Pope Francis and the miracle of the Host

By Bernie Lopez 

Author’s note. Earlier transmission carried a typo error by my original source (see link at the end). The incident happened in August 18, 1996, not 1966 as earlier given. At that time Pope Francis was just a priest, ordained in 1966, became an archbishop in 1998, and a Cardinal in 2001. At the time he ordered the scientific analysis in 1999, he was already an archbishop. I stand corrected. Thanks Jess. Villa.

Back in 1996, when Pope Francis (formerly Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio) was just a priest, a miracle of the Host occurred in Buenos Aires that later caused a stir. In hind sight, that story becomes meaningful now that he is Pope. On August 18, 1996, three days after the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, a woman came up to Fr. Alejandro Pezet after Holy Mass in a local church, and pointed to a discarded Host on a candleholder at the back of the church. Unable to consume the Host, Fr. Pezet put it in a container with water and placed it inside the tabernacle.

On August 26, a week later, as he opened the tabernacle, he saw that the Host had turned blood red. He informed Bergoglio, who immediately had it photographed. On September 6, the photographs revealed that the Host “had become a fragment of bloodied flesh and had grown significantly in size”. For years, the Host was kept secretly in the tabernacle. On October 5, 1999, Bergoglio, now an Archbishop, seeing that the Host did not decompose, sent it for scientific analysis in New York City through his representative Dr. Castanon.

CONTINUATION

Dr. Castanon purposely did not give any background about the Host to Dr. Frederic Zugiba, a well-known cardiologist and forensic pathologist, who did the examination. His findings revealed the it was “real flesh and blood and containing human DNA. Zugiba testified that the material was a fragment of the heart muscle responsible for contraction to supply blood to all parts of the body.

Dr. Zugiba reported that the examined material was inflamed flesh containing a lot of white blood cells, indicating that the heart was alive at the time the sample was taken. Dr. Zugiba added that white blood cells would die in a matter of minutes if the heart was no longer alive and functioning. The white blood cells had penetrated the tissue, indicating that the heart had been under severe stress, as if the owner had a trauma of being beaten on the chest. This reminds us of the pain and trauma of the Crucifixion of our Lord.

Finally informed that it was a Host, Dr. Zugiba was shocked and said, “How and why a consecrated Host would change its character and become living human flesh and blood will remain an inexplicable mystery to science.”

A blind man in Adelaide, Australia, who wanted so much to see a documentary film on the Buenos Aires miracle, after praying intensely for the grace to ‘see’, was given his sight but only for the 30 minute duration of the film. To prove that he really saw it, he described in detail certain scenes. Half an hour was a lifetime for him, and he can ‘see’ today in his blindness more than others who are not blind.

There seems to be two important messages from Jesus emerging from this event. First, Jesus is trying to tell us of the importance of the Eucharist as a core element of our faith, the sine qua non of our faith, ‘that without which there is nothing’. Our faith depends on how close we get to Him. What other way than in the Eucharist, where we commune with Him in an intimate manner.

Second, the fact that a future Pope was in the midst of this miracle of the Host, the message seems to say that, in whatever crisis the Church is in today, and whatever difficult tasks the Pope has to do to solve that crisis, we must begin and end with the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the Alpha and Omega of solving that crisis. We have to first go back to basics before we venture into the storm. We can solve the Church crisis through the Eucharist. It’s not just up to us. It’s up to us with the Lord beside us. Our solutions, whatever they are, begin and depend on our devotion to the Eucharist. Our reconciliation with His heart is through the Eucharist. Only through Him can we weather a severe storm raging at this very moment.

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