Florida Cevoli, la croix au cœur

Mother Florida, superior of the Capuchin convent in Città di Castello, Umbria, was known for her mystical charisms: she was believed to have received the stigmata, but to have obtained from Heaven, out of humility, that they should be invisible. Shortly before her death in 1767, after announcing her imminent passing, she confided to her nuns that an autopsy of her body would reveal proof of her transverberation, the visible trace left by the spear which, during an ecstasy, pierced her heart in order to better unite her to the sufferings of Christ's Passion, and many other wonders. She also specified that nothing would be seen at first, but that her heart would have to be placed in a vase of pure water for eight days before the proof of the miracle would be revealed. Her instructions were scrupulously obeyed, and everyone was left speechless on the eighth day.

Les raisons d'y croire :

• Sister Florida witnessed the ecstasies and the marks of the crown of thorns on the forehead of the superior of the convent in Città di Castello, Mother Veronica Giuliani. Five years after Mother Veronica's death (1727), when she succeeded her, Mother Florida entered into a mystical marriage with Christ on March 25, 1733, received the stigmata and the gift of prophecy, and had numerous visions, as if her role were to continue the mission of the deceased abbess. Without being an exact replica of Veronica's, Florida's special charisms were in a way a continuation of the deceased's mission.

• As far as the physical symptoms are concerned, autosuggestion cannot be the cause, as some scientists claim. Padre Pio's famous reply to a doctor who accused him of meditating too much on the Passion to explain his stigmata: “Try to think hard and long that you are an ox, then come back and tell me if you have grown horns!"

• Florida sought to hide her mystical graces, asking Jesus to leave her the suffering of her wounds, but to make these invisible so as not to be venerated. An impostor in search of attention, on the other hand, would have wanted them to be visible. Similarly, although she had, in obedience to her spiritual director, written several notebooks recounting her mystical experiences and revelations, when he died, she took care to collect them all and destroy them, out of humility.

• The great physical and moral suffering Florida began to endure at the same time was not an act. She was afflicted by strange illnesses, inexplicable fevers and a generalized herpes that covered her with repulsive purulent sores, making her an object of disgust.

• Veronica Giuliani had announced before her death that proof of her mystical graces would be found during the autopsy of her heart, and she had drawn a plan showing the symbols that would be found there, with their exact location. The leading medical authorities of the day attended the autopsy, affirming the impossibility of deception, and found, precisely where she had said, the miniaturized instruments of the Passion. Agnostic doctors have dubbed these stigmatized women “mystical cardiacs” and named the phenomenon “mystical epigraphy by autosuggestion”. There's no need to point out the absurdity of this assertion, since no one can produce drawings, even miniature ones, in their ventricle or aorta, let alone live an almost normal life under these conditions if the origin were not supernatural.

• We can't suggest a psychiatric disorder, as that wouldn't produce this phenomenon either. Incidentally, both Veronica and, even more so, Florida, were highly functioning women who performed domestic tasks and led their convent intelligently. In this role, Florida proved especially efficient, caring and capable.

• In the spring of 1767, Florida prophesied her imminent death, announcing that the symbols of her most cherished devotions would be imprinted, engraved or materialized in her heart, as they had been in Veronica's. They would not be the same as those of her friend. She specified that they would not be visible at the autopsy, and that it would be necessary to wait eight days to see them, after having placed her heart in a vase of pure water, which should be monitored to prove that there was no fraud involved.

• When she died on June 12, 1767, the doctors had initially found nothing, but the words “faith”, “charity”, “obedience” and others were later discovered written in the left ventricle, along with a drawing of the Sacred Heart joined to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, pierced by swords; the crown of thorns; and miniature Passion instruments. Of course, there is no way that all this could appear spontaneously in a heart taken from a corpse, then immersed and left in water for over a week, especially in early summer.