The Archdiocese of Indianapolis said an investigation of an alleged Eucharistic miracle is underway at a southeast Indiana church where it reportedly took place in late February. Source: OSV News.
The archdiocese’s communications department said the inquiry originated in St. Anthony of Padua Church in Morris, Indiana.
“A careful investigation, with assistance from a professional laboratory, is in progress,” Sally Krause, director of communications, said in a statement.
The office did not provide further comment citing the ongoing investigation.
In Facebook and X posts, Corpus Christi for Unity and Peace, or CUP (a local Catholic advocacy group) said that a “young woman” — whom a member of the group knows well — described seeing “drops of blood” on two consecrated hosts.
The hosts had apparently fallen on the floor on February 21 and were placed in water and kept in the tabernacle to dissolve. A day later, what the woman saw instead, she claimed, “looked like a very very thin piece of skin with blood on it.”
A CUP founder confirmed that the same woman, who wished to remain anonymous, took the photos of the apparently blood-stained hosts that were posted on social media.
Fr Terry Donahue, a Companion of the Cross priest, who has given talks on well-known Eucharistic and healing miracles, said that in recent months the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith released updated guidelines for miraculous investigations.
The local bishop now has to alert the national bishops’ conference and the Holy See from the beginning, informing them that an inquiry will be undertaken. The bishop has to personally ensure the consecrated specimen is kept in a “confidential place and in an appropriate manner”.
He has to form a commission of at least one theologian, one canonist and one expert, usually a medical doctor who specialises in hematology (blood study) or histology (microscopic tissue study) and various other scientists.
“Maybe you’re going to have people who are familiar with detecting whether something is in fact blood or not,” he said. “Because you can have various natural phenomena that to the untrained eye look like something bleeding, but actually it’s a certain type of mould spores that are very red.”
FULL STORY
Indianapolis Archdiocese probes parish’s alleged Eucharistic miracle (By Simone Orendain, OSV News)
