Transcript

Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World is brought to you by the StarQuest Production Network and is made possible by our many generous patrons.

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You're listening to Episode 220 of Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World, where we look at mysteries from the twin perspectives of faith and reason.

In this episode, we're talking about Eucharistic miracles.

I'm Dom Bettinelli, and joining me today is Jimmy Akin.

Hey, Jimmy.

Howdy, Dom.

For centuries, people have reported witnessing miracles involving the Holy Eucharist, which Jesus declared to be his body and blood.

Sometimes, they report the Eucharist appearing to turn into flesh and blood.

What's the truth about these reports?

What should we make of them, and do they represent genuine miracles?

That's what we'll be talking about on this episode of Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World.

So, Jimmy, to begin, this is a patron-requested episode, right?

Yes.

We had a, uh, very generous patron named Tim Van Megum who, uh, wanted to hear about Eucharistic miracles, and so that's what we're talking about today.

Thank you, Tim.

Thank you, Tim.

So, how do you wanna begin today's mystery?

By talking about what the Eucharist and Eucharistic miracles are.

For people in the Catholic community, and many other Christian communities, the word Eucharist will be familiar, but in some communities, it won't be.

Uh, growing up as a Protestant, I never heard the term, and I wouldn't have known what it meant, but it's fairly easy to explain.

It comes from the Greek word eucharistia, which means thanksgiving.

Uh, the Gospels indicate that, at the Last Supper, Jesus gave thanks over the bread and wine before declaring them to be his body and blood, and so the thanksgiving that Jesus gave over them eventually became the name for the whole rite.

Uh, Jesus' thanksgiving, or eucharistia, thus gave us the name Eucharist for the Lord's Supper.

The Eucharist can refer either to the celebration as a whole, or it can refer specifically to the consecrated elements.

And then what's a Eucharistic miracle?

Basically, a Eucharistic miracle is any miracle that occurs in connection with the Eucharist, and here we need to mention the big one first, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, because he said that the elements are his body and blood.

"This is my body.

This is my blood." Uh, the passages on the Last Supper and other passages in the New Testament stress this fact, and the vast majority of Christians throughout world history have understood that Jesus meant what he said.

Uh, the elements aren't simply bread and wine anymore, like they were before the consecration.

At the consecration, they become his body and blood, just like he said.

This belief is shared not only by Catholics, but also by Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, the Assyrian Church of the East, and large groups in the Protestant community, including Lutherans, Anglicans, and Methodists.

Together, these bodies represent a large majority of Christians in the world today, and it's actually only a comparatively small number of groups in the Protestant community that reject this and hold that the consecrated elements are only symbols of Christ's body.

Uh, both historically and today, a large majority of Christians teach the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Uh, how many Christians are we talking about?

How, how large of a majority?

I haven't done the exact math, but Catholics alone are a majority of Christians in the world, more than 50%.

Uh, add to them the various Eastern Christian churches, and you're up to around 75%.

With the Protestant communities that believe in the real presence, you're probably up to around 85%, so something like 85, maybe a little more, percent of the Christians in the world today belong to churches that teach the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

It's only been in the last 500 years in certain segments of the Protestant community that there's been a significant number of Christians belonging to communions that denied the real presence, and, uh, even today, that's quite a small minority of them.

Do all the groups that teach the real presence understand it the same way?

No.

There are differences of understanding among them on exactly how Christ is really present in the Eucharist, but they agree that, in the service, Christ really and truly does become present in the elements, so they're not just bread and wine.

And this is something that happens by God's power and promise, so however you understand it, the real presence would be a miracle, and that makes it objectively the first and greatest Eucharistic miracle.

Then why don't people think of every single Eucharist when they use the term Eucharistic miracle?

Because it's not an obvious miracle.

There are...

There's no visible change in the elements at the consecration.

It's a kind of hidden miracle, something we know God has done because Jesus said so, but not something that's obvious to our senses.

Um, we normally use the word miracle to refer to things that are obvious to the senses.

In fact, the Latin word miraculum means wonder or marvel, something that causes wonder or astonishment, and that tends to be associated with overt, obvious acts of God rather than God's hidden acts.

Uh, for example, if someone is converted to God, then that's accomplished by the action of God's hidden grace in his heart, and in an objective sense, every conversion is a miracle.

But conversions happen regularly, and the action of God is not obvious to the senses, so we don't automatically think of conversions as miracles.

Instead, when we think of miracles, we tend to think of rare, extraordinary happenings where God acts in a more obvious way, like when people are instantly healed of a fatal disease or when the blind suddenly get their sight back or the deaf their hearing or when a saint levitates off the ground.In the same way, the term Eucharistic miracle tends to be used for extraordinary events that go beyond what normally happens in the Eucharist, events where God's action is more obvious and can cause wonder and amazement.

What happens in these incidents?

How does God's action manifest in Eucharistic miracles?

There isn't just a single way.

Uh, probably the kind of Eucharistic miracles that most people think of today are the ones where there's a visible transformation in the consecrated elements, like the host taking on the appearance of flesh, or the chalice taking on the appearance of blood, um, the contents of the chalice.

This is the kind of Eucharistic miracle that we will primarily focus on in this episode.

Uh, but there have been other kinds of miracles reported in connection with the Eucharist in history.

What are some examples of other kinds of Eucharistic miracles?

Well, some do involve a visible transformation of the elements, but not so that the host looks like f- flesh and the contents of the chalice look like blood.

Another kind of Eucharistic miracle involves a host that appears to bleed.

So the host continues to look like a host, a piece of bread, but it appears to bleed, uh, sometimes becoming red, sometimes with drops of blood flowing from it, uh, sometimes after someone has attempted to desecrate the host, and sometimes it just happens on its own.

Another kind of Eucharistic miracle that has been reported that involves a visible change of the elements is where they cease to look like bread and wine, and in their place people will see the Christ child, Jesus himself as a small child.

What happens in those cases?

Does the Christ child just continue to appear or does something else happen?

Typically, the Christ child's appearance only lasts a short time, and afterwards the elements revert to the normal appearances of bread and wine.

That also sometimes happens with other Eucharis- other Eucharistic miracles that involve a change of appearance.

Uh, when the host and the contents of the chalice change to look like flesh and blood, they sometimes go back to looking like bread and wine, and sometimes they remain looking like flesh and blood even for centuries.

Uh, similarly, if a host appears to bleed, it may go back to looking like ordinary bread or it may not.

Do all Eucharistic miracles involve a visible transformation of the elements?

