Why does the Church sometimes take so long to recognize a miracle?

"Recognizing a miracle": what are we talking about?

The first source of misunderstanding is the word itself. We imagine that "recognizing a miracle" means proving that God intervened. But the Church never claims to demonstrate God's action positively: that exceeds the means of any human investigation. What it establishes is something more modest and more solid: that a fact — most often a cure — has no known natural explanation, neither medical, nor psychological, nor fraudulent. The approach is first negative: one closes, one by one, every natural way out.

It is Saint Thomas Aquinas who gives the classical definition: a miracle in the proper sense is what is done by God "outside the order of the whole of created nature"^[4]. Establishing that a fact lies "outside the order of nature" first requires knowing that order — hence questioning medicine, science, archives and witnesses. As long as a natural doubt remains, the Church abstains. That abstention is not denial: it is the price of rigour.

Haste would be the real scandal

Let us turn the question around. What would we think of a Church that proclaimed "miracle!" at the first unexpected cure, before the doctors had even reviewed the file? The day one of those "miracles" turned out to be explained by a known remission, a diagnostic error or a deception, it is the whole credibility of the faith that would collapse. The Church's adversaries ask for nothing so much as a botched miracle they can then dismantle in public.

The Church has always known it: in matters of the supernatural, haste is more dangerous than slowness. A hasty recognition that proves false does more harm to the faith than ten true miracles left in the shadows. Slowness is therefore a strategy of protection: it protects the faithful from disappointment, it protects the sick from exploitation, it protects the name of God from abusive use.

"An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign; but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah." — Jesus, according to Saint Matthew 12:39^[5]

Jesus himself refuses the miracle demanded as a spectacle or as proof on request. By taking its time, the Church merely imitates this Gospel reserve: a miracle is not a trick meant to force assent, but a sign given to those who truly seek.

Three distinct cases, three distinct procedures

We speak of "miracles" as if they were one single reality, but the Church in fact treats several kinds of facts through different paths. Confusing these paths feeds the idea of a uniform slowness, whereas the timeframes and the bodies involved vary greatly.

In all three cases, the underlying logic is the same — ruling out every natural cause before concluding — but the actors, the timeframes and the vocabulary differ. A canonization cure can be recognized within a few years; an apparition can take decades; a Lourdes cure passes through several successive commissions.

A judgment that is first negative: closing the natural doors

Whatever the case, the investigation begins with work of exclusion. Before asking "is it God?", the question is "can nature, medicine, psychology, error or fraud explain it?" Only once all these hypotheses have been set aside can the supernatural question be raised — and even then, with prudence. This methodological inversion explains much of the slowness: proving an absence (the absence of a natural explanation) takes far longer than noting a presence. This work of exclusion does not cancel the positive judgment that follows: once the inexplicable has been established, the Church recognizes in the fact a sign from God — but that final "yes" rests on the prior "no" opposed to every natural cause.

1. Prudence: better late than wrong

The first reason is a virtue: prudence. By recognizing a miracle, the Church commits its authority and invites the faithful to see in it a sign from God. If it is mistaken, it misleads millions of people. Better, then, a true miracle recognized too late than a false miracle recognized too soon. This asymmetry governs the whole procedure: doubt always works in favour of restraint.

This prudence is nothing modern: it is written into Scripture, which commands us to test spirits and signs rather than naively welcoming everything.

"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world." — First Letter of Saint John 4:1^[6]

2. The weight of fraud and illusion

Second reason: history is full of false miracles, pious deceptions, collective illusions and psychosomatic cures. The Church has been fooled often enough to know that the marvellous attracts fraudsters, mythomaniacs and the credulous. Scripture itself warns that a wonder is no guarantee: the coming of the lawless one will be "with all power and with pretended signs and wonders"^[7], and Deuteronomy already teaches that even a real portent proves nothing if it turns people away from the true God^[8].

The suspicion of fraud therefore requires heavy verification: authenticity of documents, independence of witnesses, absence of financial interest or manipulation. The 2024 Norms on supernatural phenomena explicitly foresee the case where a fact must be declared not supernatural on the basis of concrete evidence — for example the confession of a forger or of a presumed visionary^[9]. Ruling out fraud takes time because fraud, by nature, hides itself.

3. Medical and scientific rigour

Third reason, and the most visible: most of the miracles examined are cures, and a cure cannot be judged by the naked eye. It takes complete medical files from before and after, firm diagnoses, independent experts, and the exclusion of every known natural remission. Yet medicine advances: a cure "inexplicable" in 1900 may be explicable in 2000. The Church must therefore judge with the science of its time, which means calling on the best specialists — and waiting for their conclusions.

