Therese Neumann: a medical enigma

Therese Neumann, whose beatification process was officially opened in 2005, was a 20th-century Bavarian country girl whose hope to become a missionary sister was dashed after a fateful injury. Through the intercession of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, she received miraculous cures. During her life, Therese Neumann's reputation as a mystic attracted many pilgrims and curious onlookers who came to observe the different marks of the Passion she had received on her body. After her death on September 18, 1962, 10,000 people attended her funeral. In opening her beatification process, the Church recognised Therese Neumann as a servant of God, remarkable for her piety, spiritual fervour and human qualities.

Thérèse Neumann in 1926 / © CC BY-SA 3.0 de/Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-00241 / Ferdinand Neumann - Bild urheberrechtlich geschützt

Reasons to believe:

Bedridden since an accident in 1918, Therese Neumann was monitored by doctors who all witnessed her paralysis and blindness. On April 29, 1923, the day of Saint Therese of Lisieux's beatification, a saint to whom she pray constantly, she was suddenly and inexplicably cured of an irreversible optic nerve lesion. And on May 17, 1925, when the canonisation of the same saint was being celebrated, Therese Neumann regained full use of her legs.

Therese Neumann received the stigmata in 1926. All medical attempts to close or heal her wounds failed. The opening of the stigmata followed a perfectly clear liturgical pattern: they remained closed during the week, opened on Fridays, then closed again on Sundays. The amount of blood spilled from the wounds (on the side, hands and feet, then the head) is far beyond the usual blood capacity of the human body. Many photographs were taken.

For 36 years, Therese Neumann ate and drank nothing, except the host she received in her daily Eucharistic communion. This inedia (the ability to feed solely on the Blessed Sacrament) was the subject of unprecedented medical surveillance. In 1927, for example, Therese was admitted to a clinic in Konnersreuth for 14 days and 14 nights, and was never left alone: the 53-page medical report attested to the veracity of the inedia and rejected any natural explanation.

At the time, oral hygiene was less sophisticated than it is today. Therese's dentist, Dr Diener, emphasised that her complete absence of cavities would not have been possible if normal bacterial flora had been present in her mouth, since food induced micro-organisms that destroyed the teeth.

Therese's absolute fast from Christmas 1926 until her death is also indirectly corroborated by the Nazis, who took away her food card during the war.

Every Friday, Therese experienced the Passion: each time, she lost 4 kg (8.8 lbs), which she regained the following days without eating or drinking.

During her ecstasies, Therese spoke in languages unknown to her (Aramaic, Portuguese, French, etc.), perfectly identified by experienced linguists such as Franz-Olivier Wutz, professor of biblical languages at the University of Eichstätt, but also in impeccable German, even though she usually spoke in a typical Bavarian dialect.

During her ecstasies, levitations were reported by dozens of unsuspecting witnesses.

Therese had the charisma of clairvoyance, which made her aware of distant events and words spoken dozens of kilometres away by strangers.

Summary:

The eldest of eleven children, Therese Neumann was born a practising Catholic in Konnersreuth, a small Bavarian village with a population of less than a thousand. Her father, Ferdinand, was a tailor, and her mother, Anna, worked in the fields. Therese soon had to help her with her daily chores. The family was poor. Therese attended primary school, while helping with farm and domestic duties.

After leaving school, Therese was placed with a local farmer; she worked hard and thrived in nature, among the animals. At the same time, her parents instilled in her a love of prayer. From an early age, she wanted to serve God by becoming a nun, or even a missionary in Africa. In 1914, her father was drafted. He asked her not to enter the convent until he returned, as the house needed her so much. She helped with the raising her younger siblings and the farm chores.

Ferdinand returned safely to Konnersreuth on March 9, 1918. The next day, Therese suffered a serious injury while helping to put out a fire at a neighbour's house and exerting herself during several hours. The prognosis was grim: her spine was dislocated and her spinal cord was damaged. Her plans for a contemplative life came crashing down.After weeks in the hospital, her condition worsened: she had paralysis of the limbs, impaired vision, etc. One year to the day after her fall, she lost her sight completely after falling from a chair on which she was sitting. The doctors diagnosed optic nerve damage.

Therese remained bedridden for four years, day and night, in a catastrophic state: migraines, bedsores, cramps... She asked for special help from the "Little Thérèse", whom she had heard of and whose picture her father had brought back from France. On April 28, 1923, she fell asleep blind. The next day, the day of the beatification of Thérèse of Lisieux, she recovered her sight. But her body remained ill. She could neither stand up nor make any significant movements. On May 17, 1925, the day of the canonisation of Blessed Thérèse of Lisieux, she regained the use of her legs without any natural explanation. She explained that she had heard a "voice" asking her if she wanted to be healed. She replied that she simply wanted to do God's will.