No, some involve other things such as, um, who administers the elements, the survival of the elements, and the behavior of the elements.

Then let's look at each of these.

What Eucharistic miracles have been reported in connection with who administered the elements?

Ordinarily, in the Mass, or the Divine Liturgy as it's often called in Eastern Christian circles, communion is given to the faithful by a normal human being, usually a priest.

However, there are reports of communion being given in a more extraordinary form by an angel.

For example, this was reported by the three Fatima seers, uh, Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco.

We talked about the Fatima apparitions of the Virgin Mary in episode 40, and we specifically talked about the third secret of Fatima in episode 64 and 65.

Uh, these apparitions of the Virgin Mary took place in Portugal in 1917, but the three children reported earlier supernatural experiences that had occurred beforehand.

In her second memoir of the events, Sister Lucia reported that in 1916, the year before the Marian apparitions, the Guardian Angel of Portugal appeared to the three children and taught them a prayer.

Then, later the same year, the three children were saying the prayer together, and Sister Lucia reports...

"I don't know how many times we had repeated this prayer when an extraordinary light shone upon us.

We sprang up to see what was happening and beheld the angel.

He was holding a chalice in his left hand with the host suspended above it, from which some drops of blood fell into the chalice.

Leaving the chalice suspended in the air, the angel knelt down beside us."

The angel then said a new prayer with them three times, and then...

"Rising, he took the chalice and the host in his hands.

He gave the sacred host to me and shared the blood from the chalice between Jacinta and Francisco, saying as he did so, 'Take and drink the body and blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men.

Make reparation for their crimes and console your God.' Once again, he prostrated on the ground and repeated with us three times more the same prayer and then disappeared.

We remained a long time in this position, repeating the same words over and over again.

When at last we stood up, we noticed that it was already dark and therefore time to return home."

So in this encounter, the angel gave Holy Communion to the three children despite the fact that communion is normally given by a human minister, typically a priest, and this is not the only report like this.

Uh, for example, Saint Faustina Kowalska reported receiving Holy Communion from an angel more than once.

Um, one can discuss whether experiences like this were simply visions or whether they happened physically, but saints have reported receiving the Eucharist from an angel rather than a human minister.

You said that some Eucharistic miracles involve the survival of the Eucharistic elements.

What were you thinking about here?

Primarily two situations.

Uh, first there's the survival of the consecrated elements over time.

With time, you'd expect natural elements to corrupt, decay and cease looking like themselves.

You know, bread gets moldy and disintegrates, and wine evaporates.

Uh, if the Eucharistic elements were nothing more than normal bread and wine, you'd expect that to happen to them too.

But there are cases where this is reported not to happen.Uh, "In particular, there are cases where hosts are reported not to have been corrupted even after a period of centuries.

Uh, a second kind of miracle in this class involves the survival of the elements not through time, but through situations that would ordinarily destroy them.

For example, if you burned a piece of bread, whether leavened or unleavened, it would be expected to be reduced to ashes.

But there are reports of the consecrated host surviving fires and other situations that would be expected to destroy it, and so these also have been considered Eucharistic miracles."

"You also mentioned Eucharistic miracles in which the behavior of the elements was involved.

What were you thinking about here?"

"Uh, principally, I was thinking about two things.

First, uh, Eucharistic miracles may involve unusual behavior of the consecrated elements in a visible way.

Uh, for example, normal bread and wine don't spontaneously levitate above the surfaces they're located on, but there are multiple reports in history of the consecrated host or the chalice doing exactly that, uh, sometimes remaining in the air for an extended period.

And second, uh, the Eucharistic elements may behave in another exceptional way.

There are reports of individuals being able to subsist on nothing but the Eucharist for extended periods of time, sometimes lasting decades.

Um, these would represent extraordinary fasting periods, and even receiving the Eucharist daily would not provide enough calories to allow a person to survive for decades without other food."

"If that's a survey of some of the different types of Eucharistic miracles that have been reported, are Eucharistic miracles reported only among Catholic Christians?"

"No, they're reported more broadly than that.

Uh, for example, they've been reported in Eastern Orthodox Churches.

In fact, as we'll hear towards the end of the episode, there's even a section in the Slajebnik, which is a sort of Orthodox equivalent of the Roman Missal and contains instructions for the Eucharistic liturgy, that deals with what to do if a Eucharistic miracle occurs during the service.

I also know of a report in the Anglican Church.

In fact, it came from, uh, Corpus Christi Anglican Church in Rogers, Arkansas, right near where I grew up.

In 2017, they were holding a synodal mass there, and one Eucharistic miracle was reported.

According to Reverend Father Jason Rice, an image of a heavenly host appeared directly over the chalice immediately after the words of consecration.

In fact, there's a photograph of this occurring, and it does look like there is a glowing host above the chalice, though whether this image has a natural explanation is a separate subject.

However, the point is that Eucharistic miracles are reported in other parts of the Christian community."

"Over the last 2,000 years, there have been numerous reports of Eucharistic miracles occurring.

Should we believe all of the reports involved genuine miracles?"

"No.

2,000 years is a long time, and today, there are two billion Christians in the world, most of whom belong to churches that teach the real presence.

In all that time, with all those people, there are bound to be numerous reports that do not involve genuine miracles.

Uh, undoubtedly, many have natural explanations.

They may be based on rumors, legends, hoaxes, misperceptions, misidentifications, and mental illness.

For example, a possible natural explanation for the Rogers, Arkansas case immediately occurred to me upon looking at the photograph of the event.

In this particular case, one of the questions I would ask if I was investigating the case is whether the image could have been produced by ordinary light reflecting up from the bowl of the chalice due to an accidental alignment between the chalice and one of the overhead ceiling lamps.

Um, that kind of misperception can happen in any community, and as a result, the Catholic Church doesn't automatically sign off on every report of a Eucharistic miracle."

"Does the church have a way of investigating Eucharistic miracles?"

"Yes, uh, typically it's the responsibility of the local bishop to oversee the investigation of reports of the supernatural in his diocese.

That applies to private revelations, as we discussed in episode 84.

It reports to demonic possessions, uh, it in...

uh, he also investigates reports of demonic possessions, as we discussed in episode 188, and the same thing happens with reports of miracles.

So, the local bishop is kind of the chief supernatural investigator of his diocese, only he typically doesn't do the investigations himself.

Instead, in each of these cases, he usually appo- appoints a group of experts to look into the situation.

Depending on the nature of the case, these experts can include medical doctors, scientists, theologians, other experts, and there are always priests involved.

