The Science of Miracles

by Joe Nickell

  CANONIZATION

  Not only was Padre Pío accused of inducing his stigmata with acid, he was also alleged to have misused funds and to have had sex with female parishioners—in the confessional. The founder of the Catholic university hospital in Rome branded Pío “an ignorant and self-mutilating psychopath who exploited people's credulity” (“Pío of Pietrelcina” 2008).

  The faithful were undeterred, however, and after Pío's death there arose a popular movement to make him a saint. Pope John Paul II—whose papacy sped up the process of canonization and proclaimed more saints than any other in history (Grossman 2002)—heard the entreaties. Pío was beatified in 1999. On June 16, 2002, he was canonized as Saint Pío of Pietrelcina, but not before at least two statues of him wept in anticipation. Unfortunately, the bloody tears on one turned out to have been faked (a drug addict used a syringe to apply trickles of his own blood), and a whitish film on one eye of the other was determined to have been insect secretion (“Crying Statue Not a Miracle” 2002).

  Interestingly, neither of the two proclaimed miracles of Pío (one used for his beatification, the other for canonization) involved stigmata. Instead, they were healings, assumed to be miraculous because they were determined to be medically inexplicable. In short, the church never affirmed Pío's stigmata as miraculous.

  Of course, not everyone was happy with the canonization of Pío. Historian Sergio Luzzatto wrote a critical biography of Pío called The Other Christ. Luzzatto cited the testimony of a pharmacist recorded in a document in the Vatican's archive. Maria De Viot wrote: “I was an admirer of Padre Pío and I met him for the first time on 31 July 1919.” She revealed, “Padre Pío called me to him in complete secrecy and telling me not to tell his fellow brothers, he gave me personally an empty bottle, and asked if I would act as a chauffeur to transport it back from Foggia to San Giovanni Rotondo with four grams of pure carbolic acid” (Moore 2007). But if the acid was for disinfecting syringes, as Pío had alleged to the pharmacist, why the secrecy? And why did Pío need undiluted acid?

  Investigation shows the timing of this reported incident is significant. The previous September, Pío and some of the other friars at San Giovanni Rotondo were administering injections to boys who were ill with influenza. Alcohol not being available, an exhausted doctor left carbolic acid to be used for sterilizing needles and injection sites, while neglecting to tell the friars it had to be diluted. As a result, Pío and another friar were left with “angry red spots” on their hands. When Pío was subsequently alleged to have exhibited stigmata, the other friar at first thought the wounds were from the carbolic acid. Although Pío allegedly exhibited stigmata on his hands as early as 1910, the “permanent” stigmata appeared, apparently, not long after the carbolic-acid misuse (Ruffin 1982, 69–71, 138–43).

  Sergio Luzzatto drew anger for publicizing the pharmacist's testimony. The Catholic Anti-Defamation League accused the historian of “spreading anti-Catholic libels,” and the league's president sniffed, “We would like to remind Mr. Luzzatto that according to Catholic doctrine, canonisation carries with it papal infallibility” (Moore 2007).

  EXHUMATION

  Forty years after Padre Pío's 1968 death, his remains were exhumed from their crypt beneath a church in San Giovanni Rotondo. The intention of church officials was to renew reverence and so boost a flagging economy. Padre Pío, explained the Los Angeles Times, is “big business” (Wilkinson 2008).

  No doubt many anticipated that the saint's body would be found incorrupt. The superstitious believe that the absence of decay in a corpse is miraculous and a sign of sanctity (Cruz 1977). In fact, under favorable conditions even an unembalmed body can become mummified. Desiccation may result from interment in a dry tomb or catacomb. Conversely, perpetually wet conditions may cause the body's fat to form a soap-like substance known as “grave wax”; subsequently, the body may take on the leathery effect of mummification (Nickell 2001, 49).

  Alas, Pío's body, despite embalmment (by injections of formalin), was only in “fair condition.” So that it could be displayed, a London wax museum was commissioned to fashion a lifelike silicon mask of Pío, complete with his full beard and bushy eyebrows. The “cosmetically enhanced corpse” went on display April 24, 2008, in a glass-and-marble coffin (where it was to repose until the end of September 2009) “amid weeping devotees and eager souvenir-hawkers” (Wilkinson 2008). For those who wonder: no, there was no visible trace of stigmata.

