The Church verifies miracles with prudence and recognizes them with gratitude. A hundred years after the event, the Archbishop of Liverpool confirms a miraculous healing that occurred in Lourdes in favor of a war invalid
by Don Gabriele Cantaluppi
On Sunday 8 October 2024, the Archbishop of Liverpool, Monsignor Malcolm MacMahon, officially recognised a miracle of healing that occurred in Lourdes a century ago, on 25 July 1923, in favour of John Jack Traynor, a Catholic at the time in his forties belonging to the English diocese, an epileptic, paralysed due to wounds sustained in the First World War. Although it was already commonly believed that Traynor had been miraculously healed, there had never been a declaration from the ecclesiastical authority on the matter, as the medical documentation was considered insufficient.
Recently the diocese of Liverpool made a pilgrimage to Lourdes, on the anniversary of the one that had occurred a hundred years earlier, and on this occasion the report of the doctors who had visited the invalid in 1923 was found and reconsidered, to then declare: "We recognize and proclaim, together with our colleagues, that the dynamics of this prodigious healing are absolutely outside and above nature". This was the first step in the canonical process that allowed Archbishop MacMahon to publish the decree recognizing the miracle.
Every year, four to six million believers go on pilgrimage to the sanctuary at the foot of the Pyrenees, many of them with the hope of being healed from various illnesses through the intercession of the Virgin Mary. The prayer is accompanied by the traditional immersion in the water that
It flows near the grotto, in compliance with the invitation expressed by the Madonna herself to Bernadette on 25 February 1858, the day of the ninth apparition.
It is estimated that since the first apparition at least 6500 cases of "miraculous healings" have occurred, however so far the Church has recognized only 71 of them, officially considered inexplicable from a medical point of view. The process for recognition is meticulous and the first step is always an accurate medical-scientific analysis carried out in Lourdes in Bureau des Constatations MédicalesThis office began its activity in 1883 on the initiative of Doctor Georges-Fernand Dunot de Saint-Maclou, at the invitation of the first rector of the sanctuary Pierre-Remy Sempé, "so that no pilgrim leaves Lour-
des claiming to have recovered without having submitted his recovery story to a rigorous medical team." The duties of the Design were redefined by Pius X
in 1905 and brought back to the criteria established for the canonical processes of beatification.
Initially, it must be clarified whether it is an “unexpected” healing; in a second moment, it is verified whether it is a “confirmed” healing and only in a third step is its “extraordinary character” recognized. In other words, on the basis of current scientific expertise, the aim is to define the exceptionality of the healing and its definitiveness.
From Design doctors of all religious beliefs are part of it; they carry out an initial examination of the alleged miraculous healings, which is then examined by the International Medical Committee of
Lourdes, based in Paris. This is an international body, composed of about forty doctors from all over the world, who are called to independently re-examine the healing considered miraculous, and then eventually judge that the case is inexplicable according to current scientific knowledge. After further evaluations on the invocation to the Virgin, the Church can recognize the miraculous character of a healing and in this case the declaration is entrusted to the bishop of the diocese to which the miracle-worker belongs.
It should be remembered, however, that the Church does not establish the obligation for the faithful to believe in these events considered supernatural, nor in private apparitions, since these are realities that do not belong to the deposit of the Catholic faith. They are classified as thanks free data, that is, free gifts of God above the natural power, but also outside the supernatural merit of the person who receives them. St. Paul in the First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12, considered them belonging to the charism of prophecy, as they confirm the Revelation by manifesting things that only God can know, but which are already contained in it.
In Lourdes, the fountains and the basins for the immersion of the sick are fed by over 120 thousand liters of water, which daily flow from the Lourdes spring, water that scientific analysis has recognized as similar to that of other nearby mountain springs. However, healings continue to occur among the sick, after being immersed in the bath water.
Over the years, the cultural sensibilities and spiritual expectations of the pilgrims who go to the feet of the “White Lady” have changed, but the question that Lourdes raises remains. Indeed, numerous astonishing healings have been verified by hundreds of doctors and thousands of witnesses. These are facts that cannot be ignored.
Prayer is the core of healing in Lourdes, an essential condition for a miracle to occur. The individual who heals is not the one who prays for himself, but the one who prays for others, thus living in asceticism and self-denial. And Lourdes remains the place of hope, also because there one experiences that in front of a wounded humanity there is always someone who is capable of welcoming and is ready to roll up their sleeves, someone who forgets his pain and prays so that the voice of the brother who suffers at his side may be heard.