And, like in non-religious investigations of the paranormal, the experts are supposed to look for and eliminate natural explanations for the reports before concluding the cause is supernatural.

Once the experts have given him their reports, the bishop then makes a judgment about what to do.

In the case of a demonic possession, he would authorize an exorcism, but there wouldn't be a public announcement of this fact for privacy reasons.

But in the case of private revelations and miracles, there may well be a public announcement of the bishop's conclusions, and these days, the bishop typically shares his conclusions with the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome ahead of time to get their approval before making an announcement."

How will we be looking at Eucharistic miracles going forward today?

We'll principally be relying on a book titled A Cardiologist Examines Jesus by Franco Serafini.

As the book's title indicates, he's a cardiologist and he lives in Bologna, Italy.

Uh, his book is a review of multiple Eucharistic miracles that have been the subject of scientific studies, so it's a particularly useful resource.

What we'll do is briefly review the five major cases he covers and explain what happened.

Then in the reason and perspective segment, we'll look at what the scientific studies, uh, found about these cases, and finally, we'll have some closing remarks, uh, from the faith perspective.

Then let's take a look at the five cases.

What was the first one?

It's by far the oldest and it apparently took place in the 700s in Lanciano, Italy.

According to a document written in 1631...

"In this city, in the convent of Saint Lancianzo, where the monks of Saint Basil lived in about 700 AD, was a monk who, not very steadfast in his faith, lived day by day doubting if the true body of Christ was in the consecrated host, and likewise, if the true blood was in the wine.

Still, never abandoned by divine grace and constant prayer, he kept praying to God that He would heal this wound in his heart.

Thus, one morning in the midst of his sacrifice, after uttering the most sacred words of consecration, while more than ever before caught up in his old mistake, he saw the bread turned into flesh and the wine turned into blood.

'Behold the flesh and the blood of our most beloved Christ.' At these words, the anxious people hastily ran with devotion to the altar and, and terrified, not without overflowing tears, began shouting for mercy."

Now, normally, this would not be a very promising case to examine.

Um, we don't have contemporary documentation of it, and the key source we do have was written 900 years after the event.

But what we do have are the physical relics of the reported event, and as Dr. Serafini states...

"After many centuries, without undergoing any process of decay, which is evidently in itself a mysterious fact, a double relic has been handed over to us made of a fleshly rounded tissue, dark brown and yellowish in color, about six centimeters in diameter, thicker on the edges and thinning out centrally into a large cavity in the middle, and five solid fragments of unequal volume, yellow-brown color, of clotted blood, weighing t- altogether 16 grams."

And in the 1970s and 1980s, the Franciscans who have custody of the relic decide to, decided to allow scientific studies of it to be done using, of course, the scientific techniques that were available at the time, which did not include DNA sequencing, as that hadn't been invented yet, but they were still better tests than at any prior point in history.

The second reported miracle Dr. Serafini covers occurred in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

What happened in that case?

This case was actually a set of five reported miracles that occurred in the 1990s, three of them in 1992, one in 1994, and one in 1996, and all of them occurred in the same parish.

To understand them, as well as some of the ones we'll later cover, we need to know something about how the church handles consecrated hosts and pieces of hosts that are not edible, for one reason or another.

Going back centuries, it's been the church's understanding that the real presence of Christ remains as long as the appearances of bread and wine remain.

So even if a host has become inedible, for example, because it's fallen and gotten dirty, the real presence is still there.

As a result, when a host can't be reasonably consumed, the procedure is to dissolve the appearances of bread and wine.

Uh, this is done by dissolving them in water.

And then once the appearances of bread and wine are no longer there, and thus the real presence is, has left, the water is poured into the parish's sacrorium, which is a special kind of sink that leads down into the consecrated soil of the parish rather than into the sewer system.

So, for the first of the Buenos Aires incidents, Dr. Serafini reports...

"On the evening of Friday, May 1st, 1992, Carlos Dominguez, a lay minister of the Eucharist, noticed two crescent-shaped host fragments lying on the corporal in front of the tabernacle.

Quite possibly, they could have fallen out of the ciborium earlier on.

He mentioned it to the parish priest, Father Juan Salvador Caraballo, who told him to begin the pro- dissolving procedure explained before, thinking they were no longer fresh and edible.

The two host fragments were thus immersed in water in a small ceramic container that was then locked inside the tabernacle.

On the morning of May 8th, Father Juan checked the container for the first time and was astonished.

He spoke about what he saw with the other priests living in the same parish.

Three blood clots had formed in the water, initially covered in a white fuzz that later disappeared.

There were blood streaks on the walls of the container, as if they had been produced by some sort of explosion of the hosts themselves."

Two days later, at two different masses, two new events took place.

"The patent holding the consecrated host was stained with blood, not just one, but rather two distinct patents, a bronze one and a tin fish-shaped one."

Then in 1994...

"At the children's morning mass on Sunday, July 24th, 1994, the lay minister distributing the Eucharist noticed a running drop of blood on the inner rim of the ciborium."

And finally, in 1996...

"At the end of the distribution of Holy Communion at the 7:00 PM mass on Sunday, August 18th, 1996, one of the faithful turned to the priest celebrant, Father Alejandro Puzet, with great embarrassment."She had noticed a host hidden in the base of a candlestick in front of the crucifix, which is still to this day in the right-side nave.

Father Alejandro took a look and picked up the host that had been certainly abandoned by someone with desecrating intent.

He thought of consuming it himself, but it was too dirty and dusty.

Therefore, he asked Emma Fernandez, a 77-year-old lay minister of the Eucharist, to immerse it in water and lock it in the tabernacle according to the usual procedure.

Later, Mrs. Fernandez, the only layperson who had access to the tabernacle, indeed saw something strange in the round glass container she had left in, in it, and discussed what she saw with Father Pezet eight days later on August 26th.

After immediately involving Father Eduardo Graham, Father Pezet also noticed that the host was transforming into something else, something red in color that was destined to grow in the following weeks.

The dissolving host was less and less distinguishable, although the water was made more and more turbid by a red, cloud-like substance and darker jelly-like clumps whose texture resembled that of clotted blood.

Darker mold-like blooms were seen on the surface of these presumed blood clots.

All of the materials from 1992 to 1996 were collected and photographed, and the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, uh, authorized an investigation of them.

The third miracle report Dr. Serafini records took place in Tixtla, Mexico.

What happened there?

On Sunday, October 22nd, 2006, Father Raymundo Reina Esteban was celebrating mass.