The current criteria go back to the monumental treatise of Cardinal Prospero Lambertini, the future Pope Benedict XIV, De Servorum Dei beatificatione et Beatorum canonizatione (1734). That jurist and theologian fixed in it the conditions a cure must meet to be held miraculous^[10]. They are still in force, at Lourdes as in canonization trials.

These seven requirements form a formidable filter. At Lourdes, a cure must be "complete, lasting, sudden, of a serious illness, incurable or of unfavourable prognosis"^[11] — and the single criterion of lastingness already imposes years of waiting: a cure cannot be declared definitive until time has proved the absence of relapse. That criterion alone explains a large part of the slowness.

4. Respect for freedom and for faith

Fourth reason, a more theological one: miracles are not meant to coerce faith. The Catechism recalls that Christ's miracles "invite to believe in him" but "are not intended to satisfy curiosity or magical desires"^[12]. If the Church handed out "certified miracle" labels in bulk, it would turn faith into spectacular evidence and deprive believers of their freedom of assent. By remaining sober, it protects the very nature of faith: a free trust, not submission to proof.

That is also why the 2024 Norms took prudence one step further: henceforth, "as a rule, the faithful are not to expect from ecclesiastical authority a positive recognition of the divine origin of presumed supernatural phenomena"^[13]. For apparitions, "neither the Diocesan Bishop, nor the Episcopal Conferences, nor the Dicastery will, as a rule, declare that these phenomena are of supernatural origin"^[14]: the Church chiefly evaluates the fruits and the pastoral value, without claiming to settle the mystery in God's place.

5. Time as a criterion in its own right

Fifth reason, often forgotten: time is not only a constraint, it is a criterion. A cure is truly "lasting" only after several years without relapse. An apparition shows its "fruits" — conversions, charity, peace, or on the contrary divisions and money — only with hindsight. A spontaneous devotion reveals its solidity only by persevering. Waiting here is not losing time: it is letting the fact prove itself. Slowness belongs to the method, not only to its cumbersome side.

At Lourdes: three stages, several commissions

Lourdes offers the best-known model. Since 1858, more than 7,000 cures have been declared there; only 72 have been recognized as miraculous, the latest in 2025^[15]. That ratio — fewer than one case in a hundred — alone tells of the severity of the selection.

The procedure has three stages^[16]:

1. The Medical Bureau (founded in 1883 by Dr Dunot de Saint-Maclou) gathers the file and verifies that the cure goes beyond "normal medical expectations" and has an extraordinary character. A "declared cure" becomes an "unexpected cure".
2. The International Medical Committee of Lourdes (CMIL), created in 1947 and composed of some thirty doctors from several countries, carries out a rigorous comparative study of the documents from before and after the cure, and rules on its inexplicable character "according to current scientific knowledge".
3. The bishop of the sick person's diocese then receives the file. It is not the doctor, but the authority of the Church, that renders the final judgment: declaring the cure miraculous, or not. Medicine says "unexplained"; only the Church dares to say "miracle".

This sharing of roles is essential: doctors, believers or not, rule only on scientific inexplicability; the Church alone interprets the fact as a sign from God. Each stage adds its own delay, and the whole often stretches over many long years.

In canonization causes: the Consulta Medica

To beatify and then canonize a saint, the Church generally requires one miracle per stage — most often a cure obtained through the candidate's intercession. These files pass through the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, and more precisely through the Consulta Medica, a college of medical experts instituted under John XXIII in 1959^[17].

The regulations reformed in 2016 speak volumes about the rigour required: a cure is first submitted to seven doctors, and a qualified two-thirds majority — five votes out of seven (or four out of six if the college sits with six) — recognizing its inexplicable character is needed for the file to move forward^[18]. The commission's president may serve no more than two terms; the same case may be re-examined no more than three times, each time with different experts; and the strictest secrecy binds everyone involved. Only after this medical filter do theologians examine the link between the cure and the prayer addressed to the future saint, before the pope decides. No wonder a cause can take years.