  Canadian Lilian Bernas claims to exhibit—“in a supernatural state”—the wounds of Christ. On March 1, 2002, I observed one of a series of Bernas's bleedings. It was the eleventh such event that “the Lord allows me to experience on the first Friday of the month,” she told the audience, “with one more to come” (Bernas 2002b). But was the event really supernatural or only a magic show?1

  A NEW STIGMATIST

  Lilian Bernas is a Catholic convert (in 1989) and one-time nursing-home worker. She first exhibited stigmata during Easter of 1992, having previously received visions of Jesus. According to one of her two self-published booklets, Jesus appears frequently to her, addressing her as “my suffering soul,” “my sweet petal,” and “my child” (Bernas 1999).

  The Archdiocese of Ottawa, Ontario, where she then lived, established a commission to investigate Bernas's claims. “The inquiry did not make a judgment on the authenticity,” stated a spokeswoman for the archdiocese, Gabrielle Tasse. Tasse told the Buffalo News, “It doesn't really concern the general public. It just creates propaganda.” The Catholic Church often resists publicity regarding supernatural claims, noted Reverend Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest who edits the weekly Catholic magazine America. “The church is very skeptical of these things,” Reverend Reese explained (Tokasz 2003).

  Bernas now resides in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, living with a retired couple that she asked to take her in in 1996, supposedly at Jesus’ request. They are impressed with Bernas, whom they regard as a “victim soul” (one who suffers for others). In 2001 the Ottawa Citizen published a profile of Bernas (Wake 2001), apparently provoking displeasure from her home archdiocese in Ottawa. Their policy (according to a spokesman for the Diocese of Buffalo) is “that she is not to speak publicly because her faith journey is private” (Tokasz 2003).

  However, Bernas does speak publicly, addressing the faithful and the curious at various churches. I attended a talk she gave, for example, at Resurrection Church in Cheektowaga, New York. Although she claimed Jesus guided her in her talks (she sometimes departed from her prepared text), she said that “the Devil” was at her elbow at all times and that she had to struggle with pride and self-will. She spoke of Lent, of praying the Rosary, and other Catholic topics, and claimed that Jesus had given her “a vision of aborted babies” (Bernas 2002a).

  Afterward, she answered questions from those who gathered around her. Asked what Jesus looked like, she said he appeared as we did, solid. She added that he had shoulder-length hair with a beard and a mustache, and that he wore a white robe. In other words, he exhibited the conventional likeness of Jesus as it has evolved in art. Bernas's devotees exhibit a portrait of Jesus, “drawn under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit on May 20, 1994, by Lil Bernas.”

  MIRACLE WOUNDS?

  I asked Bernas about her wounds, noting that there were reddish scars on the backs of her hands. She replied that she had also bled from the palms on occasion, but that no marks were left in those instances. She told me she was “permitted” to retain those on the backs of her hands and also on the tops of her feet. Someone asked about cross-shaped wounds (she has, for example, an apparent cruciform scar on her right jaw near the ear), and she stated that such stigmata were of the devil, that before her genuine stigmata came she had periods of possession (Bernas 2002a).

  I found the absence of wounds on the palms and soles highly suspicious. A sham stigmatist might well avoid those areas, which would be subjected to additional pain and made more difficult to heal whenever one walked or grasped something. But a perso
n truly exhibiting the nail wounds of Jesus should have his or her hands and feet completely pierced.

  When I subsequently attended an exhibition of Lilian Bernas's stigmata (at Navy Hall, Niagara-on-the-Lake, March 1, 2002), my suspicions were increased. Not only was the bleeding already in progress when she appeared, but there were only the most superficial wounds. These were limited to the backs of the hands and tops of the feet, in addition to small wounds on the scalp, supposedly from a crown of thorns (John 19:2). The latter were only in the front, as if merely for show (see figure 48.1).

