Source: Messenger of God via YouTube

In December 1976, a mother in Sicily was preparing a burial dress for her twelve-year-old daughter. Days later, the girl got out of bed and walked. Delizia Cirolli’s recovery from a bone tumour was examined by doctors for six years before it was declared medically unexplained. In this video, we go through her case and two more of the 72 cures officially recognised at Lourdes: Danila Castelli and Sister Bernadette Moriau. We look at what the medical files say, where the doctors disagreed, and what’s still open to question.

Translations from Italian and French are my own. Sources Dowling, “Lourdes cures and their medical assessment”, J R Soc Med, 1984: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/… D’Alpa, “La guarigione di Delizia Cirolli – Una analisi critica”, 2008: https://www.laiko.it/images/lourdes/L… Lourdes Sanctuary, official list of recognised cures: https://www.lourdes-france.org/en/mir… AMIL, Danila Castelli: https://www.amilourdes.com/en/post/69… AMIL, Sr Bernadette Moriau: https://www.amilourdes.com/en/post/70… Cath.ch, Lourdes Sanctuary communiqué (2013): https://www.cath.ch/newsf/danila-cast… Aleteia (2016): https://aleteia.org/2016/01/12/lourde… Aleteia FR (2018): https://fr.aleteia.org/2018/02/12/qui… Catholic World Report (2018): https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2… CBS 60 Minutes transcript: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sanctuar… Image credits Grotto of Lourdes, 2014: © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…, via Wikimedia Commons Map data: openstreetmap.org

Header image: Messenger of God via YouTube