Shades of the Supernatural
An umbrella. A kayak. A bike.
A cap. A wine chalice. A pair of dark sunglasses.
This trove of papal ‘relics’ – toys and trappings once belonging to the late Pope John Paul II – is luring hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Monterrey, Mexico, an often-brutal place plagued by drug-related murders. Still, each day, the faithful flock in from nearby Mexican villages or from southwestern U.S. cities. Some come in desperation.
Many are ill, a few deathly so. But a few have claimed that standing near the sprawling spread of artifacts has spurred swift, unexplained cures within their bodies. This is according to Guillermo MacLean, head of Villacero Foundation, the group behind the 150-piece exhibit.
One woman nursing debilitating pain in her arm approached the umbrella, kayak, sunglasses and other sacred souvenirs, MacLean told a journalist two weeks ago. She pressed her body against a bronze replica of the late pope’s hands. She prayed for the ache to vanish. And it did, MacLean said. The woman, he added, later returned to and offer a personal thank you to John Paul for ending her “suffering.”
In Monterrey, believers might say, the miracles are so bright, you’ve gotta wear shades. But when it comes to Church dogma, this is murky space.
Within the Catholic faith, relics are tiered in three layers. First-class relics are said to be pieces of the body of a saint or of a dead saintly contender: typically hair or bones. (John Paul II is currently a candidate for sainthood). Second-class relics – like those in Monterrey – are items the saint or would-be saint used in life: a book, a pen, a spoon. Third-class relics are typically scraps of linen or other cloth that have been placed directly against first-class relics.
I have a third-class relic – a memento from my two years spent researching “The Third Miracle.” It is a small pink ring of woven linen once placed against a bone from the corpse of Mother Theodore Guerin, foundress of a Catholic college and convent in Indiana – and later a candidate for sainthood. I accepted the relic in 2009 as a gift from a nun at the convent. “This is not magical,” she warned sternly. “This is not a lucky charm.”
I listened while tucking the relic into my wallet. And I’ve kept it there ever since – like a lucky charm. Sorry, sister.
In December 2010, I was pulled over for speeding in the Colorado mountains. While standing beside my Jeep, the state trooper asked to see my vehicle registration. As he watched, I pulled a fat clump of credit cards and old receipts from my wallet. I peeled through the mess piece by piece, searching for the requested document. I smiled when I came across the relic, which happened to be pressed against the registration. The cop let me off with a warning.
As I explain in “The Third Miracle,” Catholics have for centuries plucked body parts from saintly candidates during special – or, some might say, gruesome – exhumation ceremonies. (The worship of relics also spans Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and other branches of Christianity – as well as much of secular history.) Catholic doctrine clearly states, however, there is no inherent power in these pieces; they are merely meant to be stored as tangible reminders over which the faithful can pray. That’s the official stance from Rome. That doesn’t stop many believers, however, from trying to tap some magic. Like the ill folks in Monterrey.
As I describe in my book, when the body of Mother Theodore was unearthed from a cemetery and reburied in a church shrine shortly after 1900, several relics were collected from her body, including four of her fingers, a rib bone, and something that surprised the sisters who were inspecting the 50-year-old remains – her brain.
Inside the dead nun’s skull, the sisters saw what appeared to be her brain – “as fresh and entire as if death had just occurred,” according to convent exhumation records. This discovery defied science: watery brain tissue dissolves weeks or months after death. Three doctors – including one non-Catholic – were summoned to the convent to examine and probe the lump of tissue. One doctor peered at slices of the brain under a microscope. All three experts, according to convent records, later stood before a notary public and gave sworn affidavits in which they “marveled” at the brain’s condition.
Rules are rules: Catholics strictly maintain that relics do not contain any supernatural or curative force. No alchemy. But in 1907, the nuns in Indiana decided to borrow the brain of their foundress for, they hoped, a dash of supernatural medicine. On December 20, the nuns placed the 50-year-old organ against the leg of Sister Mary Alma Ryan. Her foot had been badly burned by a hot water bottle during a botched operation months earlier. Due to the severity of her injury, Sister Mary Alma had not been able to walk since the surgery. But after the brain was momentarily rested on Mary Alma’s scalded skin, the foot quickly improved to a point where she could navigate campus with the aid a special shoe, convent records show.
My lead-foot luck? I figure I merely caught a pre-Christmas break from a cop who was, just maybe, in the holiday spirit. The scorched foot of that Indiana nun? Convent archives show that her fellow sisters firmly believed Mary Alma’s restored stride to be something “miraculous.” Unofficially, of course. The Vatican never investigated.
And in Monterrey, thousands of pilgrims are streaming daily – many to soak up a small dose of what they believe to be the inherent magic in a dead pope’s collection of curios and playthings.
You can see much more about "The Third Miracle" at http://www.facebook.com/AuthorBillBriggs
The Third Miracle: An Ordinary Man, a Medical Mystery, and a Trial of Faith
A cap. A wine chalice. A pair of dark sunglasses.
