Vatican exhibit on Eucharistic miracles comes to La Salle

While making a pilgrimage to Rome, Beth Snyder of La Salle and her peers made a detour to the Italian city of Orvieto to celebrate Mass beneath a bloodstained cloth.

Where had the blood come from? According to 13th century testimony, it fell from a host consecrated at a nearby Mass. More than 750 years later, Snyder remembers the hair-raising sensation she felt worshiping beneath the miraculous relic.

“It was an overwhelming feeling to think all these things that we’ve been taught and we’ve believed through the years were all true,” said Snyder, a parishioner at St. Patrick Church in La Salle. “And the living proof was right in front of my eyes.”

Snyder couldn’t resist popping into the parish school gymnasium to catch a look at the Vatican-sponsored traveling exhibit that showed the Bolsena miracle (the relic was transferred to neighboring Orvieto) but dozens of other Eucharistic miracles, many of which have withstood scientific analysis.

“The Real Presence Eucharistic Miracle Exhibit,” featuring 160 explanatory placards, was displayed Saturday and Sunday in Trinity Catholic Academy. Each describes a Eucharistic miracle reported from across the globe.

Many of the placards included a discussion of the laboratory findings that bishops insisted upon before stamping an event as miraculous. Scientists have found:

-Blood samples retrieved at some sites have been the same blood type, AB positive, and linked to types found in the Holy Land

-Flesh samples retrieved from investigations have been found to be heart tissue

-DNA profiles recovered, while incomplete, show markers from a mother’s profile but not from a father’s profile

“It’s just amazing what they know now through DNA,” said Ray Aubry of rural Ottawa, another visitor at the traveling exhibit. “Everything you learn about the Sacred Heart of Jesus has been scientifically proven.”

The exhibit was Vatican-sponsored but credit for launching it goes to the Blessed Carlo Acutis (1991-2006), an Italian teenager who succumbed to leukemia but not before attempting to catalog the thousands of reported miracles. Acutis chronicled 160 before his death and his summaries were donated to the Holy See, which in turn approved reproductions for public display.

The copies in La Salle were brought by two South Dakota residents, Earl Markley and Jim Koenig, who have spent the past 11 years taking to exhibits to 95 cities and counting.

Markley said he’s delved into the scientific analysis and been impressed with the findings. Nine Eucharistic miracles were subjected to lab analysis and yielded identical results, defying odds of 50 trillion to one. The faithful are swayed, Markley has found, but clinicians are sometimes slow coming around.

“We go to medical schools and colleges and the med students argue with us, saying, ‘This is not possible,’” Markley said. “We really have fun with them.”

For those who missed the exhibit, Markley and Koenig will take the placards to Gilman in Iroquois County (south of Kankakee) for display Thursday, June 16 and Saturday, June 18.