Why Miracles Belong to Faith
Miracles are real acts of God. The Creator, who calls the world into being and sustains it, can also act beyond the powers of created nature. Jesus heals the sick, commands the storm, raises the dead, and himself rises from the dead. In these deeds, he reveals his power and his mercy. The Church bears witness to this divine action and also preserves testimony to miracles from her subsequent history.[3][2][4]
In Dei Filius, the First Vatican Council teaches that miracles and prophecies make the credibility of Revelation recognizable. They are external evidence of God's action and also address reason. Faith is directed toward God who reveals; miracles help people recognize his call. Their careful presentation therefore belongs to the Church's proclamation.[3][2][4]
Thomas Aquinas explains that a miracle in the proper sense exceeds the powers of created nature. The investigation therefore seeks the concrete event: What happened, who observed it, what natural causes might account for it, and in what connection with prayer, Revelation, or intercession did it occur? Reliable observation, good testimony, and converging examinations give weight to a reasoned assessment.[3][2][4]
“He saw and believed” — and yet believing without seeing
On Easter morning, the disciple finds the tomb empty and sees the linen cloths left behind: he saw and believed. Later, the risen Christ stands before Thomas and shows him his wounds. The Apostle responds by confessing him as his Lord and God. The Gospel of John thus leads from the visible event, through testimony, to a personal response of faith.[1][4]
The blessing upon those who believe without seeing for themselves is addressed to later generations. They receive reliable apostolic testimony. John records Christ's miracles so that his readers may believe and have life in his name. Faith in this testimony is consistent with the desire to know its historical foundations.[1][4]
The Church's later miracles also lead to Christ. They invite thanksgiving, prayer, conversion, and active charity. Those who read the sources and examinations encounter real people: the sick and the healed, their families, witnesses, physicians, and the pastors who investigated the events.[1][4]
The Event and Its Evidence
The starting point is the event itself. A sick person is healed; blood appears on a consecrated Host; when a tomb is opened, those present find a preserved body. The investigation records the place, time, people, and sequence of events. It follows the witnesses through to medical findings, surviving objects, and ecclesiastical records.
In cases of incorruption, the first exhumation carries its own weight. If a body was found extraordinarily preserved under unfavorable burial conditions, a wax covering applied only later does not explain that earlier finding. Nor does subsequent decay undo the observation made at that time. The first exhumation, further examinations, and subsequent care are therefore presented in their actual order.
The specific finding determines the evidential value. Preserved internal organs, fully recovered bodily function, or blood identified by several methods are concrete facts that can be discussed and assessed. The more precise the testimony and the stronger the converging findings, the more definite the presentation of the result can be.
Why Credible Witnesses Matter
Historical knowledge rests substantially on testimony. An eyewitness recounts what he or she has seen and heard. A treating physician knows an illness before the healing; family members experience the recovered strength in daily life. Early chroniclers preserve the memory and name the people from whom they learned about it. Such testimony is taken as seriously in the case of a miracle as it is for other events in history.
Credibility grows through proximity in time, specific details, independent corroboration, and agreement with surviving documents. Religious faith does not disqualify a witness. A willingness to report uncomfortable facts, endure opposition, and submit one's statement to investigation also deserves consideration.
A witness and a later interpreter have different tasks. Early statements, later transmission, and present-day investigations are therefore identified with names and dates. In the case of a historical event, the testimony of a reliable informant can support the account even when no modern medical record or photograph could have been produced.
What Examinations Contribute to the Findings
Scientific examinations can considerably strengthen a miracle case. Microscopy reveals tissue structures; chemical and immunological analyses examine blood components; medical findings before and after document bodily restoration. When different appropriate methods lead to the same result, the finding gains weight.
To ensure that a measurement concerns the correct object, investigators document the collection, custody, and treatment of the sample. Comparison samples and controls help identify mix-ups and contamination. Methods, measured values, and transparent analyses allow other specialists to check a result.
