The Miracle of Lanciano
The Miracle of Lanciano
The small town of Lanciano is located 45 kilometers from Pescara (Italy), which borders the Adriatic. In the eighth century, a Basilian monk, after performing the double consecration of bread and wine, began to doubt the real presence of the Body and Blood of the Savior in the host and in the chalice. It was then that the miracle was performed in front of the priest’s eyes; the host became a piece of living flesh; in the chalice the consecrated wine in living blood, coagulating in five irregular little stones of different shapes and sizes.
This miraculous flesh and blood have been preserved, and over the centuries, various ecclesiastical investigations were carried out.
Verification of the miracle.
They wanted in the 1970s to verify the authenticity of the miracle, taking advantage of the advancement of science and the means available. The scientific analysis of those relics, dating back thirteen centuries, was entrusted to a group of experts. Professors Odoardo Linoli, Professor of Anatomy, Pathological Histology, Chemistry and Clinical Microscopy, and Ruggero Bertelli, from the University of Siena, rigorously carried out the laboratory analyses. Here are the results:
Meat is truly meat. The blood is truly blood. They are both human blood and flesh. Flesh and blood are of the same blood group (AB). Flesh and blood belong to a LIVING person.
The diagram of this blood corresponds to that of a human blood that was extracted from a human body that same day. The meat is made up of muscular tissue from the heart (myocardium). The preservation of these relics, left in a natural state for centuries and exposed to the action of physical, atmospheric and biological agents, is an extraordinary phenomenon.
One is amazed at such conclusions, which manifest in an obvious and precise way the authenticity of this Eucharistic miracle.
Another inexplicable detail: weighing the coagulated blood stones, and they are all different sizes, each one of them has exactly the same weight as the five stones together.
Conclusions. How many conclusions, how many ideas and insights into God’s designs can we draw from the miracle of Lanciano!
1. Precisely when the arrogant affirm: “Science buried religion, the Church and prayer, which are things that have been superseded. None of this is important.” For these, the miracle of Lanciano is a categorical answer. It is just science, with its current resources that come to prove the authenticity of the miracle. And what a miracle!
2. Truly a miracle destined for our time of unbelief. Well, as Saint Paul says, miracles are not done for those who believe, but for those who do not believe. Precisely at this time, when a certain number of Christians doubt the Real Presence, admitting only a spiritual Presence of Christ in the soul of the one who communicates, science proves it with evidence of a miracle that has lasted for more than thirteen centuries.
3. The church of Lanciano, where the miracle took place, is dedicated to Saint Longinus, the soldier who pierced the Heart of Christ with the spear, on the cross. Coincidence?
4. The scientific confirmation by experts that it is the flesh and blood of a living person, living today, since this blood is the same as that which would have been withdrawn on the same day, from a living person.
5. Therefore it is the same living flesh, not flesh from a corpse, but an animated and glorious flesh, that we receive in the Eucharist, so that we can live the life of Christ.
6. An impressive fact: the meat that is there is meat of the heart. It is not just any muscle, but the muscle that propels blood and, consequently, life.
7. The proteins contained in the blood are normally distributed in a percentage ratio identical to that of the protein scheme of normal fresh blood.
For us, fifty years, half a century, is practically a lifetime. Thirteen centuries seem like an eternity to us and it is perhaps with this sense of eternity that we “feel” the miracle of Lanciano, where God allowed the verification by science of men of his omnipotent words: THIS IS MY BODY, THIS IS THE CHALICE OF MY BLOOD, OF THE NEW AND ETERNAL TESTAMENT.
This text was published in:
Sun of Fatima, no. 83, May June 1982,
Rome magazine of Buenos Aires, no. 28, September 1978,
Colombian Legionnaire n. 5.
The following information is found in the monograph of Professor Linoli, professor of pathological and cytogenetic anatomy and histology, published after the last scientific investigation of the miraculous Flesh and Blood in 1970 and revised in 1991.
Information provided by the Italian Cardiologist Marina De Cesare, who participated in the investigation of the miracle.
After several investigations, today the Eucharistic Miracle is preserved in the Church of San Francisco, in a precious silver reliquary.
In particular, the Meat has a rounded shape, with a diameter between 55 and 60 mm, of a color between dark yellow and brown. The sheet of tissue is subtly and widely lacerated in the central part, due to its withdrawal towards the outer edge, where it is raised in folds. It is evident that it is an organ with a cavity, seen in cross section, histologically recognized as a heart. The lower, thicker part can be identified as the left ventricle; the upper part, thinner than usual, can be identified as the right ventricle. Over the centuries, the Miraculous Flesh has been the object of repeated manipulations that have led to the loss of central parts such as the interventricular wall, of which only traces have remained at the base, between the two ventricles. In addition, the only current cavity was losing water, with the consequent mummification and reduction of dimensions.