Uh, he was known as Father Rayito, which means Little Ray, and that was a joke because he was over six feet tall.

.

But...

Two nuns were helping with the distribution of the Eucharist for Holy Communion.

While holding a ciborium full of consecrated hosts, Sister Aurelie Maroquinn, one of the two, suddenly paused and turned pale in front of the faithful who were queuing up to receive.

A few years later, the local p-paper, Diario 21, published an account of the events that took place on that day by giving the names of the eyewitnesses and reporting their interviews.

One of them was the woman in front of whom Sister Aurelie had paused her distribution of Holy Communion.

According to this woman's recollection, the nun had returned to the altar with teary eyes and had shown the ciborium to Father Rayito after kneeling without uttering a word.

One of the hosts was stained with blood.

It had a moist e friable texture, so, so much so that a small fragment had come off it by gently touching it.

Father Rayito and Father Leopoldo quickly talked to one another until Father Rayito loudly spoke out, "This is a miracle!" and publicly showed the host that was stained by a few drops of fresh blood.

With his booming voice, he began singing Que Viva Mi Cristo, Que Viva Mi Rey, or long live my Christ, long live my king, a hymn well-known to all Mexicans.

There were people who applauded and people who wept.

And afterwards, the local bishop authorized a scientific investigation of the event.

The fourth incident Dr. Serafini covered takes us across the world.

What happened in this case?

The incident took place in Sokolka, Poland, uh, which is on the east side of the country near the Belarusian border.

It began on October 12th, 2008, and here's what happened.

The 8:30 morning mass was being celebrated by the young priest, Father Filip Dodrovski.

He was being helped with the distribution of Holy Communion by Father Grzesiek Chmielewicz.

Most likely, it was he who dropped a consecrated host by mistake at that time.

The series of events involved in the mishap was curious and moving.

It was witnessed in great detail.

One of the faithful was kneeling at the altar rail to receive Holy Communion.

Without uttering a word, that lady touched Father Grzesiek's leg, and with a glance, showed him the first step of the altar.

The priest picked up the host.

It was dirty, and he decided not to consume it, but rather to immerse it in water in the vasculum, a silver container used for the cleansing of the hands that was already on the altar.

At the end of mass, Father Grzesiek put the host containing vasculum inside the tabernacle.

On the same day, parish priest, Monsignor Stanislaus Gaudziako, was either informed of the mishap or otherwise simply took notice of the water container that had been unusually stored inside the tabernacle.

Thus, he asked Sister Julia Dubowski, the parish sacristan looking after candles, sacred vessels, and the overall church decor, to pour the contents of the vasculum into a larger glass vase, adding water to it and locking it in the sacristy safe, whose keys were only kept by the two of them.

At 8:00 AM on the following Sunday, October 19th, Sister Julia opened the safe and smelled a bread fragrance.

She thought it was from the complete dissolution of the host, but that wasn't the case.

Part of the host had not yet dissolved and was partially covered by a solid red protruding stain resembling a one-by-one-and-a-half centimeter blood clot.

Yet the water in the container had remained clear.

Sister Julia immediately called the parish priest, Father Stanislaus, and the other priests, who rushed over.

All of them were surprised and astonished.

At the time, they decided to maintain a strict silence about what had happened.

However, they contacted the diocese, which, again, authorized an investigation.

That brings us to the final and most recent of the five cases, which also took place in Poland, but on the other side of the nation.

What happened there?

It occurred in a place called Legnica, which is on the west side of the country near the border w- with Germany and the Czech Republic, and it started on Christmas Day in 2013, just nine years ago.

In this case-

The same event that happened in Sokolka five years earlier took place again.

A consecrated host accidentally fell on the ground, more precisely on a carpet, within the sacred space of the sanctuary.

It was a host that had just been dipped in the consecrated wine and became dirty upon touching the ground.

The priest then decided, like in Sokolka, to follow the procedure we already know, and he put the host in the container, a metal chalice, with simple tap water for it to dissolve.

The chalice was then kept in the tabernacle for a few days.

On January 5th, 2014, another priest, the eldest in the community, checked the sacred vessel and noticed that a crescent-shaped portion of the host, about one-half c- by one and a half centimeters in size, had detached from the rest of the unleavened bread and was turning red.

Some very clear photographs showing the different stages of the phenomenon can be seen on the parish website.

Monsignor Stefan Cyzy, the Bishop of Legnica at the time, was informed, and he requested that the observation be continued.

After two weeks, the colored portion of the host was still present on the surface of the water, while the rest had completely dissolved.

At that stage, the bishop set up a committee of four experts to monitor the events.

So, that's the summary of the cases covered by Dr. Serafini in his book.

Uh, these are the ones that have both had scientific investigations done and in which the results have been published.

There may have been others where investigations were ordered, but either the results weren't published or Dr. Serafini didn't know about them.

Nevertheless, this provides us with a basis for looking at Eucharistic miracles from the perspectives of faith and reason.

Before we get to our theories and our faith and reason perspectives, we'd like to take a moment to thank our patrons who make this show possible, including Kathy N., Allen P., Doreen M., Randy S., and Cody.

Their generous donations at sqpn.com/give make it possible for us to continue Jimmy Akins' Mysterious World and all the shows at StarQuest.

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So Jimmy, what series are there about Eucharistic miracles?

Well, it depends on the type of miracle being considered.

In this episode, we are considering Eucharistic miracles where the appearance of the bread and wine changes, and here, there are two principal divisions.

Sometimes, the elements only briefly look like something else, such as flesh and blood, or the infant Jesus, and then they change back to looking like bread and wine.

If that happens, it could be that someone has had a visionary experience, uh, and you'd have to treat that under the heading of private revelation and use the criteria suited to evaluate private revelations.

But in those cases, there's nothing physical to examine afterwards, so in this episode, we're looking at Eucharistic miracles where there was a permanent change of appearance, and thus scientific studies can be done.

There are three general types of explanations that can be involved in these cases.

First, there are natural explanations, where it turns out that nothing unusual has actually happened.

Second, the ultimate explanation may be supernatural, in which case a miracle has occurred.

And third, there could be non-supernatural, but still paranormal explanations, meaning that something strange happened, but it wasn't a miracle.

Let's look at each of these from the reason perspective.

First, let's talk about the non-supernatural, but still paranormal explanations.

What could these involve, and how likely do you think such explanations are?

The border between the supernatural and the paranormal is a fuzzy one, and how to dis- distinguish them depends on the definitions you use.

They both involve something happening that is outside of what we, in the West, would consider the ordinary operation of nature.