For an apparition: the 2024 Norms

Apparitions and private revelations fall under a different regime, profoundly renewed by the Norms of 17 May 2024 (in force since 19 May, on the solemnity of Pentecost), signed by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith^[19]. They replace the 1978 norms and renounce, as a rule, any positive declaration of supernaturality. Instead, the bishop — with the agreement of the Dicastery — chooses among six possible conclusions, from the most favourable to the least favourable:

This framework expresses the whole philosophy of ecclesial slowness: fruits and risks are judged first, the faithful are protected, and the supernatural is endorsed only with extreme restraint. To explore this framework further, see Nihil obstat and imprimatur and The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

For a Eucharistic miracle

Eucharistic miracles (hosts turning to flesh, bleeding) follow a similar logic, combining laboratory analyses with the bishop's discernment. The Buenos Aires case (Santa María parish, 1996) was thus examined for years under the authority of the auxiliary bishop of the time, Msgr Jorge Mario Bergoglio (the future Pope Francis — he would become Archbishop of Buenos Aires only in 1998), with independent laboratory analyses^[20]. Here again, prudence dominates: the Church first lets science speak, then concludes slowly, and often soberly. Many of these phenomena receive only a local and discreet recognition, never a solemn proclamation.

Lourdes: more than a century for 72 miracles

The figure deserves attention. In more than one hundred and sixty years, out of thousands of declared cures, only 72 have passed every filter. Some waited decades between the cure and official recognition, while lastingness was proved and the commissions deliberated. The most recent, the 72nd, announced on 16 April 2025, concerns the Italian Antonietta Raco, cured in 2009 of primary lateral sclerosis after bathing in the shrine's pools: sixteen years of examination between the cure and recognition by her bishop^[21]. Far from being an admission of weakness, this parsimony speaks of the seriousness of the examination: a recognized Lourdes miracle is not a pious story, it is a file that has survived years of counter-expertise.

Recognitions after decades

It is not uncommon for a canonization cause to wait a very long time for a miracle, or for a presented cure to be finally set aside because a medical doubt remains. Conversely, when a cure passes every filter, recognition crowns an examination all the more credible for having been long. Time does not weaken the miracle: it makes it more credible.

The Church's patience is a form of charity

We may be tempted to see cold bureaucracy in these delays. It is the opposite: the Church's slowness is charity. Charity toward the sick, whom it refuses to expose to false hopes or public curiosity while the file is not solid. Charity toward the faithful, whom it refuses to mislead. Charity toward God, whose name it refuses to cheapen by attaching it to doubtful facts. Taking time here means loving truth more than emotion.

Miracles are not faith

Finally, miracles must be put back in their place. Faith does not rest on recognized miracles: it rests on Christ dead and risen. Miracles are signs that invite belief, not the foundation of belief. That is why the Church can afford to be slow: it is not staking its survival on the recognition of this or that wonder. It knows that God acts far beyond the few facts it officially authenticates, and that the immense majority of graces received will never be the subject of a file.

"Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe." — Jesus, according to Saint John 20:29^[22]

The beatitude Jesus addresses to Thomas illuminates the whole question: the summit of faith is not to possess a certified miracle, but to believe on his word. The Church's sobriety, far from depriving us of the marvellous, returns us to the essential: a trust that needs no spectacular proof to hold. Its slowness teaches us too the patience of discernment.

• "Recognizing a miracle" does not mean proving that God intervened, but establishing that a fact — most often a cure — has no known natural explanation. The approach is first negative: every natural door is closed.
• The slowness has five reasons: prudence (better late than wrong), the risk of fraud, medical rigour, respect for the freedom of faith, and time as a criterion (a cure's lastingness can only be proved over years).
• The substantive criteria go back to Cardinal Lambertini (Benedict XIV, 1734): a serious and documented illness, with no effective treatment; a sudden, complete, total and lasting cure.
• Three distinct cases: canonization cures (Consulta Medica, qualified two-thirds majority, judgment of the pope); Lourdes cures (Medical Bureau, CMIL, judgment of the bishop); apparitions and Eucharistic miracles (bishop + Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith).
• At Lourdes, 72 recognized cures out of more than 7,000 declared: rarity speaks of the seriousness of the examination.
• The 2024 Norms enshrine this restraint: the Church no longer "ordinarily" expects a positive declaration of supernaturality, but evaluates fruits and protects the faithful.
• Spiritually, this slowness is charity and a reminder: faith does not rest on miracles, but on Christ. "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe."

• What is the difference between a miracle, a sign and a wonder? — what exactly a miracle is, and how it differs from a sign and a wonder.
• How to discern a Marian apparition? — the Church's criteria for sorting the true from the false supernatural.
• How to recognize a false apparition? — the warning signs of a doubtful phenomenon.
• Should we believe in private revelations? — the status of extraordinary graces in relation to Revelation.
• Can we believe in a private revelation that has not been recognized? — what to do while the Church has not decided.
• Nihil obstat and imprimatur — how the Church guarantees the doctrinal safety of a content.
• The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith — the Roman body that approves decisions on supernatural phenomena.
• What is the discernment of spirits? — discernment applied to the interior life.