by Joe Nickell
In April 1971, however, the Argentine president ordered what has been called “the world's most beautiful corpse” returned to Perón, who was living with his third wife, Isabel, in Madrid (“Which Coffin Holds the World's Most Beautiful Corpse?” 1978). According to journalist Wayne Bernhardson (2004, 73), Perón's “bizarre spiritualist adviser” Jose López Rega—known as “The Witch”—“used the opportunity to try to transfer Evita's essence into Isabelita's body.” (After Perón's brief return to power in 1973 and his death the following year, Isabel succeeded him, but she was soon deposed by the military.)
I visited several related sites, including the Museo Evita, where the controversial first lady is honored. It appears that claims of miracles have largely abated. However, one writer concludes (Morrison 2005):
Though efforts to have her made into a saint have been turned down by the Vatican, Evita still holds near to saint status in Argentina. Slogans proclaiming Evita Vive! (Evita Lives!) can be seen everywhere even today in a new century. At her family crypt in the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, supporters and pilgrims still leave flowers, and a continual guard is kept to prevent vandalism.
(See figure 44.1.)
Questions remain: Were none of the miracles by Santa Evita authentic? Were they rejected for lack of merit or dismissed out of hand for political reasons? How does the church reject her but canonize Mexico's Juan Diego? (He is the legendary—possibly fictitious—figure on whose cloak the Virgin Mary “miraculously” imprinted her image, though the image on the cloak is, in fact, painted [Nickell 2002].) Are any miracle claims credible, officially sanctioned or not?
Beautiful, exotic Tijuana—city of passion and mystery. My first investigative trip to Mexico's fourth-largest city was in the fall of 2003, when I attended Day of the Dead festivities there and went undercover in the persona of a terminally ill cancer patient to test a fortuneteller and to search for the bogus curative, Laetrile (Nickell 2004). I returned in mid-May 2009 as a side jaunt to an extensive California trip (and went on an expedition into Bigfoot country). This time in Tijuana, accompanied as before by Vaughn Rees, I looked into several mysteries, including the case of a dubious folk saint.
In Catholicism, certain deceased persons are officially recognized as saints, who are held to be in the glory of God in heaven and whose holiness is attested through miracles (Schreck 1984, 153–56). Among the rank-and-file faithful, however, there are also a number of popular, unofficial saints—like Argentina's controversial “Evita,” as discussed in the previous chapter (Nickell 2006, 20).
“SOLDIER JOHN”
One such folk saint in northwestern Mexico, as well as in the southwestern United States, is known as Juan Soldado (“Soldier John”), the name given to Juan Castillo Morales by his devotees from southern Mexico. In 1938, at the age of twenty-four, he was in Tijuana, serving as a private in the Mexican army (see figure 45.1).
Late on February 13, an eight-year-old Tijuana girl, Olga Camacho, was sent by her mother to the corner grocery for meat. When she failed to return, an all-night search for her was conducted by citizens and authorities. It culminated at noon with the discovery of the child's raped and nearly decapitated body in an abandoned building not far from the police station. The neighbor who found her had been convinced Olga would be found safe, but that woman subsequently claimed she was directed to the site by “a vision” of the Virgin Mary (Vanderwood 2004, 5–6).
Tijuana smoldered with anger, a lynch mob was formed, and finally tensions exploded. The police station and municipal hall were torched, and fire trucks answering calls had their hoses slashed with machetes. Eventually soldiers fired on the crowd, killing one and wounding several. Newspapers dubbed that day, February 15, “Bloody Tuesday.”
However, by February 17, just over three days after the discovery of little Olga's body, Juan Castillo Morales had been accused of the crime, taken into custody, turned over to the army, sentenced to death following a twelve-hour court martial, and transported to the municipal cemetery, where he was executed. He was dispatched by a method known as Ley Fuga (“flight law”) in which he was ordered to flee for his life then cut down by a firing squad. He was badly wounded, and an officer finally administered the coup de grace (Maher 1997; “Juan Soldado” 2009; Vanderwood 2004, 49–50).