However, for our present purposes, I'll distinguish between the two, uh, based on what human nature is claimed to be capable of doing and what human nature is not capable of doing.

Super is Latin for above, so something would be supernatural if it involves an ability that is above what human nature can do.

So, if it happens, it would have to involve the action of God or a non-human spirit, like an angel or a demon.

However, para is Greek for alongside, and paranormal events occur alongside normal ones, and as such, they can be within the reach of human nature.

Uh, human nature may not normally do certain things, but in certain cases, it might be able to accomplish them, in which case they would be paranormal, or alongside what human nature normally does.

Such unusual operations of human nature are what psychic abilities are claimed to be, as we discussed in episode 79 on religion, magic, psychic phenomena, and science, and in episodes 105 and 106 on Saint Thomas Aquinas and the occult.

This isn't to say that psychic abilities exist, but doctors of the church, like Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, held that they did-And so we need to consider, just hypothetically, whether any such abilities could be responsible for a permanent change in the appearances of the consecrated elements.

Have psychic abilities been reported that could produce an effect like this?

Yes.

Uh, sometimes physical mediums, meaning mediums that produce physical effects, have reported what are known as asports and apports.

Uh, the word asport comes from Latin roots that mean to carry away from, so an asport occurs when a physical object disappears from one location and reappears in another.

By contrast, the word apport comes from a Latin root meaning to bring, so an apport is an object that suddenly appears, uh, having been brought to a location by paranormal means.

This could either mean that it has suddenly materialized or that it's suddenly been brought from another location.

Asportation and apportation, uh, thus can be cases of what would more commonly be called teleportation, and by teleportation, one could hypothetically swap objects between different locations.

If these phenomena turned out to be real and if God allowed it, uh, it would be possible to swap the consecrated elements for human flesh and blood from a distant location, and that could produce the reported effect.

Are there other claimed psychic abilities that can produce the same effect?

The only other one that comes to mind is psychokinesis or mind over matter.

In this case, a psychokinetic person would need to consciously or unconsciously manipulate the elements so that there was a permanent change in them.

Exactly how that would work would itself involve a difficult set of questions, and I only mention it for the sake of completely mapping out the possible hypothetical explanations.

Do you think any of these non-supernatural paranormal explanations have any merit?

No, I don't.

Uh, in the first place, as far as I'm aware, there have been no cases of apportation or asportation documented under tightly controlled laboratory conditions.

Instead, physical mediums claiming these abilities have been exposed as frauds.

And while there are parapsychological studies supporting the existence of psychokinesis, they don't involve the kind of psychokinesis needed to molecularly transform one substance into another, much less do they deal with the thorny metaphysical questions that would be involved in things like consecrated elements.

Furthermore, as I often say on Mysterious World, every phenomenon needs to be taken at face value until we have evidence otherwise.

So Eucharistic miracle reports present the events as supernatural ones, so if Eucharistic miracles involve anything unusual, they should be understood as supernatural until we have evidence otherwise, and we don't have such evidence.

So I don't think that we need to devote further attention to hypothetical paranormal explanations.

Then let's look at possible natural explanations.

What might be involved here?

In the cases we're considering, which all involve objects that can be scientifically studied, we're not dealing with accounts that could be chalked up to rumor, legends, mental illness or misperceptions, so there are only two remaining natural explanations that could be involved: misidentifications and hoaxes.

How could misidentification be involved, and how would that differ from misperception?

In a case of misperception, someone would falsely perceive a phenomenon, like seeing something under poor viewing conditions, such as in the distance, in the dark, or only for a brief moment, resulting in an erroneous sensory perception.

But that wouldn't apply in these cases where the relevant objects have been observed in good viewing conditions, up close, in full light, and over a long period of time.

So there's no misperception here.

These objects genuinely look like they're flesh and blood, but that doesn't mean they've been correctly identified.

They might look like flesh and blood, but this might be misidentification involving something else that looks like flesh and blood.

What kind of thing might that be?

One possibility is a bacterium known as Serratia marcescens.

Uh, this bacteria was discovered in 1819.

It is red in color, and it can grow on wheat, meaning it could grow on hosts and make them look like they're bleeding.

As a result, it's been proposed as a possible natural explanation for hosts that appear to bleed, and this may be the explanation for some reports.

Do you think it could be responsible for any of the reports Dr. Serafini covered in his book?

No, because all of these were examined under microscopes, and the presence of a rod-shaped bacterium like Serratia marcescens, uh, would have been immediately obvious.

Uh, not only did the scientists involved not see this rod-shaped bacterium, they reported seeing human cells.

So despite the appeals of skeptics to this bacterium, it won't explain the cases that we're examining.

What does that leave us with as a natural explanation for the cases we're looking at?

Essentially, it would leave us with hoaxes.

Uh, given the vast 2,000-year length of time involved and the vast number of Christians in the world, including the two billion alive today, frauds involving Eucharistic miracles undoubtedly have been committed by various individuals in history for reasons including fame, profit, mental illness and simply pranking others.But the question is whether the scientific evidence supports the idea of hoaxes in these five cases, because no matter how many cases are explained by natural means, all it takes is one case that can't be explained this way to prove the reality of a phenomenon.

All you need is one genuinely alien UFO, or one genuine Bigfoot encounter, or one genuine Eucharistic miracle, and you've shown that the phenomenon is real.

If you were a skeptical materialist, someone who didn't believe that miracles were possible, and you were going to propose fraud as an explanation for these cases, what aspects of them would you focus on?

I'd focus on what's known as prov- provenance or chain of custody.

Uh, that is, I'd focus on what happened to the elements before and during the period of scientific examination.

Provenance is a concept that often comes up in fields like art and archeology.

It can be important to know the history of an artifact in order to establish whether or not it's genuine.

For example, suppose that you're an archeologist at a dig in Egypt, and while you're excavating a site, your ground-penetrating radar indicates that there is a hidden chamber 10 feet underground.

So, you get your diggers to work at making a 10-foot hole in the earth.

The earth is densely packed and obviously hasn't been disturbed since ancient times, and then you get down to the hidden chamber and open it.

And inside, you find a statuette of an Egyptian god.

Let's say Thoth, the ibis-headed god of the moon and writing.

You found this statuette in what archeologists call in situ, a Latin phrase meaning at the site of discovery, and since you dug through 10 feet of earth that hadn't been disturbed in centuries, there's no realistic chance that an antiquities forger managed to plant the statuette here, so you have very high confidence that it's a genuine ancient Egyptian artifact.