  Significantly, there was no side wound like the one inflicted on Jesus by a Roman soldier's lance (John 19:34; 20:25, 27). Such a large wound would represent a real commitment by a fake stigmatist. It rarely appears, and then usually in a questionable fashion. Bernas exhibits a photo of an alleged wound in her left side, but it lacked rivulets of blood and—conveniently—was claimed to have soon disappeared without a trace. Bernas did say she was to receive a side wound later in the day (Bernas 2002b), but of course the crowd would not be there to witness the alleged happening.

  The side wound was not the only one of Bernas's stigmata reputed to have unique properties seemingly best displayed in photographs. Bernas exhibits other photos that depict a squarish nail head emerging from a hand wound (harkening back to St. Francis), a thorn in her forehead that supposedly emerged over a week's time, and even an entire crown of thorns that allegedly materialized around Bernas's head—believe it or not!

  As we watched Bernas bleed, I regretted that we were not getting to see such remarkable manifestations. I observed that her wounds soon ceased to flow, consistent with their having been inflicted just before she came out. After she had spoken to the audience for about an hour, people gathered to speak to Bernas (figure 48.2). (While shaking hands with her, one man attempted to get, rather surreptitiously, a sample of her blood, presumably as a magical “relic.” He clasped his other hand, containing a folded handkerchief, against the back of her hand. Unfortunately, the blood had dried, and even rubbing did not yield a visible trace.)

  Although I shook Bernas's bloody hand, I obtained a better look at a wound shortly before, when she hugged the woman in front of me and thus placed her hand virtually under my nose. I noticed that the actual wound looked like a small slit, but surrounding that was a larger red area; this appeared to have been deliberately formed of blood in order to simulate the appearance of a larger wound, like one formed by a Roman nail. (For my demonstration of a similar effect, see Nickell 2000, 27–28.)

  ASSESSMENT

  Bernas makes still other supernatural claims. For example, she says towels from her stigmata sessions, put away in plastic bags, allegedly “disappear within 48 hours” (Wake 2001). (I will wager they would not vanish while in my custody.)

  Such outlandish and unsubstantiated claims should provoke skepticism in all but the most gullible. Yet a professor of philosophy at a Catholic college took exception to my views. I had told the Buffalo News that, on the evidence, I regarded stigmatics as “pious frauds,” and I said of Lilian Bernas's stigmata, “Everything about it was consistent with trickery. Nothing about it was in the slightest way supernatural or intriguing” (Tokasz 2003).

  Professor John Zeis (2003) replied with the astonishing statement: “Trickery is consistent with any reported miracle (including Jesus’ resurrection) but that is no reason to reject belief in the miracle.” He found more reasonable a priest's statement that “it is up to each person to believe or not.”

  CSI Public Relations Director Kevin Christopher (2003) responded: “Zeis is suggesting that objective evidence is irrelevant. What, in fact could be a more unreasonable conclusion?” Christopher also replied to Zeis's claim that “the Skeptical Inquirer is biased against claims concerning faith in the miraculous.” Stated Christopher: “The magazine's mission is to inform its readers about the state of the evidence for paranormal and supernatural claims. When the evidence is poor or nonexistent, it is not ‘biased’ to report that fact. It is, in fact, a moral duty.”

  From the snake-charming “miracle men” of the East, to their Western counterparts who “take up serpents” in certain Christian rituals or who even perform in sideshows, many have demonstrated their supposed power over the feared reptiles.1

  ROD-TO-SERPENT MAGIC

  The first biblical magic feat, performed in public, is credited to Moses’ brother Aaron—one of a set of three effects based on God's instructions to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:2–5). The performance occurs at the Egyptian pharaoh's court, where the brothers are attempting to convince the pharaoh to set their fellow Jews free from bondage (Exodus 7:8–12):

  And Moses and Aaron went in unto the Pharaoh, and they did so as the Lord had commanded: And Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh, and before his servants, and it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers: now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments. For they cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents.

  This event was long considered to be either (depending on one's outlook) a true miracle from God or a fairy tale. If one is to hold the first position, a problem arises. How were the magicians able to work the same miracle? There are answers, of course, since theologians are very clever. But perhaps they can be spared the effort.

