With 7,500 cases of unexplained cures, Lourdes is unique in the world (1858-today)

Summary:

Lourdes is reputed as a "place of miracles" and is the best known "healing shrine" not only in France but abroad and worldwide. Alleged and authenticated miraculous cures have largely contributed to the fame of this small town in the French Pyrenees, which has become one of the most famous Marian shrines in the world, attracting five to six million pilgrims every year.

These miracles all consist of cures. It is interesting to note that the Virgin Mary never alluded to illness or healing during her exchanges with Bernadette, yet miraculous cures have been part of the story of Lourdes from the very beginning.

On February 25, 1858, during the ninth apparition (the median and central apparition of the series of 18), and a month before the Virgin revealed her identity, Bernadette - on Mary's instructions - laboriously uncovered a spring at the bottom of the Grotto of Massabielle, by digging into the earth with her fingers. It was in contact with this water that, three days later, the first cure took place, followed by others in the days and months that followed. At first, it was thought that the water in the cave had curative properties, but analyses soon revealed that this was not the case. More and more cures were to follow, whether during the Eucharistic procession, Mass, even thousands of miles away from the shrine, with or without the use of the Lourdes water, but always recognised by the beneficiaries as the result of Our Lady of Lourdes's  intercession.

It is hard to imagine the scale of the reported cures today. During just one pilgrimage, lasting a few days, the annual French National Pilgrimage for the Sick started in 1873, the number of claims totaled about 50, the same figure as the current annual average! The reality is that today, the expressions of faith have changed and when people are ill, they rely more on medicine (which has made more advances in the past 150 years than in all the past centuries combined) than on a divine intervention, but unexplained cures continue to occur at Lourdes, whether modest (mostly unrecorded) or spectacular (incurable diseases and terminal illness) in nature.

From the outset, these surprising and unexpected healings led the civil and religious authorities to investigate. As soon as the apparitions to Saint Bernadette ended, in July 1858, Bishop Laurence of Tarbes set up a medical commission to begin "authenticating" the numerous allegations of miraculous healing. This body of medical experts headed by Professor Vergez, an associate professor of termal medicine at the University of Montpellier (France), summoned all the people who had claimed to have been cured, to question them and examine them in a scientific way. As early as January 18, 1862, in a pastoral letter giving his ruling about the Lourdes apparitions, Bishop Laurence emphasized: "These cures are miracles: I see in them the finger of God." The trend in reported miracles only increased over the following decades, making Lourdes an incomparable place.

The authentication procedure that has been established is designed to guarantee a high level of credibility.

1. The first step is a formal declaration: this is completely voluntary, and up to the individual who believe they have been cured. Why do people chose to do so? Because they feel sure that what they experienced was not natural, but supernatural, and want to bear witness to it. This is quite different from what we now call a spontaneous remission or recovery. At this stage the cure stands as just one exception to current, statistical medical knowledge, on the extremity of a Gaussian distribution curve. 

2. Only serious, identified, and previously diagnosed incurable illnesses that are not of psychiatric origin (i.e. which have never been known to be cured by a simple placebo effect) are retained for consideration. Additionally - and this is an essential criterion, expressly requested by the Church for recognition of a miracle - the recovery must have been "sudden, instantaneous, and without a period of convalescence", all characteristics that do not exist in medicine. It must not be a matter of simple improvement, sense of relief or remission, but of total and definitive recovery.

3. The Medical Bureau (comprising any doctors who were present in Lourdes at the time the apparent cure took place) investigates the claim, by examining the patient, the casenotes, and any test results. If not altogether dismissed, the case is then referred to the International Lourdes Medical Committee (abbreviated in French to CMIL) who appoints one of their own members to carry out a full assessment of the case, which he or she presents to the whole committee after a year for a secret vote: a two-thirds majority is required to admit that the presented case represents an "unexplained cure based on current medical knowledge". The case is then forwarded to the Church.

4. In the last stage, it is up to the bishop where the healed person resides to recognize or not the hethe miracle as a canonical act, a serious decision that will not be revisited.

These "unexplained cures" over a period spanning 150 years can therefore be described as miracles. Even with the immense progress made in medicine since the first cures in 1858, and despite the rigorous scientific procedure in place, we still cannot explain the cures recognized as miraculous by the Church.

Beyond reasons to believe:

• The simple, beautiful and credible message of Our Lady of Lourdes, which calls for prayer, penance and conversion, is more relevant than ever and deserves our attention.

• Lourdes is a place of blessings not just for the sick, but for all who go there on pilgrimage: the Virgin Mary, who knows our struggles and miseries, and what the world is like, meets every visitor to her shrine, and is always eager to alleviate the burdens of her children who put their trust in her.

Going further:

Everyday Miracles of Lourdes: Twenty Extraordinary Experiences along the Way to the Grotto, by Marlene Watkins, EWTN Publishing Inc. (February 21, 2023)

More information:

• The Wonders of Lourdes: 150 Miraculous Stories of the Power of Prayer to Celebrate; the 150th Anniversary of Our Lady's Apparition, by Gerald Korson (Editor), John Pepino (Translator), Magnificat; First Edition (May 31, 2008)
• Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age, by Ruth Harris, December 1, 2000 by Penguin Books
• Lourdes movie (2023 documentary by Thierry Demaizière and Alban Teurlai)
• CBS News article by Bill Whitaker (Dec. 18. 2022) "France's Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes: Where 70 medical miracles have been recognized by church officials"
• Catholic World Report article by Father Seán Connolly (July 7, 2024), "70th miracle of Lourdes affirmed by the Church"
• The National Library of Medicine (NLM) an unbiaised and objective scientific study (July 27, 2012) "The Lourdes Medical Cures Revisited" by Bernard François, Esther M. Sternberg, and Elizabeth Fee