But now suppose that you're taking a break from your dig and you're going out to lunch in Cairo.

On your way to the restaurant...

and by the way, I've been to restaurants in Cairo.

Use hand sanitizer.

I'm just saying.

Um, in any event, on your way to the restaurant, you pass an antique dealer shop and decide to take a look.

Inside the shop, you discover that he also has a statuette of Thoth, and it looks a lot like the one you just dug up.

But you can't be as confident that it's a genuine artifact, because the antiquities market has lots of frauds on it.

Uh, antiquities forgers regularly make fake copies of ancient artifacts so they can get money, and the statuette you're looking at in the shop could be such a fake.

There are ways experts can try to detect such fakes, but it isn't always easy.

Sometimes antiquities forgers are so good, they can slip things past experts.

And the key reason that you can't be confident of the statuette in the shop is that you didn't find it in situ.

It's not at the original site.

It's in a shop, and you don't know how it got there.

You don't know its provenance or chain of custody, how it allegedly got from the site of discovery to the shop where you're seeing it.

The same thing can happen in the art world, where it can be very important to know the history of a painting and who owned it over the years in order to establish that it's not a recent creation by an art forger.

And of course, the same thing applies in the legal world with, with the chain of custody of evidence being important in criminal trials.

Exactly.

That's why the police try to rigorously document the collection of evidence at the scene of a crime.

They photograph it first.

They try to avoid contaminating it at the scene.

They bag it.

They make a log of the evidence and who has it.

They may even videotape the collection procedure, and then they store it in a secure room.

They document everyone who has access to this room, and then they turn it over to a qualified forensics lab.

Even then, the chain of custody is still documented, because there can be laboratory shenanigans in which evidence is contaminated or accidentally or deliberately altered, so they try to be really careful.

And if attorneys can impeach the chain of custody, they may be able to get their clients declared innocent.

How, if you were a skeptical materialist, would you use this to impeach the chain of custody of the five Eucharistic miracles we're considering?

I would argue that we don't have perfect chains of custody on them.

The worst is the Lanciano miracle.

In that case, we don't know the when, how, and who of it all.

The miracle allegedly occurred in the 700s, but the earliest document describing its history is from 900 years later.

And from an evidential perspective, that's a terrible record of its provenance.

Uh, all we really have is the physical artifact itself, and we can't place a lot of confidence in an account written 900 years later with no intervening documentation.

So, even if the scientific tests show that this is human tissue, how do we know someone didn't just get some human tissue in the early Middle Ages and pass it off as a Eucharistic miracle?

What about the later cases?

Do they have better chains of custody?

From one perspective, yes, uh, because in these cases, we have contemporary documentation of how the relics were collected, uh, who had custody of them, and so forth.

However, even after they were collected, they weren't always stored in super secure conditions.

Uh, often they were initially stored in a tabernacle in a parish, and tabernacles are locked to prevent desecration of the Eucharist.But there's often more than one key to a tabernacle, so especially in cases where the host initially appeared normal and then changed appearance in the tabernacle while they were trying to dissolve it in water, how do we know a nun or a priest who had a key didn't unlock the tabernacle, then dropped some human tissue into the water, making people think a Eucharistic miracle had occurred when no one was looking?

Doesn't the same thing apply to evidence in crime cases?

Police evidence lockers also have keys, so we can't rule out the possibility that someone with a key got into the evidence locker and tampered with or planted evidence.

That's correct, and yet the courts don't automatically throw out evidence just because this is a hypothetical possibility.

It's one thing if you have reason to think a particular police department or police official is corrupt and would deliberately tamper with evidence, but at some point, you have to trust people whose job it is to be trustworthy.

So unless you can impeach a particular office or officer, courts still honor the evidence the police have.

The same standard needs to be applied in the case of Eucharistic miracles.

Like the police, priests and nuns are supposed to be trustworthy.

Uh, like the police, they aren't always trustworthy, but it's part of their job.

And so unless you have evidence impeaching a particular priest or nun who had custody, then I think we need to take them at their word and give the, give credence to the claim that the reported Eucharistic miracle hasn't been tampered with since it was collected.

What about cases where the miracle occurred during mass?

In those cases, the miracle happened immediately, not while locked away from public view.

Instead, if it was at a typical parish mass, it may have happened in front of hundreds of people.

There are a couple of reasons for caution here.

First, stage magicians use sleight-of-hand techniques to make objects seem to appear and disappear in front of hundreds of people a- all the time.

If you're a stage magician, that's part of your job, and so even when hundreds of people are watching, it doesn't rule out fraud due to sleight of hand.

However, secondly and more importantly, the moment of the miracle isn't typically witnessed by hundreds of people.

At mass, people are all going about their business with their eyes pointed in lots of different directions.

What happens in this type of case is that usually nobody reports seeing the moment that the change in the host or chalice takes place.

Instead, someone, usually one person, looks down and sees something strange, like a host that has begun to bleed or a piece of flesh they thought had been a host.

Then this is brought to the attention of the priest who's celebrating mass, it gets hailed as a miracle or possible miracle, and they put it in the tabernacle.

This means that we have one initial witness to something strange, and that witness often doesn't claim to have seen the moment of transformation.

Consequently, from a skeptical viewpoint, we can't rule out that someone, either the witness or someone else, didn't do something surreptitious to make it look like a miracle had happened, like substituting a piece of flesh, substituting a host that they had previously squirted blood on, or even squirting blood on it at the moment using sleight of hand.

But you can't simply assert that this is what happened in these cases.

Wouldn't you need evidence to make that claim?

It's true that a skeptic cannot simply assert that fraud must have been involved in a particular case.

However, if we're talking about just a handful of cases, and if the most likely natural explanation for something is fraud, then in light of the fact that natural explanations are more common for unusual phenomena than paranormal or supernatural ones, it can be reasonable to propose fraud and say, "We're only looking at a small number of cases here, and since natural explanations are the most common, I think these most likely have a natural cause, and the most likely natural cause is fraud, so I propose that's what happened in these cases." And I think one can rationally make such a proposal.

What one couldn't rationally do is assert such a proposal if there is other evidence that makes it unlikely.

Then let's have you stop pretending to be a skeptical materialist and look at the other side of the issue.

Is there evidence that would make the fraud prop- pro- proposal unlikely?

Considering the other side of the equation, I think there are several arguments that one can make.

Uh, the first one involves the commonalities that the scientific studies have turned up when the relics have been examined in laboratory settings.

Um, on this argument, it isn't any one case that disproves fraud.

