Miracles [61 – 68]

LIST OF APPROVED LOURDES MIRACLES: 61 – 68
Source: The Miracle Hunter
Reprinted with permission.

In 1859, Professor Vergez of the Faculty of Medicine at Montpellier was appointed to examine the cures. Seven cures were recorded before 1862 promoting the argument for the recognition of the Apparitions by Bishop Laurence. Almost 7,000 cures have been documented at the waters of Lourdes. The Church has vigorously investigated and validated a mere 67 of them.

Read more at: How Lourdes Cures Are Recognized as Miraculous (Zenit 2004) | PDF

Download a list of miracles authenticated by International Medical Committee of Lourdes (C.M.I.L.).

Source: Mangiapan, Theodore and d’Andria, Vivienne. Imprimerie de la Grotte. 1987

61. Elisa ALOI  
62. Juliette TAMBURINI  
63. Vittorio MICHELI  
64. Serge PERRIN
65. Miss CIROLLI Delizia  
66. Jean-Pierre Bély  
67. Anna Santaniello
68. Serge Francois (56)

Elisa ALOI

Born on 26.11.1931 in Patti (Sicily)

Cured on 5.6.1958, in her 27th. year. Miracle on 26.5.1965, by Mgr Francesco Fasola, Archbishop of Messine.

This was the last cure involving multiple tuberculous lesions.

Elisa ALOI was nearly 17 years old when her illness began with a white swelling” of the right knee (tuberculous arthritis). In the following 10 years, up to 1958, she developed numerous tuberculous infections in bones and joints. At these sites, fistulae usually occured, requiring in-patient treatment in hospitals and sanatoria. Despite more or less immediate treatment, relapses and recurrences were for ever happening.

In June 1957, in desperation, she went to Lourdes with the Unitalsi Pilgrimage from Sicily.

She did not seem to benefit from the visit really.

But in 1958, she went to Lourdes again in a much worse condition, encased in a pelvis-to-foot plaster cast, with four fistulae drained through it. The dressings were soaked in Lourdes’ water during the pilgrimage. Just ten days after she had left Sicily, her surgeon observed and wrote “Elisa ALOI returned from Lourdes completely cured”.

The Medical Bureau in Lourdes recognised her cure, and handed her dossier to the International Medical Committee in 1960.

There, Professor Salmon, the recorder, had his report of a medically inexplicable cure adopted by the Committee.

Finally, after the Canonical Commission had given a favourable report, Mgr Fasola, Archbishop of Messine, declared “that the cure from multiple fistulous tuberculosis, which happened to Elisa ALOI, is miraculous” on 26.5.1965.

Some months later she married. Between 1966 and 1974, she gave birth safely to four children, which without any doubt was “the best evidence of her complete cure”!

Juliette TAMBURINI

Born on 4.12.1936 in Marseilles

Cured on 17.7.1959, in her 23rd. year. Miracle on 1 1.5.1965, by Mgr Marc Lallier, Archbishop of Marseilles.

At the time of what was most likely her first tuberculous infection, the appearance in 1948, when she was 12 years old, of a bone lesion (L. femur), heralded the onset of a long illness for Juliette TAMBURINI.

During the next 11 years, she was frequently admitted to hospital and sanatoria. She underwent 11 operations, four of which were for bone curetting, which led to fistula formation. However, all this treatment had no lasting effect. Concurrently, repeated epistaxes (nose bleeds) needed urgent interventions, once or twice every 3 months, to control the bleeding.

In desperation, and when the profuse purulent discharge from her fistula required at least two dressings a day, she left for Lourdes with her Diocesan Pilgrimage in July 1959.

And there, after the fistulous tract had been syringed with Lourdes’ water, the discharge dried up, the fistula closed and even the bleeding ceased.

As similar changes had happened before, but never persisted, this “cure” (according to Juliette and her family) was not publicised.

A year later, 1960, the Medical Bureau made her acquaintance for the first time. After two more examinations (in 1961 and 1963), this cure was recognised and her dossier handed to the International Medical Committee.

There Prof. Salmon on 3.5.1964, delivered his report, leading to the verdict that “this instantaneous cure, without any convalescence, must be regarded as medically inexplicable”.

Mgr Marc Lallier on 11.5.1965, after receiving a favourable report from his Canonical Commission, declared the cure of Juliette TAMBURINI to be miraculous.