An explanation of an object must account for its characteristics together. For the Shroud, image, blood traces, fabric, and history belong together; for a healing, diagnosis, treatment, sudden restoration, and permanence. A single reproduced effect does not yet explain the entire event. Likewise, the question of God's action remains connected to the historical and religious context.
Nonbelieving Physicians and Personal Journeys of Faith
The medical examination in Lourdes is also open to physicians who do not share the Catholic faith. According to the official account of the procedure, physicians and healthcare professionals present may take part in the clinical case discussion regardless of their religious convictions. In 2018, Alessandro de Franciscis, as head of the Medical Bureau, explicitly stated that they included agnostics and atheists. They inspect the records and give their professional judgment. The examination therefore requires no prior belief in a miracle: the decisive factors are the medical findings and medical arguments.[7][8]
A concrete example is the Canadian hematologist Jacalyn Duffin. In her own account, she describes initially examining bone-marrow specimens without knowing the religious occasion. Her finding later contributed to the proceedings concerning Marie-Marguerite d’Youville; she also testified before the ecclesiastical tribunal. In the same account, Duffin explicitly continues to identify herself as an atheist. Her testimony therefore illustrates particularly clearly that medical participation does not presuppose agreement with the Catholic interpretation. Her medical assessment and her personal philosophical response remained distinguishable.[10]
The French surgeon Maurice Caillet described a decisive conversion in Lourdes. He had previously identified himself as a rationalist and atheist. While accompanying his sick wife, he attended Mass. The Gospel touched him personally; afterwards, he asked for baptism. His own testimony and a later Vatican Radio interview document this journey of faith. This is a physician's personal conversion, to which he himself bears witness.[11][12]
Alexis Carrel, who later won the Nobel Prize for his surgical work, gave literary form to his Lourdes experience in Le Voyage de Lourdes under the name Lerrac. He describes how an extraordinary recovery shakes a skeptical physician and leads him to ask for faith. At the same time, the inner struggle is not yet resolved. The testimony shows how encountering such an event can call an existing worldview into question and open a path to faith.[13][14]
The Church's Judgment
The Church's explicit recognition of a miracle is a weighty judgment. It follows an investigation of the event and its religious significance. The dossiers name the decisive ecclesiastical authority, the date, and the content of the decision so that readers can understand the judgment for themselves.[6]
There are also permitted forms of veneration and positive pastoral decisions that concern a different subject. The 2024 apparition norms, for example, provide for a Nihil obstat that allows a spiritual experience to be promoted pastorally without ordinarily establishing certainty about its supernatural origin. Earlier explicit recognitions are presented in their own wording.[6]
Different procedures apply to the medical examination of miracles and to apparitions. Recognition of a healing also differs from establishing the origin of an old textile. The precise ecclesiastical decision therefore belongs in each individual dossier; it is read in connection with the preceding testimony and findings.[6]
Examining and Answering Objections
A serious objection requires a specific answer. Anyone seeking to explain a miracle by a natural cause must show how that cause could have produced the particular documented event. The general observation that diseases sometimes recede or bodies remain preserved under certain conditions does not replace that demonstration in the individual case.
Criticism of a particular supporting argument does not automatically refute the whole case either. A blood group, for example, is not a personal fingerprint; it does not follow, however, that independently established findings of blood or tissue are meaningless. Conversely, an individual argument that has actually been refuted is no longer used as evidence. The body of sound evidence remains decisive.
The claim that miracles are impossible because only natural causes can exist already presupposes a particular worldview. An open investigation must not anticipate its result in this way. It examines the facts and possible causes and takes account of prayer, the message, and the historical context. Strong testimony and converging findings deserve a correspondingly clear answer; an unresolved specialist question is addressed where it concerns the specific case.
The right investigative approach for each type.
A healing is examined through medical records, an old cloth through its transmission and material. An apparition requires an investigation of testimony, messages, and consequences. For each group, the following texts explain the methods of examination, the competent ecclesiastical authorities, and the scope of their decisions.