SANCTIFICATION
How was Juan Castillo Morales transformed from child rapist and murderer into “Juan Soldado” the popular saint? A rumor circulated that the little girl was actually killed by an army officer who framed Juan for the atrocity. Still later, more conspiracy theories were advanced (Maher 1997; “Juan Soldado” 2009). Meanwhile, there were unverified reports of “ghostly voices” near Juan's burial site. As well, some spoke of “blood seeping from his grave” (“Juan Soldado” 2009) or, alternately, claimed “that a rock by the spot where he fell kept spouting blood, calling attention to his innocence” (Maher 1997) or that blood oozed “through the rocks laid [ritualistically] at the grave site” (Vanderwood 2004, 64). Such variants (as folklorists call differing versions), together with the common folk motifs (or story elements),1 are indicative of the folkloric process at work in the evolving Juan Soldado legend. (If real blood was actually “seeping up through the loosely packed soil” of Morales's shallow grave—his coffin was reportedly “just a foot or so below the surface”—it was attributable to decomposition gases forcing blood and tissue upward [Vanderwood 2004, 64, 190]. More simply, after a rain, a rock containing red ocher—red iron oxide—could have given the appearance of blood.)
In time, little shrines were built at the supposed execution and burial sites, as well as elsewhere in the area (see figure 45.1). Votive candles, cards, and other religious items devoted to Juan Soldado are now sold throughout the borderlands. Many people appeal to his spirit before attempting to enter the United States illegally: “Juan Soldado, ayúdame a cruzar” (“Soldier John, help me across”). Others pray to him for help with health problems, criminal troubles, and family matters (“Juan Soldado” 2009). Many attest to “miracles” he produced on their behalf. Although June 24, Mexico's El Día de San Juan (“The day of Saint John”), actually celebrates John the Baptist, whose feast day it is, cultists have appropriated it for their San Juan, Juan Soldado, and the cemetery is filled with believers and mariachis (Maher 1997).
The Catholic Church, on the other hand, understandably denies the sanctity of Juan Soldado. Before Olga's body was discovered, Juan Castillo Morales was seen loitering in the area. He was known to police as one who reportedly made sexual overtures to girls. His common-law wife came forward to say he had returned home very late, disheveled, and spattered with blood, whereupon he broke down and confessed to the crime. Newspaper reporters invited to interview him found him unrepentant, even nonchalant. A Los Angeles paper headlined its report, “Smiling Mexican Private Tells Examiner, ‘Yes I did it’” (Vanderwood 2004, 14).
If the evidence is correct, and Juan indeed represents depravity rather than sanctity, how ironic is his transformation to solider-saint and even more so his purported ability to work “miracles” seemingly as real as those of any officially sanctioned saint.
Of reputed miraculous powers, perhaps none is more popularly equated with saintliness than stigmata, the wounds of Christ's crucifixion allegedly duplicated spontaneously upon the body of a Christian. Indeed one historical survey indicated that about a fifth of all stigmatics are eventually beatified or canonized (Biot 1962, 23).
The year 1999 brought renewed interest in the alleged phenomenon. Among the offerings were the movie Stigmata (which even contained a brief shot of my book Looking for a Miracle [Radford 1999]); a Fox television pseudodocumentary, Signs from God, which featured a major segment on stigmata (Willesee 1999); and the Vatican's beatification of the Italian stigmatic Padre Pío. For an in-progress television documentary, I took a new look at the subject.
EVOLVING PHENOMENON
From the death of Jesus, about 29 or 30 CE, nearly twelve centuries would pass before sti
gmata began to appear—unless one counts a cryptic biblical reference by St. Paul. In Galatians 6:17 he wrote, “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Many scholars believe Paul was speaking figuratively, but in any case the statement may have been sufficient to prompt imitation.
St. Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) is credited with being the first stigmatic—or at least the first “true” one, his affliction occurring just two years after that of a man from Oxford who had exhibited the five crucifixion wounds in 1222. That man claimed to be the Son of God and the redeemer of mankind, but he was arrested for imposture, his wounds presumed to have been self-inflicted.
