: the female DNA presented as proof of fraud at Tixtla in reality comes from a completely different file, a plaster bust reputed to bleed at Cochabamba (Bolivia), and corresponds to the owner of the object, a banal human contamination unrelated to the Mexican host^[152].

Sokółka: the prudent formula of the Polish researchers

On 7 January 2009, the sample taken at Sokółka is divided between two anatomopathologists of the Medical University of Białystok. One of them, Prof. Stanisław Sulkowski, receives his slide without knowing its origin, an analysis partially conducted blind, rare in this type of file. Optical then electron microscopy reveal segmented, fragmented fibres, with contraction bands, the histological signature of a living tissue but in acute suffering, not a simple artefact of preservation. The published conclusion remains deliberately measured, "myocardial tissue, or at least [...] the one it most resembles", and it is precisely this prudence that makes its scientific force.^[153] The cardiologist draws from it a clinical reading common to the four recent cases:

"Whatever the overall diagnosis, the fragmentation and segmentation of the myocardial cells are the indisputable sign of an acute and atrocious suffering, of spasms so rapid and so violent that they are capable of breaking the muscle cells themselves. These lesions are only possible in a heart in agony, which spends its last energies before dying." Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 156^[154]

No trace of blood is on the other hand detected at Sokółka, nor moreover at Legnica, a precision that forbids attributing indiscriminately to these two Polish cases the "fresh human blood" often associated, wrongly, with all the modern cases^[155]. The recurrent objection of a colouring produced by the bacterium Serratia marcescens moreover does not account for the observed structures: this bacterium forms bacilli, not organized fibres presenting nuclei, segmentation and contraction bands identifiable under the microscope (see below, The natural explanations advanced and their limits).

What the AB blood group argument can establish, and what it cannot

Among the five modern Eucharistic miracles analyzed in the laboratory, only Lanciano and Tixtla have been the subject of explicit ABO typing, and both conclude to group AB, which Serafini estimates at about 5% in populations of European origin:

"Each time the ABO blood group has been sought in a tissue coming from a Eucharistic miracle, that is at Lanciano and at Tixtla, it has always been group AB." Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 188^[156] Serafini then extends the comparison to the three most studied cloths of the Passion, the Shroud of Turin, the Sudarium of Oviedo and the tunic of Argenteuil, whose blood was also typed AB. With a frequency of 5%, two fortuitous concordances have one chance in 400 of occurring; three, one in 8,000; four, one in 160,000; five, the three cloths, Lanciano and Tixtla, one in 3,200,000.^[157] The author speaks of a statistical "bomb". The calculation measures the rarity of a fortuitous coincidence; it supposes that the five typings are exact and independent and that the frequency of 5% holds for all populations and all eras. It therefore quantifies the improbability of chance, not the probability of a miracle. Buenos Aires, Sokółka and Legnica, for lack of ABO typing, do not enter into this calculation: no document authorizes writing that "the five miracles are of group AB".

The limits of DNA: what a genetic trace makes it possible to say, and what it does not

The three cases where a DNA analysis was attempted, Buenos Aires, Tixtla and Legnica, deliver unequal results. At Buenos Aires, the Californian laboratory reports on 9 December 1999 very small quantities of human DNA in the two samples. The later search for nine STR markers and amelogenins nevertheless provides nothing usable; the final report of 1 May 2000 even envisages a non-human origin for the analyzed DNA.^[158] Serafini summarizes the failure of the amplification:

"No result is obtained, no amplification." Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 239^[159]

At Tixtla, Serafini describes research in the Mexican and Guatemalan laboratories, then an analysis by DEPArray in Bologna intended to isolate individual white blood cells, related notably in the autobiographical testimony of Mike Willesee. These works do not deliver a usable individual genetic profile. At Legnica, on the other hand, the results include two portions of nuclear DNA amplified and fragments of mitochondrial DNA; Serafini retains from them a human identification, without an individual profile.^[160]

"The two DNA amplifications are nevertheless sufficient to establish, without any doubt, that the cardiac tissue belongs to the human species." Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 246^[161]

The genetic results therefore do not constitute uniform human proof in the three cases: Legnica provides fragments interpreted as human; Buenos Aires preserves a contradiction between initial detection and final analysis; Tixtla does not deliver a usable profile. None of this research establishes the identity of a person nor a genetic correspondence between two events. Any affirmation of a "DNA of Christ" identified in the laboratory exceeds what these results authorize one to conclude.^[162]