How Miraculous Images Are Examined
Investigating image formation and determining what the findings establish.
Read the investigative approach →How Relics Are Examined
Tracing provenance, material, age, and ecclesiastical custody.
Read the investigative approach →How Eucharistic Miracles Are Examined
Securing the account of events, identifying the material, and reading the Church's judgment precisely.
Read the investigative approach →Examining Healings: From Findings to the Church's Judgment
Diagnosis, treatment, the course of healing, and ecclesiastical recognition are examined separately.
Read the investigative approach →Examining Incorruption: Bodily Preservation and Its Causes
The state of preservation, burial conditions, and later interventions must be investigated together.
Read the investigative approach →How Apparitions and Private Revelations Are Examined
Testimony, messages, spiritual fruits, and ecclesiastical decisions.
Read the investigative approach →How Miracles in the Lives of the Saints Are Examined
Stigmata, bilocation, and material changes require different examinations.
Read the investigative approach →How the Miracles of Jesus Are Examined
Apostolic testimony, historical transmission, and the deeds of Christ.
Read the investigative approach →Foundational sources
- [1] Gospel of John, Chapter 20
Biblical basis for the title, the words concerning Thomas, and the concept of signs.
Open source · vatican.va ↗ - [2] Dei Filius
Miracles as external signs of credibility; faith remains a free assent sustained by grace.
Open source · vatican.va ↗ - [3] Summa theologiae I, q. 105, a. 7
The classical distinction between wonder at a hidden cause and a miracle in the proper sense.
Open source · bkv.unifr.ch ↗ - [4] Summa theologiae III, q. 43
The purpose of Christ's miracles and their relationship to his teaching and person.
Open source · newadvent.org ↗ - [5] Summa theologiae III, q. 25
The theological foundation of the veneration of relics, not a judgment on an individual body's condition.
Open source · newadvent.org ↗ - [6] Norms for Proceeding in the Discernment of Alleged Supernatural Phenomena
The current basis for ecclesiastical procedures concerning these phenomena; not to be equated with the medical procedure in canonizations.
Open source · vatican.va ↗ - [7] Le Bureau des Constatations médicales
The clinical discussion is open to physicians present regardless of faith. The CMIL assesses medical inexplicability.
Open source · lourdes-france.org ↗ - [8] Il medico che analizza i miracoli di Lourdes: Da me le persone vengono per dirmi che sono guarite
The head of the Bureau attests to the participation of agnostics and atheists. He explains the CMIL's secret ballot and two-thirds majority.
Open source · famigliacristiana.it ↗ - [9] Regulations of the Medical Board of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints
Professional expertise, independent initial assessments, prohibition of contact, binding vote, and rules for discontinuing proceedings; the Promotor fidei has a separate, non-voting role.
Open source · causesanti.va ↗ - [10] Can an Atheist Scientist Believe in Miracles?
Duffin describes her blinded bone-marrow assessment and her testimony in the d’Youville proceedings. She explicitly continues to identify herself as an atheist afterwards.
Open source · strangenotions.com ↗ - [11] Confesiones de un antiguo masón
Self-identification as a rationalist and atheist; visit to Lourdes with his sick wife, attendance at a service, and subsequent request for baptism.
Open source · es.zenit.org ↗ - [12] Maurice Caillet: J’étais franc-maçon
Confirms Caillet's medical profession and documents the interview about his decisive religious conversion in Lourdes.
Open source · archivioradiovaticana.va ↗ - [13] Le Voyage de Lourdes
Carrel's first-person experience, given literary form, is narrated under the name Lerrac; the text attests to continuing doubt after the experience.
Open source · reparti.free.fr ↗ - [14] The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1912
Carrel received the Nobel Prize in 1912 for vascular suturing and transplantation work, not for an investigation of a miracle.
Open source · nobelprize.org ↗