Instead, it's all five taken together, uh, that display qualities that make fraud unlikely.

For example, let's look at a hypothetical scenario, and I, I wanna make it clear up front that this is a hypothetical scenario, not one that we have scientific proof of.

But suppose, uh, for purposes of making the concept clear, suppose we ran DNA tests on the relics of all five cases, from Lanciano in the 700s to Legnica in 2013, and suppose that it turned out that all of the relics had the exact same genetic code, meaning that they came from the same individual.

It is unlikely in the extreme, uh, astronomically unlikely, that fraudsters across the world in different years would be able to both get and then fraudulently plant biological material with the DNA of the same person in all five events.Uh, that's especially unlikely in the Lanciano case, because even though we don't have a chain of custody going back to the 700s, we do have a chain of custody that goes back at least four centuries, and nobody living four centuries ago would've had the same DNA as someone living today.

So, as this illustration makes clear, the scientific study of the five cases could reveal commonalities among them, like them all having the same DNA, that would make fraud very, very unlikely.

You see, that's a hypothetical case to illustrate the concept.

So, we don't have that kind of DNA- DNA evidence.

Why not?

In the case of Lanciano, it's because the last...

It was last studied in the 1980s, when modern DNA sequencing didn't exist, and in the case of Sokolka, in 2008, despite the fact that DNA testing did exist at the time, they strangely didn't do it, and ran other tests instead.

In the case of the other three, uh, Buenos Aires, Tixtla, and Legnica, they did do DNA testing, but they weren't able to establish results from Buenos Aires and Tixtla, and they only got partial results from Legnica.

So, no, we don't have the ability to compare the DNA of the miracles and see if they came from the same individual.

Why weren't they able to get usable DNA results from the samples they did test?

There are several potential reasons.

One is that DNA technology has been, uh, rapidly developing.

It's better now than it was in the 1990s, but Buenos Aires was tested in the 1990s.

Also, the scientists were only allowed to take very small samples, and doing that makes it harder to develop a useful DNA profile.

You can tell basic things, like this is human DNA, but you can't profile an individual.

And finally, the relics of the reported miracles were not stored under scientific laboratory conditions, and DNA degrades over time if you don't take care of it.

Uh, in these cases, the relics were stored at room temperature without preservative agents, and in improper storage media, such as distilled water, in one case, and distilled water causes cells to burst.

Um, as a result of these factors, the DNA was too degraded for them to build a genetic profile of a single individual.

Then let's talk about what the tests did find.

What did they find when they looked at the blood associated with these relics?

It's unfortunate that they didn't run identical tests in each case, meaning we can't directly compare all five cases on each test, but they isolated blood in three of the cases, uh, Lanciano, Buenos Aires, and Tixtla, and in each case, it turned out to be human blood.

So, whoever these samples came from, they were human.

Also, in two cases, Lanciano and Tixtla, they were able to determine the blood type.

There are four general blood types, type O blood, type A blood, type B blood, and type AB blood.

Of these, type AB is the rarest, with only about 5% or 1 in 20 people having it.

Both Lanciano and Tixtla involved AB blood.

The odds of that happening by random chance, if you picked two random people outta the world, would be 20 times 20, or 1 in 400.

Even if you set aside the earlier sample on the ground that it must have some blood type, the odds that the second would have the same type of blood would only be 5%, or 1 in 20.

So, regardless of how you wanna look at it, the odds of this being due to random chance are low, either 1 in 20 or 1 in 400.

Uh, that would count as evidence in favor of the miraculous as opposed to hoaxes.

In addition to the four major blood groups, there's also whether someone's blood is Rh-positive or Rh-negative.

Did they find anything out in this regard?

In 2010, there was a test on the Tixtla blood that revealed it was Rh-negative, and AB-negative is the rarest blood type in the world.

Only 0.5%, or 1 in 200 people, has that.

Unfortunately, they only did this in the case of Tixtla, so we don't have anything to compare it with.

It wasn't just blood that was involved in these incidents, though.

In Lanciano's case, a host reportedly turned into a piece of solid tissue.

What'd they find when they studied that?

They found out it was made of heart muscle.

In fact, it was a cross-section of the human heart, and that's part of why it's got a big hole in the middle of it.

And here's where things get stranger, because it turns out that it looks like heart muscle tissue was found in the other four cases as well, even the ones that they tried to dissolve, um...

Where they tried to dissolve a dirty host in water, and it grew what looked like a blood clot.

It wasn't a blood clot, but contained heart muscle tissue, and that's really interesting, because it poses further challenges to the hoax hypothesis, because heart muscle tissue isn't easy to get.

Uh, you have to cut a person open to get it.

So why, if these were due to hoaxes, would it be heart muscle tissue in all five cases?

It would be much easier to get tissue from other muscles that don't require you to wrench the chest cavity open.

Hoaxers would more naturally take the low-hanging fruit and get muscle tissue that was easier to obtain.

And even if you cut open a cadaver to get some heart muscle tissue, it would still look solid.

So, why would it look like a blood clot?

Um, this is just really strange from the perspective of hoaxing.

Were there other qualities that the relics had in common?

Yes.

In four of the cases, the heart muscle tissue looked like it came from a person who had just suffered severe trauma, not someone who had died peacefully.

Dr. Serafini explains:

"The heart muscle tissues of Buenos Aires, Ixtla, Sokotra, and Legnica all revealed specific pathological signs suggestive of a common and narrow differential diagnosis, a limited number of medical and traumatic conditions that would give rise to the abnormal features seen in these tissues, all linked with extreme physical, emotional, and spiritual suffering in broader, non-medical terms.

We know that the cardiac tissue identified in these four miracles came from a heart that was experiencing terrible suffering, gripped by wrenching spasms.

The pathological picture we just described is that of stress-induced cardiomyopathy, which anatomical pathologists have identified for many decades in victims of plane crashes, or murders after violent beating, and in deaths by stroke or suffocation.

Hence, all those situations in which an otherwise previously healthy heart is exposed for a few minutes, hours, or rarely days, to an extremely strong physical stress, or even just an emotional one, such as the fear or certainty of imminent death."

All of that is consistent, of course, with Jesus' passion and his death on the cross.

So what can we say about Eucharistic miracles from the faith perspective?

First, why would God do them?

To strengthen people's faith, which is a reason God commonly does miracles.

By performing an action that stands out noticeably against the background of natural phenomena, God shows us that He exists and that He intervenes in the world.