Two documentary alerts to know so as not to rely on them

The file of Eucharistic miracles also has its false documents, which Serafini took care to unmask. The first, the supposed WHO report on Lanciano, has already been noted above. The second concerns Bolsena: a list of seven scientific publications claimed to document, on the corporal preserved at Orvieto, analyses of electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy and modern chemistry. Serafini verified each reference:

"The problem is that the seven bibliographic entries cited do NOT exist." Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 292^[163]

The journals and the cited issues really existed, but neither the articles nor almost all of the supposedly involved researchers. These seven fictitious references are distinct from the documented restoration of 2015, presented above. Ester Giovacchini's report describes the visible deposits and the UV fluorescence photography; Serafini sees in it a confirmation of the sanguine nature of the stains. These conservation observations include neither microscopic identification of cells nor blood typing comparable to those of Lanciano or Tixtla.^[164][165] For Buenos Aires, he relies on the contrary on identifiable documents: the written consultations of Zugibe of 15 and 26 March 2005 and the filmed interview of 20 April 2004, which he describes in his afterword.^[166][167]

A synthesis by degrees, not a uniform block

The main contribution of Serafini's cardiological reading is therefore not to add a sixth miracle to the list, but to rank the solidity of the five scientifically instructed cases:

This differentiated reading makes the solidity of the file: each conclusion rests on its own documents, and none borrows from another case what it has not itself established. Formal diagnosis at Buenos Aires, strong compatibility at Sokółka and Legnica, ancient but solid identification at Lanciano, converging indications at Tixtla: it is this whole, taken with its degrees, that withstands examination.

A miracle-sign, not a direct vision of the glorious body

One last precision, a theological one, is necessary before closing this scientific file. The temptation, before such striking analyses, is to say that the microscope would let one see directly the glorious body of the risen Christ. This is not the theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, which the Dominican Riccardo Barile recalls in his preface to Serafini's book. For Thomas, "no bodily eye can see the body of Christ as it is in this sacrament" (Summa Theologiae, III, q. 76, a. 7); this body is only seen "in its proper species" in Heaven. What appears in the miracle is a miraculous modification of the sacramental species, intended to serve as a sign:

"The quantitative dimensions remaining, there is miraculously produced a mutation of the other accidental elements, such as figure, colour and other similar traits, so that one sees flesh or blood or even a child. [...] It is not a case of deception, since this takes place to give figure to a certain truth, that is to show by this miraculous appearance that in this sacrament there is the true body and the true blood of Christ." Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q. 76, a. 8, quoted by Riccardo Barile, O.P., preface to Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 13^[168]

Faith is not dispensed from it for all that: under the miraculous accidents of flesh and blood as under those of bread and wine, "the accidents that are apprehended by the senses are really true. For its part, the intellect, which strives to know the substance, is preserved from error by faith" (III, q. 75, a. 5, ad 2).^[169]

This precision protects the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence from a naive reading: the microscope never "sees" directly the divinity nor the glorious body of the Risen One; it observes an authentically human tissue and blood, whose extraordinary character, provenance, preservation, vitality, constitutes a sign calling to faith, not an empirical proof of the Eucharistic mystery itself. The Catechism quotes, at this precise place, the Eucharistic hymn attributed to Saint Thomas:

"I adore you profoundly, hidden divinity, truly present under these appearances; to you my heart submits itself entirely because in contemplating you, it entirely fails. Sight, taste, touch do not attain you: only what one hears said must be trusted; I believe everything that the Son of God has said; nothing is truer than this word of Truth." Saint Thomas Aquinas, Adoro te devote, quoted by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1381^[170]

Several natural explanations have been proposed. Each deserves to be taken in its strongest form, then confronted with the documents of the files.

The bacterium Serratia marcescens

This bacterium develops on starch-rich substrates left at ambient temperature and produces a red-orange pigment, prodigiosin, which can give bread the appearance of blood stains. It is the most widespread objection, and it was publicly formulated against a precise case: in October 2009, the microbiologist Paweł Grzesiowski, of the National Institute of Hygiene in Warsaw, advances it in the daily Super Express to explain the stain of Sokółka, which would have been born of a contamination of the bread during its dissolution in non-sterile water.^[171] Answer: a bacterial colouring does not account for organized muscle fibres. Under the microscope, a colony of Serratia presents itself as a population of rods, not as fibres bearing central nuclei, intercalated discs, segmentation and contraction bands, which the two anatomopathologists of Białystok described.^[172] A bacterial contamination changes appearance in a few days then disappears when the substrate is exhausted, whereas the relic of Sokółka has not changed appearance since 2009.^[173] At Legnica, the first laboratory precisely searched for this type of bacterium: negligible local contamination, no pigment-producing bacteria, search for fungi negative. At Tixtla, the tests concern human haemoglobin and blood cells, a question that red colour alone does not settle.^[174]

Collective hallucination

The hypothesis is sometimes advanced for the visions of Christ in the host (Bordeaux in 1822, La Réunion in 1902): witnesses disposed to see would have seen what they expected.