The year 1926 marked a decisive stage in her mystical life: the stigmata appeared, along with visions of the lives of Jesus, Mary and saints such as Saint Bernadette Soubirous and Saint Anthony of Padua. The first wound (on the side) was caused by a vision of Christ in the Garden of Olives. Over the following weeks, wounds on her hands, feet and head appeared in turn every Friday, and inexplicably closed again on Sundays. Her parents, brothers and sisters, as well as several doctors who came to her bedside, initially thought it was a natural phenomenon. Attempts were made to heal the wounds, but to no avail. Bandages, dressings and ointments only made the skin swell and the pain worse. At the end of 1926, she also received the wound of the crown of thorns following a vision of Jesus crowned with thorns: eight holes spontaneously opened around her head, letting out an incredible amount of blood.

Some have explained these stigmata as a bodily sign of an inner psychological conflict, or even of "hysteria". This assertion has no basis whatsoever: apart from the fact that no one has ever observed the appearance of such wounds - deep, bloody, not following the natural healing process - as a result of psychological imbalance, Therese did her utmost to conceal the extraordinary graces she received: she constantly wore mittens and long sleeves covering her hands.

From Christmas 1926 onwards, she developed a distaste for food and drink and soon stopped eating altogether. At first, she accepted a few drops of water after her daily Eucharistic communion, during which she absorbed a small amount of water (a teaspoon) used to moisten the host, then she gave it up. When asked what she lived of, she replied: "Of the Redeemer".

Therese Naumann's case reached the ears of Pope Pius XI in early 1927. He asked the bishop of Regensburg, Anton von Henle, to have the mystic hospitalised in order to determine whether or not it was a case of fraud or authenticity. For a fortnight, under the supervision of the famous doctor Agostino Gemelli, she was subjected to round the clock observation. Two eminent doctors managed the case: Otto Seidl, chief surgeon at Waldassen Hospital, and Dr Ewald, professor of psychiatry at Erlangen University. Four nurses took turns at Therese's bedside, day and night, without interruption. The doctors' orders were categorical: Therese "was never to be left alone for a moment [...]. The water used for mouth care was to be measured before use and what was spat out was to be placed in a cup and measured [...]. All bodily excretions would be collected, weighed and sent for analysis."

After two weeks of observation in these conditions, the result left the doctors (who were initially very sceptical) speechless: Therese had absorbed nothing, neither liquid nor solid, apart from bits of consecrated hosts, i.e. "about 45 cm³ in 15 days, and a tiny quantity of water, about 10 cm³ in all". What's more, her metabolism showed no signs of deterioration. Her weight remained unchanged from the beginning to the end of the experiment.

On July 30, 1927, Dr Seidl sent his report to the diocese of Regensburg, in which he wrote: "On the basis of our observations, the nuns [nurses] and I are firmly convinced that it is impossible that, during the time of the investigation, Therese Neumann ingested anything other than the Holy Host, the few drops of water that allowed her to ingest it, and during her oral hygiene treatments, a tiny quantity of water..." Moreover, the observations of the psychiatrist Ewald revealed no mental pathology.

Therese's human qualities are well known: simplicity, devotion, courage, selflessness, kindness, energy... and a marked sense of humour. When one of the countless visitors asked her if her stigmata were the result of an autosuggestion, the mark of a repressed desire, she told him to think very hard that he was a cow to see if, by chance, he would grow horns!

Therese died of a heart attack at the age of 64. More than 10,000 people accompanied this humble woman, who loved God, flowers and her animals, on her final journey. In 2005, the Church opened her beatification process.

Patrick Sbalchiero

Beyond reasons to believe:

Therese Neumann was a simple, uneducated, and uncultured woman. Her whole environment covered an area of just a few square kilometres and, from the outside, there was nothing to distinguish her from any other Bavarian peasant woman: a love of nature, animals, flowers and her vegetable garden.

Going further:

The Story Of Therese Neumann by Albert Paul Schimberg, Kessinger Publishing (September 10, 2010)

More information:

Therese Neumann: Mystic and Stigmatist (1898-1962) by Adalbert Albert Vogl, TAN Books; First Edition (August 1, 1994)
Therese Neumann by Johannes Steiner, ‎ Alba House (January 1, 1976)