In 1224 St. Francis went with some of his “disciples” up Mount Alverno in the Apennines. After forty days of fasting and prayer he had a vision of Christ on the cross, whereafter he received the four nail wounds and the pierced side. Francis appears to have sparked a copycat phenomenon, since publication of his reputed miracle was followed by occurrences of stigmata “even among people who were much lower than St. Francis in religious stature.” These “have continued to occur without intermission ever since,” according to Catholic scholar Herbert Thurston (1952, 122–23). He continues:
What I infer is that the example of St. Francis created what I have called the “crucifixion complex.” Once it had been brought home to contemplatives that it was possible to be physically conformed to the sufferings of Christ by bearing His wound-marks in the hands, feet and side, then the idea of this form of union with their Divine Master took shape in the minds of many. It became in fact a pious obsession; so much so that in a few exceptionally sensitive individuals the idea conceived in the mind was realized in the flesh.
Thurston believed stigmatization was due to the effects of suggestion, but experimental attempts to duplicate the phenomenon, for example by using hypnosis, have been unsuccessful—except for a related case that appears to have been a hoax. (The psychiatrist reported that bloody tears welled inside the subject's eyelids, but a photograph shows rivulets originating outside the eyes [see Wilson 1988].)
As the thirteenth century advanced, exhibitions of stigmata began to proliferate, one authority regarding it as “a sort of explosion” (Biot 1962, 18). Within a hundred years of St. Francis's death over twenty cases had occurred. The trend continued in successive centuries, with no fewer than 321 stigmatics being recorded by 1908. Not only were they invariably Catholic, but more than a third had come from Italy and the rest mostly from France, Spain, and Portugal, demonstrating that “the Roman Catholic countries, mostly with a Latin and Mediterranean influence have dominated the history of stigmata” (Harrison 1994, 9; Wilson 1988, 10).
The twentieth-century record of stigmata, however, “shows a change in pattern.” Italy dominated somewhat less, and cases were reported from Great Britain, Australia, and the United States (Harrison 1994, 9). The latter included (in 1972) a ten-year-old African American girl named Cloretta Robinson, a Baptist and thus one of a very few non-Catholic Christians to have exhibited the stigmata (including at least three Anglicans) (Harrison 1994, 9, 87).
Other evidence that stigmata represent an evolving phenomenon comes from the form of the wounds. Interestingly, those of St. Francis (except for the wound in his side) “were not wounds which bled but impressions of the heads of the nails, round and black and standing clear from the flesh” (Harrison 1994, 25). Since then, although bleeding wounds have been typical, they have been exceedingly varied, showing “no consistency even remotely suggesting them as replications of one single, original pattern” (Wilson 1988, 63). For example, some wounds have been tiny, straight slits. Others have been simple crosses, multiple slash marks, or indentations—even, in the case of Therese Neumann, shifting from round to rectangular over time, presumably as she learned the true shape of Roman nails. In some instances there were no apparent lesions beneath the seepages (or possibly fake applications!) of blood (Wilson 1988, 64; Harrison 1994, 70; Nickell 1999).
Similarly, the wound in the side (representing the Roman soldier's lance [John 19:34]) has appeared at different locations in the right or left side, or has been variously shaped—as a lateral slit, crescent, cross, and so on—or has not appeared at all. Some stigmatics have exhibited wounds on the forehead (as if caused by a crown of thorns [John 19:2]), markings on the back (representing scourging [John 19:1]), or abrasions on the shoulder (as from carrying a cross), and so on, while others have not exhibited these. There are even symbolic markings, such as “a vivid cross” that twice appeared on the forehead of stigmatist Heather Woods (a phenomenon previously experienced by seventeenth-century stigmatic Jeanne des Anges). And stigmata-like skin lettering—including the names of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus—appeared and reappeared on the left hand of Jeanne des Anges (1602–1665) (Wilson 1988, 64, 131–48; Harrison 1994, 2, 52).
Another trend in the evolving phenomenon—represented for example by Virginia priest James Bruse—is the location of nail wounds in the wrists. Others have tended to have them in the palms of the hands, so Bruse's wrist marks seem instructive. As Harrison observes (1994, 40), stigmata in the wrists have appeared only since photography “revealed the wounds so positioned in the Turin Shroud.” Actually, while the hands of the figure on the shroud are folded so that a single exit wound shows, it seems to indicate the palm, although the flow of “blood” does extend to the wrist, thus giving the appearance of the wound being located there (Nickell 1993). Those who believe the shroud authentic (despite definitive scientific proof to the contrary [Nickell 1998]) have an interest in promoting the wrist site. They point to experiments with cadavers that supposedly show nailed hands could not support the weight of a body and would therefore tear away (Barbet 1950). (Skeletal remains have been discovered of only a single first-century crucifixion victim, a man known as Jehohanan. A scratch on the lower end of the right radius suggests a nail had penetrated between the radius and ulna. Interestingly, a nail had been driven through the heel bones from the side, indicating that Jehohanan had been forced into “a sort of sidesaddle position,” quite unlike the familiar depiction of Jesus in Christian art [Wilson 1979, 50, illustration following page 128].)