Answer: it first comes up against the controls reported by the witnesses themselves. At Bordeaux, Abbé Delort, who doubts his eyes, questions the altar boy without telling him what he sees, and the child describes the same prodigy; fourteen written testimonies are then gathered.^[175][176] Above all it has no hold on the files analyzed in the laboratory: a hallucination does not leave tissue on a slide, nor typable blood in a tube.

Individual or orchestrated deception

One may suppose that a fraudster substituted for the host a piece of heart or human blood.

Answer: the blind examination prevents knowledge of the religious origin from influencing the diagnosis, but it does not by itself verify what precedes arrival at the laboratory. The answer to a hypothesis of substitution rests on traceability: identified samples, sealed containers, witnesses and documented transfers, a chain that Serafini describes for Buenos Aires and for Legnica.^[177][178] At Sokółka, the ecclesiastical commission of 2009 established that the examined host was indeed that of 12 October 2008 and that no intervention by third parties was possible.^[179] For Lanciano, Linoli already noted that a forger would have had to be an expert anatomist to draw from a heart so regular a section, and that remains of a corpse would have putrefied.^[180] The five cases, spread across four countries, do not follow a single protocol: at Legnica, for example, the second team had received the results of the first. A hypothesis of fraud must therefore account, case by case, for the material elements and the chain of each file.

External contamination

A simpler hypothesis: someone deposited blood on the host after the fact.

Answer: at Tixtla, Dr Eduardo Sánchez Lazo studied the relation between the stain and the bread: the blood does not wet the whole thickness of the host, as it would if it had been poured onto it; it passes through it at a central point, in the form of an "inverted cone", then spreads at the surface, as in a small wound. A second study by infrared reaches the same conclusion: the blood comes from the inside.^[181] At Sokółka, the microscopic interpenetration between the fibres and the structure of the bread excludes, according to Prof. Sobaniec-Łotowska, a deposit or a gluing.^[182]

Electrostatic phenomena

The electrostatic hypothesis mainly concerns the film of Lourdes, in 1999: two surfaces charged with the same sign repel each other. The test of Fr Jean-Baptiste Rinaudo, reported above, does not produce a measurable charge by rubbing the host with wool. Its scope remains that of the device tested. The study of a levitation also requires controlling the supports, the deformations of the host, air movements and the conditions of filming; none of these questions is resolved by the sole word "electrostatic".^[183]

Who judges a Eucharistic miracle?

The judgment belongs first to the bishop of the place. It is he who authorizes or refuses a sample on a consecrated host, who permits or not a public cult, and who may transmit the file to Rome.^[184] The acts thus placed are numerous and dated: recognition of Faverney by the Archbishop of Besançon on 10 July 1608; decree of the Archbishop of Bordeaux of 15 January 1823; declaration of the curia of Białystok of 14 October 2009 for Sokółka; declaration of the Bishop of Chilpancingo-Chilapa of 12 October 2013 for Tixtla; communiqué of the Bishop of Legnica of 10 April 2016, after transmission of the file to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.^{[185][186][187][188][189]} At Buenos Aires, Cardinal Bergoglio authorized adoration in the chapel where the "Eucharistic sign" is presented; at Tixtla, Bishop Rangel, successor of Bishop Zavala Castro, reopened the investigation after consultation of Rome.^[190][191]

The norms of 2024

Since 19 May 2024, the discernment of facts reputed supernatural follows the Procedural Norms for the discernment of presumed supernatural phenomena published by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on 17 May 2024. They recall the role of the bishop and reserve to the Dicastery the final approval:

"It is incumbent on the Diocesan Bishop, in dialogue with the national Episcopal Conference, to examine the cases of presumed supernatural phenomena occurring on his territory and to formulate on them the final judgment, which will be submitted to the approval of the Dicastery." Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Procedural Norms for the discernment of presumed supernatural phenomena, 17 May 2024, art. 1^[192]