It is hardly necessary to add, that after nearly 30 years, Juliette TAMBURINI is still faithful to Lourdes… and above all, has never had a relapse or recurrence.

Vittorio MICHELI

Born on 6.2.1940, in the Province of Trento (Italie)

Cured on 1.6.1963, in his 23rd. year. Miracle on 26.5.1976, by Mgr Alessandro Gottardi, Archbishop of Trento.

On 16th. April 1962, Vittorio MICHELI, a soldier in the Alpine Corps, was admitted into a hospital in Verona for the diagnosis and treatment of an obscure condition of his left hip. After various tests, ineffective treatment and also a biopsy, the dreaded diagnosis of a malignant tumour, a sarcoma, was made on 4th. June.

For a whole year he remained under the care of the Military Hospital and Centres, although no anti-mitotic, surgical, medical or physiotherapeutic treatment was applied.

Deterioration, both locally and generally went on relentlessly, with total destruction of his hip joint. But he still undertook a pilgrimage to Lourdes with his Diocese in June 1963.

During the pilgrimage, nothing notable happened, except that he bathed, encased from pelvis to foot in a plaster cast.

On his return he appeared to be in better shape, but because he was doing his military service, he was obliged to go back to his starting-point, i.e. the Military Hospital of Trento.

More X-rays were taken there, and in a way difficult to comprehend, they were incorrectly interpreted, being considered identical to his former ones. This accounts for why it was 6 months after the pilgrimage before proper notice was taken of his excellent health, absence of pain, ability to walk and finally “the remarkable reconstruction of his hip” the first signs of which had already been present 5 months before!

Each year since 1963, Vittorio has visited Lourdes. In 1967, the Medical Bureau saw no reason to delay admitting that “it was impossible to give any medical explanation for this cure “.

In 1968, the International Medical Committee postponed its decision, after hearing Prof. Salmon’s report. It was only in 1971, a lapse of 8 years, that this Committee confirmed the verdict of the Medical Bureau of Lourdes.

On 26.5.1976,13 years after the cure, Mgr Alessandro Gottardi, after taking into account the favourable advice of his Canonical Commission, declared that this cure contained “sufficient evidence for the recognition of a special intervention by the Power of God, Father and Creator”.

Naturally, Vittorio MICHELI keeps on coming to Lourdes, working as a brancardier in his diocesan Hospitalite.

Serge PERRIN

Born on 13.2.1929

Cured on 1.5.1970, in his 42nd. year. Miracle on 17.6.1978, by Mgr Jean Orchampt, Bishop of Angers.

In February 1964, at the age of 35 years, Serge PERRIN had already received a warning with his first neurological episode, consisting of a right hemiplegia of sudden onset and equally of sudden regression.

He had another attack in December 1968, also very abrupt with loss of consciousness. Although this was treated as before, there was no regression after several weeks.

Three months after this incident, he was admitted into the Neurosurgical Unit in the Hospital at Rennes, under Prof. Pecker.

A full investigation confirmed the diagnosis of thrombosis in the left carotid artery, for which surgery was contra-indicated. So he went home.

In April 1969, the same specialist noticed that the insufficiency of his cerebral circulation was now bilateral. At this point, realising the hopelessness of his plight, Serge PERRIN went to Lourdes. He returned as bad as ever, in the same alarming state.

Deterioration was progressive, with something new… “cerebral eclipses”, rare at first, becoming frequent. In October 1969, he was granted an invalidity pension of the third category, as he was unable to do anything alone.

Three months later in 1970, despite medical treatment, his condition became even worse: visual disturbances rendered him virtually blind, syncopes became more and more frequent, and his increasing disability made the thought of being an incurable invalid, with no future, almost unbearable.

He joined the Pilgrimage from Anjou in 1970 for the second time, though without any hope, but simply to please his wife.

After a very trying time, the last day arrived. In the morning he attended the Ceremony of Anointing the Sick. There he began to feel sensation return. In the afternoon, he found he could walk better without the use of walking sticks, and see better without spectacles! He left Lourdes quite convinced he was cured.

Once at home again, he was thoroughly checked. There was no longer any anomaly present… objectively, he was cured.

In October 1970, the Medical Bureau was informed. It confirmed on 1.5.’72, that this cure was “certain, instantaneous and lasting”. His dossier was submitted to the International Medical Committee. Before it made any comment, a Diocesan medical Commission in 1974, decided that the cure was certain and lasting.