The Blood of the Eucharistic Miracle, contained within an ancient glass chalice, appears in the form of 5 fragments with a total weight of 15.18 grams, yellow-brown in color and uniformly hard.
The study carried out in the years 1970-1971 was directed to:
1) find out the histological structure of the tissue considered Meat;
2) define if the substance considered Meat responds to its characteristics;
3) establish to which histological species the Flesh and the Blood belong;
4) specify the blood group in both tissues;
5) inquire about the protein and mineral compounds of the Blood.
1) Histological study of the ancient meat of Lanciano
The small fragments extracted from the mummified tissue have been subjected to histological studies according to classical research methods: staining on myotomic sections (Mallory, Van Gieson, Ignesti’s method, silver impregnation according to Gomori, among others) and subsequent examination under the electron microscope.
The tissue appears to be composed of fibrocells (= cells that make up muscle tissue) oriented longitudinally, obliquely, and transversely. The same fibrocells show, with greater enlargement, a longitudinal fibrillar structure, which leads to the recognition of striated muscle tissue. The fibers appear organized in syncoctic unions, that is, through bifurcations and reciprocal unions at the ends.
The characteristics described above lead to the diagnosis of myocardial tissue. In fact, the orientation of the fibrocells and the syncytial aggregation are found only in the cardiac muscle: the heart, during contraction, performs complex torsional movements, contractions from below to above and from the outside to the inside of the ventricular cavity. The resulting work has the purpose of expelling the blood from the ventricular cavity towards the great arteries. Skeletal muscles do not need such a complex organization, since they are made up of fibrocells arranged according to the same orientation. In the histological fragments, other structures, typical of the heart, have also been evidenced: a lobule of adipose tissue, nerve branches that belong to a vagus nerve (which regulates the frequency of the heart beat) and finally endocardial structures (tissue that internally lines the heart). and its valves), absent in other muscular tissues. Finally, normal arterial and venous vascular structures were evidenced, which do not present structural alterations, which rather belong to a healthy and young individual.
It is also necessary to specify that mummifying substances, which were used to preserve tissues, were not revealed.
Conclusion: the tissue of the ancient Flesh of Lanciano belongs to a Heart. A healthy heart.
2) Microscopic and microchemical examination of the ancient Blood of Lanciano.
Cellular elements do not appear on microtome sections. Microchemical studies have yielded contrasting results comparing the sample under examination and dissected human blood.
3) Chromatographic search for hemoglobin in the old Blood.
The test carried out both on the sample in question and on other reference samples, demonstrated the true hematous nature of the ancient Blood of Lanciano.
This test is fully valid for the recognition of blood even in the case of materials damaged over time, which may present contrasting results with respect to the aforementioned tests.
4) Immunological definition of the species to which the ancient Blood and the ancient Flesh of Lanciano belong.
The tissues under examination have been analyzed with anti-human protein sera, rabbit sera and ox sera.
Conclusion: the precipitation tests have shown that the Blood and the Flesh of the Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano belong to the human species.
5) Determination of the blood group in the ancient Blood and in the ancient Flesh of Lanciano.
The tests used to determine the blood group (ABO) have shown that both the Blood and the Meat of Lanciano belong to the AB group.
6) Electrophoretic analysis of the proteins of the ancient Blood of Lanciano.
The percentage composition of the proteins in the fluid under examination repeats the known values for normal human blood serum:
albumin = 61%;
alpha-1 globulins = 2.38%;
alpha-2 globulins = 7.14%;
beta globulins = 7.14%;
gamma = 21.42%.
The albumin-globulin ratio turns out to be 1.62%, the normal value being between 1.13 and 1.73.
The fractionated proteins of the sample under examination then present an electrophoretic curve similar to that of normal fresh blood (a blood serum cannot be used for electrophoretic purposes after 2-4 days of refrigeration).
7) Determination of minerals (calcium, chlorides, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, sodium) in the ancient Blood of Lanciano.
With respect to normal dissected human blood samples, the percentage of minerals was altered by contact with the glass wall of the container and by exposure to masonry dust rich in calcium salts.
Final considerations
The results of the research carried out on fragments of the Ancient Blood and the ancient Flesh that is traditionally known as the Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano (8th century), are summarized in the following points:
– The Blood is indeed such;
– Meat belongs to the myocardium;
– Flesh and Blood belong to the human species;
– The blood group identified in both the Blood and the Meat is type AB,
– Electrophoretic examination of…