Six conclusions are possible, from nihil obstat (nothing opposes devotion) to declaratio de non supernaturalitate. The Dicastery specifies that as a general rule neither the bishop nor itself will henceforth declare that phenomena are of supernatural origin, "even when a Nihil obstat is granted".^[193]

What faith requires, and what it leaves free

The Real Presence is a defined truth of faith: it rests on the word of Christ, "This is my body" (Mt 26:26), transmitted by the Church and defined at Trent, not on a particular miracle.^[194] Eucharistic miracles play a role comparable to that which the Catechism recognizes to so-called private revelations: they "do not belong to the deposit of faith" and serve to "live from it more fully at a certain epoch of history" (§ 67).^[195] No Catholic is required to adhere to a determined case; each may recognize in it a sign given to strengthen his faith.

A convergence over sixteen centuries

Beyond the individual cases, it is the convergence that strikes:

• in space: Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Egypt, La Réunion, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, United States, India, Korea, four continents;
• in time: from the desert of Scetis, in the 4th or 5th century, until 2026, more than sixteen centuries of accounts;
• in the laboratories: five cases, in four countries, point towards myocardial tissue; two include an AB typing. The methods, the quality of the preparations and the complementary results differ according to the cases;^[196]
• in meaning: the heart and the blood, which refer to the Passion.

For the Catholic faith, this convergence is a sensible confirmation of what the Council of Trent defined: by the consecration, the whole substance of the bread becomes the Body of Christ and the whole substance of the wine his Blood.^[197] Miracles do not open a window onto the glorious body of the Risen One; they are, according to the theology of Saint Thomas, signs given "to give figure to a certain truth".^[198]

Why a heart?

Serafini pauses on a fact that struck him as a cardiologist: in the five analyzed cases, it is always cardiac tissue that is in question, even at Sokółka, where Prof. Sobaniec-Łotowska thought she was sampling a blood clot and had to observe that it was myocardium. A fragment of skin or lung would not be less inexplicable in unleavened bread; "yet, Heaven's predilection for this last organ is evident".^[199] In the Bible, where the word recurs nearly a thousand times, the heart rarely designates the organ: it names the centre of the person, the place of the will, of knowledge and of love. The Catechism gives to the Heart of Christ exactly this sense:

"Jesus knew and loved us all and each one during his life, his agony and his passion and delivered himself for each of us: 'The Son of God loved me and delivered himself for me' (Gal 2:20). He loved us all with a human heart. For this reason, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced by our sins and for our salvation (cf. Jn 19:34), 'is considered as the eminent sign and symbol... of that love which the divine Redeemer unceasingly bears to the eternal Father and to all men without exception'." Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 478, quoting Pius XII, Haurietis aquas (1956)^[200]

The comparison is that of the cardiologist, not a definition of the Church; but it says what these wounded hearts, with fibres broken by agony, give to contemplate: a love that goes to the end.

A sign that does not force faith

At the end of his investigation, Serafini notes that these prodigies never crush the freedom of the one who looks at them: the slides strongly evoke the myocardium without having the clarity of an atlas, and DNA almost always escapes identification.

"[...] the light that emanates from these prodigies is never dazzling: the miracle restrains itself, it limits itself and does not want to crush with its evidence the fragile and necessary treasure of our faith. The Eucharist wants to be believed, it does not want to impose itself on our senses." Franco Serafini, Un cardiologue rencontre Jésus, Artège, 2025, p. 286^[201]

He concludes on the "delicacy of God who, even in his greatest demonstration of power, like a Eucharistic miracle that visibly subverts the laws of nature, knows how to remain discreet".^[202] It is the same discretion as that of the Saviour who, according to the Council of Trent, instituted this sacrament to pour out in it "the riches of his divine love for men".^[203]

Related Ignispedia articles

• The Eucharistic Real Presence: the doctrine that these signs confirm
• The Eucharist: the sacrament, its liturgy and its theology
• The Council of Trent (1545-1563): the definition of transsubstantiation (13th session, 11 October 1551)
• Corpus Christi: the liturgical institution linked to the miracle of Bolsena
• Saint Carlo Acutis (1991-2006): the author of the international exhibition of Eucharistic miracles
• Venerable Marthe Robin (1902-1981): a life centred on the host
• The Holy Shroud of Turin: the other great case where blood was typed AB

Main sources

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