Finally in 1976, on the joint report of the neurologist, Prof. Mouren, and the ophthalmologist, Dr. Bartoli, the International Medical Committee came to the same conclusion, namely:

“The cure of this condition can be considered as happening in a most unusual way from the medical point of view”.

Then, having received a favourable advice from his Canonical Commission, conducted in an exemplary fashion, Mgr Orchampt, Bishop of Angers, recognised “the miraculous character of this cure” on 17.6.1978, and invited Christians “to see in this sign, the merciful love of God”.

Miss CIROLLI Delizia

Jean-Pierre Bély

Born in 1926

PARIS, DEC. 24, 2002 (Zenit.org).- The latest officially recognized miracle at Lourdes involves a Frenchman who was once paralyzed by multiple sclerosis, a newspaper reported.

Le Monde dedicated an entire page to the scientifically inexplicable cure of an illness that began affecting Jean-Pierre Bély in 1972. He was classified by the French health system as a total invalid by the time he went on pilgrimage to Lourdes in October 1987, at age 51.

Those who accompanied Bély did not think he would survive the trip. At the end of the pilgrimage he received the anointing of the sick in the shrine’s esplanade. When he returned home, he was already able to walk. Today, virtually all traces of the illness have disappeared.

Patrick Fontanaud, an agnostic physician who looked after Bély, said there is no scientific explanation for what occurred. It was Lourdes’ 66th officially recognized miracle since the 1858 apparitions of the Blessed Virgin.

The head of the Lourdes Medical Office, Dr. Patrick Theillier, told Le Monde that there are two other miraculous cures about to be recognized: a 25-year-old Frenchwoman and a 60-year-old Italian woman, both cured in 1995.

See the “Cures and Miracles” section of http://www.lourdes-france.com/bonjour.htm.

Anna Santaniello

Born in 1910.

The Catholic Church has officially recognized the miraculous healing of an Italian woman who visited the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in France more than 50 years ago when she was suffering from a fatal form of rheumatic heart disease. Anna Santaniello, now 94, said her illness disappeared during a pilgrimage to the Marian shrine in 1952, reported ANSA. The international Catholic committee that runs the shrine has acknowledged Santaniello as the 67th person to officially healed at Lourdes. In 1964, the Church had declared her case an “extraordinary healing.” Archbishop Gerardo Pierro of Salerno, in southern Italy where Santaniello lives, announced the Church’s decision on Sunday at mass. After the mass, Santaniello told the daily Il Giornale that she was diagnosed with the disease as a child and the same illness had killed one of her brothers and a sister. “My condition got worse as I got older and after a while I was confined to bed, barely able to breathe. The doctors had lost all hope for me,” she reportedly said.

Source: Catholic News Agency

Serge Francois, 56

Paris, France, Mar 30, 2011 / 01:55 pm (CNA).- Bishop Emmanuel Delmas of Angers, France confirmed the healing of a man at the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes.

“This healing can be considered as a personal gift of God for this man, as a fact of grace, as a sign of Christ the Savior,” the bishop said March 27.

Serge Francois, 56, had lost almost all mobility in his left leg after complications from two operations left him with a herniated disc. He made a pilgrimage to the shrine on April 13, 2002 to pray for healing.

Bishop Delmas noted that the healing took place after Francois “had finished praying at the grotto and went to the miraculous spring to drink the water and wash his face. A unique gesture of the Virgin Mary can be seen in the healing of this man,” he said.

The Spanish daily La Razon said that after Francois’ recovery, he returned to Lourdes in 2003 and reported his case to the medical commission, which began its investigation.

The Lourdes Medical Commission later verified that “the rapid functional healing, unrelated to any form of treatment” was “still present, eight years later.”

Francois made a 975-mile pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Spain in thanksgiving for his recovery.

Bishop Jacques Perrier of Tarbes and Lourdes explained that doctors are “hesitant today to use the term ‘inexplicable,’ unless they qualify it with ‘scientifically’.”

“They prefer to limit themselves to one fact: the healing is inexplicable today. They consider this qualification to be essential so they are not discredited later by colleagues who reject the inexplicable,” he said in a statement published on the Shrine of Lourdes’ website.

“Moreover,” he added, “the doctors at Lourdes always strive to be medically irreproachable. The Church herself encourages them in this.”

To commemorate the latest healing, Bishop Delmas has invited Catholics to a special Mass in Lourdes during a pilgrimage to the shrine May 3-8.
Read the entire Catholic News Agency article >>