In any event, if it is true that the hand location is anatomically untenable—notwithstanding the Gospels (John 20:25–27 and Luke 24:40)—the argument could be made that all stigmata in the hands are therefore false, a judgment that would exclude most reported instances. Certainly the shift of location to the wrists (in keeping with a modern view) is not surprising. Stigmatics in the Middle Ages likewise “produced wounds in themselves which corresponded to the pictures of Christ suffering around them” (Harrison 1994, 128). Similarly, the 1974 crucifixion vision of Ethel Chapman, during which her stigmata allegedly appeared, was “based on the images in an illustrated Bible which she'd been given” (Harrison 1994, 128; Wilson 1988, 147). Such strong connections between popular images and the nature of the stigmata are powerful evidence that the phenomenon is imitative.
STIGMATIC PROFILE
A look at stigmata as an evolving phenomenon also sheds light on the people involved. The previously mentioned census of 321 stigmatics reveals “an interesting seven-to-one proportion of women to men.” Not only were almost all Roman Catholics, but “a very high proportion were cloistered priests or nuns”—as was, of course, the first stigmatic, St. Francis, along with such thirteenth-century stigmatics as the Blessed Helen of Veszprim (1237), St. Christina of Stommeln (1268), and others (Harrison 1994, 10, 27–28; Wilson 1988, 131–33). Indeed, of the 321 stigmatics, 109 came from the Dominican Order and 102 from the Franciscans—an overall percentage of 66 percent from religious orders versus 34 percent from among lay folk (Biot 1962, 20).
Many stigmatics seem—also like St. Francis—to have had an early life that might be characterized as notably “worldly,” before coming to believe they had been called to serve God. As a youth, Francis, the son of a wealthy merchant, was “gay, adventurous, generous, and popular” (Coulson 1958) and spent his leisure time in “hedoni
stic extravagance” (Jones 1994), even being crowned “king of the revelers” by his friends (“Francis of Assisi, St.” 1960). He later claimed he heard Christ's voice asking him to rebuild a church, whereupon he plunged into religious service, adopting the life of a hermit and later forming the order of friars named for him (the Franciscans) (Coulson 1958).
Others who were transformed from worldly to austere included the Blessed Angela of Foligno (1250–1309), who had married and bore several children but lost them all after her husband's death. After selling all her possessions, she gave the proceeds to the poor and joined the Third Order of St. Francis (Wilson 1988, 132). Another example is St. Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510), who married at sixteen, spent “ten years of a pleasure-seeking existence,” then, with her husband, devoted her life to tending to the sick in a local hospital (Wilson 1988, 133).
A more recent example is that of Father James Bruse (the Virginia priest with the wrist wounds mentioned earlier). Bruse's preordination life included finding his way into the Guinness Book of World Records in 1978 for riding a roller coaster for five straight days. He became a Roman Catholic priest the following year but subsequently found he had lapsed into a routine. Then came the “dramatic” events of 1991–1992 in which he not only experienced the stigmata but discovered statues weeping in his presence (Harrison 1994, 80–87).
Also characteristic of many, if not most, stigmatics are a variety of symptoms “ranging from what have been described as the ‘mystical’ to the ‘hysterical’” (Harrison 1994, 31). Taking the hysterical first, Marguerite of the Blessed Sacrament (Marguerite Parigot, 1619–1648) was prey to “devastating apparent diabolic attacks,” while Anna Maria Castreca (1670–1736) “would hurl herself violently around the room” and revert “to the speech and manner of a child,” and in his early life Padre Pío (1887–1968) was “emotionally disturbed.” A few stigmatics were allegedly attended by “poltergeist phenomena” (disturbances attributed to “noisy spirits” but often found to be the pranks of adolescents); among them were Johann Jetzer (ca. 1483–1515) and Teresa Helena Higginson (1844–1905) (Wilson 1988, 131–48).
