Eucharistic Miracles
I have done some research into Eucharistic Miracles (instances where a wafer blessed by a priest was thought to literally turn into human tissue). This table of contents will hopefully bring some organization to the site.
- General
- Buenos Aires 1996
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- General information about 1996 event
- Sources
- General information about 1996 event
- Timeline
- Characters
- What were the investigators told?
- Chain of Custody
- Photographs/Macroscopic Appearance
- Examinations by Forensic Analytical:
- Microscopic Examination
- Slide Preparation
- Slide images
- Dr. Lawrence
- Other examiners
- Dr. Zugibe
- Possibilities
Hello. Thank you very much for the analysis. I’m so excited to read the section “Possibilities”. I really want to know what you think.
Hello! I hope you are doing great. I would like to thank you again for thisincredible analysis. I would even pay for you to write at least the “Possibilities” section (haha). I’m researching this supposed miracle, but you’re the best person I’ve seen analyzing it.
OK, it’s not great but it’s here, if I wait until I’m satisfied nothing will ever be published.
https://skeptasmic.com/possibilities/
I’ll have to sort out the links and the navigation for it one of these days but it’s bedtime now.
Whoa! Thank you very much for your analysis!
Hello Kerri. I hope you are well!
What do you think of that supposed statement attributed to Zugibe that the blood identified in the host was type AB? I found an opponent saying that Zugibe never said that. Did you find a Zugibe source stating this?
I believe the sample was tested for blood type and found to be AB+ but definitely not by Zugibe. I can’t remember by who, I’ll have to check. I don’t know if Zugibe was ever told about the blood typing, but I can guarantee that if he was, you will never hear about it, because his response would not have been what Tesoriero wanted to hear. Zugibe had written extensively about the shroud of Turin, and he considered the blood typing of that relic to be unreliable. See my post on that here, I quote Zugibe’s opinion on that. https://skeptasmic.com/why-do-they-keep-finding-communion-wafers-have-ab-blood-type-if-its-not-blood/
I take it back, I don’t think it was ever tested. The sources that say it tested AB+ either don’t give a citation or say it was tested by Forensic Analytics. But I have the Forensic Analytics lab report and it does not mention blood typing. And they did a test for the presence of blood, which was negative, so why would they have tried to type it?
You can do blood typing on bodily fluids other than blood, but with a sample of unknown origin I don’t think the lab would have done it, certainly not without asking a lot of questions. The main reason I haven’t tried to type my own mouldy wafers is that it’s unclear what technique I should use. There’s no way to have a control, and without one false positives are practically guaranteed. (Of course the likelihood of false positives is probably why they keep getting positives on all 3 tests, AB+)
Hello,
For several days I have been investigating this Eucharistic miracle.
Thank you for your work on this topic. Are you still researching the subject?
I recommend chapter 11 of this book:
Behold It is I: Scripture, Tradition, and Science on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist (Stacy A. Trasancos, George Eliot, TAN Books, 2021). (I can send you the pdf).
You can see a summary of Stacy Trasencos’ opinion on this topic in this video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf0iQVAVIrU.
Stacy Trasancos is catholic and she has a PhD in Chemistry.
I don’t have a specific degree, but I like to do research.
Many of my Catholic friends think it’s a real miracle with serious scientific analysis. But personally I’m skeptical (especially on religious beliefs) and I think it’s most likely a fraud. I would like to learn more about this. Particularly on the involvement of Doctor Zugibe.
I read this article on Quora: https://www.quora.com/How-would-atheists-respond-to-phenomena-known-within-Catholic-Christian-tradition-as-Eucharistic-miracles-examined-each-time-by-scientists-of-various-fields-during-a-long-time-verification-process-and-always.
This article refers to this link about the involvement of Doctor Zugibe.
But I can’t find any other sources on Dr. Zugibe’s opinion. Do you have anything on this?
https://www.facebook.com/100069106326288/videos/clarification-regarding-the-false-news-circulating-on-the-internet-and-published/1136190970057107/
I hope you will find the time to answer me.
THANKS
Emmanuel
(I’m french and my English is very bad… sorry.)
Hi Emmanuel,
Thanks for your comment. I’m on vacation at the moment but I’m hoping to do some more work on this when I get back.
Regarding Zugibe, what I know is:
1) He did look at a slide in his office (there’s video of that).
2) Much later (my notes are at home) he issued at least two letters (copies of which are in the appendices of both Tesoriero’s and Castañon’s books) stating that he examined a slide and his opinion was that it was heart tissue from someone who had been recovering from a heart attack (the second letter mentions the possibility it could have been trama) for about 72 hours. The two separate letters with slightly different wording suggests to me there was some disagreement about the contents of the letter, but it’s hard to say exactly what.
3) Zugibe was a devote Catholic and had contacts with mainstream publishers and appeared on film in documentaries on the Shroud of Turin. So if he was convinced this was the heart of Jesus, I would have expected some more mainstream interest. I see no evidence he ever passed this on to those contacts.
4) Zugibe wrote an updated copy of his book on the Shroud of Turin, which talks at length about Jesus’s heart, a couple years later. He doesn’t mention this incident, which again would be odd if he believed he had seen the heart of Jesus. He also makes arguments in that book against some of the claims about the Shroud that would apply doubly to that slide.
5) There are several social media posts from people claiming to be Zugibe’s friends and family trying to distance him from this miracle claim. They appear to be authentic contacts, and I can’t imagine the motivation for someone to fake them.
So I don’t think Zugibe was convinced. However, I can’t find any details on why, or what he thought was going on. Specifically, did he ever doubt it was heart tissue, or did he just have theological objections to that slide being the heart of Jesus? After reading his letters and book I’m leaning toward the latter. His findings indicates that the slide is from someone who had a heart attack, and their heart continued to beat for 72 hours after that. Tesoriero claims the 3 days matches Jesus, but that only works if you don’t think about it very hard, and Zugibe liked to think about these things hard. The time between the crucifixion and the resurrection according to the Catholic church isn’t actually 72 hours, sunset Friday to sunrise Sunday is about 36 hours. And the heart had to continue beating that whole time to transport the white blood cells from the bone marrow to the heart. Presumably Jesus’s heart didn’t beat while he was dead. And was the damage in his heart not repaired when he was resurrected? And the Church has generally held that the Eucharist is from Jesus’s body as it exists now in heaven anyway, not from the time of the resurrection. I think those are probably the kind of objections Zugibe had. But that’s all speculation, as far as I can tell he never publicly spoke about it before his death.
I’ll try and post all of that with links and details in the next couple of months, I’m going from memory on vacation here.
I haven’t read that book. I’ll add it to my list to try and find. But in general I’ve lost interest in second and third hand accounts. There’s a telephone game going on, and the further from the source I get the more wild claims I find with nothing to back them up. If I’m going to learn more I need information closer to the source. Which unfortunately means I also have a language barrier, because the closest sources are all in Spanish. So don’t apologize for your English, I’m having my own struggles.
I got your message. Thanks. I can’t reply to the email address you gave for some reason. I actually found Willesee’s book last night, it’s interesting.
FYI your comment did briefly appear because I had you set to “trusted” so it auto approved. I’ve fixed that now.