  Surely the “enchantments” referred to are those of legerdemain, that is, sleight-of-hand. Budge (1901, 59) tells us:

  The turning of a serpent into what is apparently an inanimate, wooden stick, and the turning of the stick back into a writhing snake, are feats which have been performed in the East from the most ancient period; and the power to control and direct the movements of such venomous reptiles was one of the things of which the Egyptian was most proud, and in which he was most skillful, already in the time when the pyramids were being built.

  Encyclopedia Britannica (1960) says of the narrow-hooded Egyptian cobra (Naja haje), or asp, that “Egyptian snake charmers, who use it [the asp] in their street performances, are said to be able to make it rigid like a stick by a pressure on the neck, which perhaps suggests that it was the asp that served as Aaron's staff in the famous counter transformation.” Gibson (1967, 73–75) says: “Photographs have been taken showing how closely the rigid snake resembles a stick, and instances have been reported where modern Egyptian magicians allow bystanders to handle ‘charmed’ snakes with impunity.” He suggests that “ancient sorcerers who performed the trick probably carried staffs of a similar size and shape to the rigid Naja haje. By substituting a paralyzed snake at the proper time, it could still be shown as an ordinary stick up to the moment when it was thrown to the ground.”

  I have left off till now the final part of the account, which states (Exodus 7:12) that after Aaron and the sorcerers had all cast down their rods, “Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods.”

  Here again, a biblical author, whose purpose it is to give an account of the Good Guys, adds an imaginative touch. As with other magical “duels” in the Old and New Testaments, God's side wins. But theological legend aside, it would certainly seem that the rod-to-serpent trick was known in ancient Egypt.

  EASTERN TRADITION

  Figure 49.1 is a sketch from my travels, which I made in the Medina in Marrakech, Morocco, in 1971. I was drawn to the scene by the peculiar flute music. The performer was putting on a snake show while his assistant used his tambourine as a collection tray. As shown in the soft-pencil rendering, one of the charmer's stunts was to approach a cobra in a squatting position, one hand on the ground and the other holding a tangle of serpents with which he teased the cobra.

  In India the itinerant Jadu (magic) performer occasionally does herpetological tricks. For example, he might transform a piece of rope into a snake (after wrapping the rope in cloth and in the process no doubt making the switch) (Siegel 1991, 186). My late friend Premanand, the Indian conjurer and skeptic, knew many such feats. One, described in his valuable Science Versus Miracles (1994
, 36), is a rod-to-serpent feat like that of the pharaoh's sorcerers related in Exodus (7:9–15). The snake's mouth and tail are held in either hand and the reptile stretched straight. Firm pressure on the head between the thumb and the index finger causes the snake to stiffen. In this way it looks like a rod and is so presented, until it is thrown to the ground, whereupon it soon recovers and the rod is “transformed” into a snake.

  The Indian snake charmer performs in the open air and uses his flute music to cause a deadly hooded cobra to rise and sway in rhythm to the music. A number of additional snakes, released from baskets and jute bags by his assistants, may be similarly entranced. When the music stops and the performer extends a stick toward the cobra, it strikes quickly. The snake charmer may even have the deadly reptiles crawling over his arms, and he concludes his act by dramatically capturing each snake.

  Actually, although snakes do have hearing organs, it is the movements of the charmer himself swaying to the melody that the cobra follows. By ceasing to pipe, the charmer causes the cobra to pose motionless, and then, by extending the stick, he provokes it to strike. In some cases the cobras are drugged, or have their venom sacks removed or their mouths sewn shut. But skilled performers can and do handle the most lethal reptiles. From long experience, they understand how cobras behave, know their striking distance, and rely on their shortsightedness.

  In concluding his act, for example, the charmer often deliberately provokes a cobra with the movements of one hand, then, as it prepares to strike, quickly grasps it behind the head with the other. By taking advantage of the snake's natural tendency to hide, he quickly puts it in a basket or bag (Gibson 1967, 70–73; Gardner 1962, 51–52).

  SNAKE HANDLING