This trove of papal ‘relics’ – toys and trappings once belonging to the late Pope John Paul II – is luring hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Monterrey, Mexico, an often-brutal place plagued by drug-related murders. Still, each day, the faithful flock in from nearby Mexican villages or from southwestern U.S. cities. Some come in desperation.
Many are ill, a few deathly so. But a few have claimed that standing near the sprawling spread of artifacts has spurred swift, unexplained cures within their bodies. This is according to Guillermo MacLean, head of Villacero Foundation, the group behind the 150-piece exhibit.
One woman nursing debilitating pain in her arm approached the umbrella, kayak, sunglasses and other sacred souvenirs, MacLean told a journalist two weeks ago. She pressed her body against a bronze replica of the late pope’s hands. She prayed for the ache to vanish. And it did, MacLean said. The woman, he added, later returned to and offer a personal thank you to John Paul for ending her “suffering.”
In Monterrey, believers might say, the miracles are so bright, you’ve gotta wear shades. But when it comes to Church dogma, this is murky space.
Within the Catholic faith, relics are tiered in three layers. First-class relics are said to be pieces of the body of a saint or of a dead saintly contender: typically hair or bones. (John Paul II is currently a candidate for sainthood). Second-class relics – like those in Monterrey – are items the saint or would-be saint used in life: a book, a pen, a spoon. Third-class relics are typically scraps of linen or other cloth that have been placed directly against first-class relics.
I have a third-class relic – a memento from my two years spent researching “The Third Miracle.” It is a small pink ring of woven linen once placed against a bone from the corpse of Mother Theodore Guerin, foundress of a Catholic college and convent in Indiana – and later a candidate for sainthood. I accepted the relic in 2009 as a gift from a nun at the convent. “This is not magical,” she warned sternly. “This is not a lucky charm.”
I listened while tucking the relic into my wallet. And I’ve kept it there ever since – like a lucky charm. Sorry, sister.
In December 2010, I was pulled over for speeding in the Colorado mountains. While standing beside my Jeep, the state trooper asked to see my vehicle registration. As he watched, I pulled a fat clump of credit cards and old receipts from my wallet. I peeled through the mess piece by piece, searching for the requested document. I smiled when I came across the relic, which happened to be pressed against the registration. The cop let me off with a warning.
As I explain in “The Third Miracle,” Catholics have for centuries plucked body parts from saintly candidates during special – or, some might say, gruesome – exhumation ceremonies. (The worship of relics also spans Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and other branches of Christianity – as well as much of secular history.) Catholic doctrine clearly states, however, there is no inherent power in these pieces; they are merely meant to be stored as tangible reminders over which the faithful can pray. That’s the official stance from Rome. That doesn’t stop many believers, however, from trying to tap some magic. Like the ill folks in Monterrey.
As I describe in my book, when the body of Mother Theodore was unearthed from a cemetery and reburied in a church shrine shortly after 1900, several relics were collected from her body, including four of her fingers, a rib bone, and something that surprised the sisters who were inspecting the 50-year-old remains – her brain.
Inside the dead nun’s skull, the sisters saw what appeared to be her brain – “as fresh and entire as if death had just occurred,” according to convent exhumation records. This discovery defied science: watery brain tissue dissolves weeks or months after death. Three doctors – including one non-Catholic – were summoned to the convent to examine and probe the lump of tissue. One doctor peered at slices of the brain under a microscope. All three experts, according to convent records, later stood before a notary public and gave sworn affidavits in which they “marveled” at the brain’s condition.
Rules are rules: Catholics strictly maintain that relics do not contain any supernatural or curative force. No alchemy. But in 1907, the nuns in Indiana decided to borrow the brain of their foundress for, they hoped, a dash of supernatural medicine. On December 20, the nuns placed the 50-year-old organ against the leg of Sister Mary Alma Ryan. Her foot had been badly burned by a hot water bottle during a botched operation months earlier. Due to the severity of her injury, Sister Mary Alma had not been able to walk since the surgery. But after the brain was momentarily rested on Mary Alma’s scalded skin, the foot quickly improved to a point where she could navigate campus with the aid a special shoe, convent records show.
My lead-foot luck? I figure I merely caught a pre-Christmas break from a cop who was, just maybe, in the holiday spirit. The scorched foot of that Indiana nun? Convent archives show that her fellow sisters firmly believed Mary Alma’s restored stride to be something “miraculous.” Unofficially, of course. The Vatican never investigated.
And in Monterrey, thousands of pilgrims are streaming daily – many to soak up a small dose of what they believe to be the inherent magic in a dead pope’s collection of curios and playthings.
You can see much more about "The Third Miracle" at http://www.facebook.com/AuthorBillBriggs
The Third Miracle: An Ordinary Man, a Medical Mystery, and a Trial of Faith
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