Further, by doing specifically Eucharistic miracles, He strengthens people's faith in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and in some cases, like when a host has been dropped or desecrated and a mir- and a miracle happens, it can be a reminder of the reverence we need to show the Eucharist, because Christ is really there.

Earlier, we talked about how Eucharistic miracles are reported in non-Catholic churches, such as among the Eastern Orthodox.

Why would God do Eucharistic miracles outside the Catholic Church?

Because non-Catholics need to know these things also.

Uh, miracles aren't just confined to the Catholic community.

God loves everybody.

As Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, he makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust.

So if someone's a non-Catholic and in need of healing, God may heal them.

And if a Eucharistic miracle will help them, God may do one.

Sometimes people think that the Eucharist involves a kind of time warp back to Jesus' suffering on the cross.

The fact that the Eucharistic miracles we've covered suggest a suffering person could support that view.

Is that how we should understand them?

No.

Uh, the church understands that the Eucharist makes Jesus present as he is today, and today, he's in heaven.

Uh, this has been understood for a long time.

So for example, uh, Saint Thomas Aquinas understands the Eucharist as making present the body of Jesus, which is currently in heaven, not on the cross.

Now, you could challenge this by pointing out that Aquinas lived before Albert Einstein, so they didn't have the concept of time warps.

Uh, you could also challenge it and say, "Well, that's just Aquinas' theological opinion," but actually it isn't.

It's an actual church teaching.

Thus, in 1968, Pope Pau- uh, Pope Saint Paul VI wrote a profession of faith called The Credo of the People of God in which it states...

"The unique and indivisible existence of the Lord, glorious in heaven, is not multiplied, but is rendered present by the sacrament in the many places on Earth where mass is celebrated."

So despite what you hear, the Eucharist doesn't involve a time warp.

The church teaches that the real presence remains for as long as the elements appear to be bread and wine, but when they no longer look like bread and wine, the real presence ceases.

In the Eucharistic miracles we've been considering today, the appearance of the elements permanently changes.

Does that mean that Christ is no longer present?

So far as I'm aware, the church has no teaching on this and the matter is disputed.

For example, Saint Thomas Aquinas holds that Christ is still present, even though the elements no longer look like bread and wine.

In the Summa Theologiae, he writes...

"While the dimensions of the elements remain the same as before, there is a miraculous change wrought in the other accidents, such as shape, color, and the rest, so that flesh or blood is seen.

And as was said already, this is not deception, because it is done to represent the truth, namely to show by this miraculous apparition that Christ's body and blood are truly in this sacrament, and thus it is clear that as the dimensions remain, the body of Christ truly remains in this sacrament."

On the other hand, this view is not universally shared in the Christian community.

For example, in the Orthodox Slajebnik, uh, it contains a section dealing with Eucharistic miracles and it says...

"If after the consecration of the bread or the wine, a miracle should appear, namely that the appearance of the bread would become that of flesh, or the wine appearing as blood, and if this appearance does not change shortly, meaning if the appearance of bread or wine does not return, but remains unchanged, in no way should the priest commune, for these are not the body and blood of Christ, but simply a miracle from God manifested as a result of disbelief or other cause.

If shortly that which had appeared as flesh should a- again appear to be bread, or in the chalice that which had appeared to be blood should once again appear as wine-""...

let him commune with these and so complete the service, for they are the true body and blood of Christ."

And Aquinas would agree with the last point.

If the appearances revert to those of bread and wine, it was a vision and the real presence was there the whole time.

What they disagree about is if the change endures.

Aquinas says that the changed elements do have the real presence on the grounds that the change is made to indicate the real presence.

But the Slujevnik, uh, says that they no longer have the real presence, presumably on the grounds that they no longer appear to be bread and wine.

However, so far as I'm aware, the church has not made a determination on this matter, so you can make up your own mind.

So Jimmy, what's your bottom line on Eucharistic miracles?

Eucharistic miracles are fascinating to study.

Uh, the five cases we've examined today are particularly fascinating because of the scientific investigations that have been done of them, and the fact that the, uh, AB blood type of two of them, the fact that all five involve hard-to-obtain heart muscle, and the fact that four of them seem to indicate a distressed heart present challenges to the idea that these five could have been products of hoaxes, giving us reason to think that they could be genuine miracles.

Nice.

So Jimmy, what further resources can we offer to the listeners and the viewer?

We'll have a link to, uh, Dr. Franco Serafini's book, A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles.

We'll also have a link to Fatima in Sister Lucia's Own Words.

Uh, also articles on Eucharistic miracles and, uh, how the church investigates Eucharistic miracles.

We'll have information from St. Thomas Aquinas on Eucharistic miracles, including from the Summa Theologiae, as well as that quote from the Slujevnik.

Also, information on ceratium archestins, uh, the vi- the, uh, uh, bacterium that can make wheat look red.

Also, information on world population by blood type, and Paul VI's Credo of the People of God.

Very nice.

So Jimmy, what do we have for mysterious headlines this week?

Well, uh, we have a things-from-space theme, and so one of the things that has come from space was the 1908 Tunguska event, which we talked about previously, and it happened on June 30th.

So now June 30th has been named International Asteroid Day as a way of promoting awareness of the need for planetary defense against asteroids and comets and other things like that.

So, uh, check out the link and, uh, get, uh, get, get up to speed on, uh, on the need for planetary defense.

Also, the US Congress recently had, um, UFO hearings, and we're not the only ones.

The Brazilian Senate has also now held UFO hearings about what their, uh, people have been able to figure out about UFOs.

So, you can check out that article as well and learn what's been happening down there.

And it's never too early to start planning for your next International Asteroid Day next year, so get your banners and paint 'em.

Yeah.

all the things.

So, uh, w- we would love to hear from you.

What are your theories about Eucharistic miracles?

You can let us know by visiting sqpn.com or the Jimmy Akins Mysterious World Facebook page, sending an email to [email protected], sending a tweet to @MYS_World, or you can join the StarQuest Discord community at sqpn.com/discord, or call our Mysterious Feedback Line at 619-738-4515.

That's 619-738-4515.

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Excellent.

So Jimmy, what are we gonna be talking about next time?

Next week, we're going to be talking about the paranormal phenomenon of shadow people.

Uh, people have been reporting seeing dim, shadowy figures, sometimes out of the corner of their eye, sometimes full-on.

Uh, so we'll be looking at reports of shadow people, what may be responsible for them, and why they appear.

Excellent.

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Thanks, Dom.

And once again, I'm Dom Bettinelli.

Thank you for listening to Jimmy Akins Mysterious World on StarQuest.