When posthumous biographies are written about kings, movie stars, and great military leaders, the final chapters inevitably discuss how and when these persons died. But in the case of saints, to do this would fail to tell the whole story. Though the soul departed from the body, the saint may still have work to do on earth from the vantage point of eternal life.
Such was the case with many stigmatists.
The bodies of some of the stigmatists have continued to exhibit miraculous wonders hundreds of years after their deaths. The principal miracle has been bodily incorruptibility—that is, miraculous preservation. Let us examine this miracle by looking at three female stigmatists. As we will see, God is still working wonders through them.
1. St. Clare of Montefalco (d. 1308)
As a general principle, the Catholic Church requires that at least three miracles be clearly attributed to a person’s intercession before she is canonized. That did not represent much of a hurdle for St. Clare. When the Sacred Congregation of Rites was assembling its investigation for Clare’s canonization, the members were presented with not three, but thirty-five proposed miracles, of which they ultimately decided on six that they classified as “more eminent than the rest” and “beyond all doubt” (219).
The first miracle was the most obvious by far: Clare’s heart. On her deathbed, Clare uttered this assurance: “You will find the cross of Jesus graven on my heart” (19). When an autopsy was performed, she was proven correct. Her heart was significantly larger than average, and beyond that, it was imprinted with the signs of Jesus’ passion. Fr. Lawrence Tardy describes it:
The figure of the Crucified was found in the right side of the heart, and that of the scourge in the center of the left; between both was the pillar, and at its foot the crown of thorns; at the right side of the figure of the Crucified were the three nails, and under them the lance; and at the left side of the same was the reed with the sponge (168).
The other five miracles were “instantaneous and perfect” cures: first, the “monstrous” congenital disability of a boy named Cetto Speranza; second, the healing of the “inveterate lameness” and “other grave symptoms” of a young man named Antony Romanone; third, the prolapsed uterus of a woman named Flora Nicolai; fourth, the “cancer of the eyes, together with blindness, and an enormous wasting away of the eye-balls” of a child named Lucarello Jacometti; and fifth, a hernia of a cleric named Chino Rinalducci. The saint, dubbed “Sleeping Beauty,” has been very active in her intercession from heaven, continuing to pray on behalf of her trusting friends on earth.
2. St. Rita of Cascia (d. 1457)
St. Rita was never embalmed; the decomposition of her body should have proceeded rapidly. Yet before Rita’s beatification by Pope Urban VIII in 1627—one hundred and seventy-one years following her death—her body was exhumed, and it was discovered that she was incorrupt (188). Beyond that, Rita’s face appeared to be that of not a seventy-six-year-old woman, but a young woman again. The wound on her forehead—which once emitted a revolting stench—now smelled like a flower garden (186-187).
The cases of Rita’s “odor of sanctity,” to use the terms of mystical theology, are so numerous and documented that they served as the first miracle for her canonization. Another miracle attributed to Rita involved healing a girl whose eyes had become disfigured and almost totally blind due to smallpox. Similarly to Rita, her wounds emitted a vile odor. Multiple doctors pronounced her case incurable, and the girl was sent to live with the Augustinian nuns of Cascia. While caring for her, one of the nuns had an idea: She touched a dress to the enclosed case of Rita and gave it to the girl to wear. The nuns also touched a piece of silver that had once touched Rita to the young girl’s eyes. The girl was immediately cured (264-66).
3. St. Teresa of Avila (d. 1582)
Joan Carroll Cruz writes, “Moisture is the chief factor that encourages dissolution, yet many of the incorruptibles encountered this condition during their entombments, their preservations being inexplicably maintained in spite of it” (loc. 553). Teresa’s body serves as a prime example. It was covered in mud, but when the sisters cleaned it, they saw what they very likely thought they would see: Her body did not have the slightest decay. She was not put on display, but instead reburied (321).
Two years after Teresa’s death, her body was again examined. This time, two physicians examined the body and concluded that the body had preserved so well that natural science could not explain it (434). Her body was also exhumed in 1603, 1616, and 1750. Once again, in 1914, her body was again exhumed. Her body remained incorrupt. It was also noted to be incorrupt again in 2024.
For those who think the Catholic Church has a system of casually canonizing saints based on limited information about their holiness or on poorly verified miracles, it is worth considering the following. In the process of gathering information for Teresa’s beatification and subsequent canonization, there were approximately sixty formal hearings conducted over three decades in numerous cities, including Avila, Salamanca, Cuerva, Toledo, Lisbon, and Valencia, in which over one thousand witnesses testified.[1] Teresa’s miracles and her influence were so well known that seemingly every dignitary in Spain, as well as many luminaries in other countries—including the king of Poland; the king, queen, and princess of France; and the archduke of Austria—urged the pope to canonize their beloved incorruptible saint quickly.
Twelve miracles were approved for Teresa’s beatification by Pope Paul V. For her canonization a few years later, sixteen miracles were analyzed: three during her life, one at her death, and twelve posthumously.
In a letter dated August 22, 2024, Bishop James V. Johnston stated, “The Catholic Church does not have an official protocol for determining if a deceased person’s body is incorrupt, and incorruptibility is not considered to be an indication of sainthood.”
This is true. The same may be said of the stigmata itself: There is no universal protocol for determining the mystical stigmata, nor does the presence of medically inexplicable stigmata alone guarantee sainthood. The Catholic Church has infallibly canonized men and women who displayed the stigmata. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church does not mandate belief in the mystical stigmata—even the stigmata of Francis of Assisi—just as it does not mandate belief in Marian apparitions.
We live in an age in which we Catholics are almost ashamed of miracles, lest we embarrass ourselves in front of the smart kids at the front of the class: the free-thinkers, the scientists who practice scientism, and so forth. But instead, we should respond with wonder and delight that God loves us enough to send us visible miracles. We should be inspired by, and proclaim the beauty of, the stigmatists.
Many more amazing stories like these are compiled in John Clark’s remarkable new book God’s Wounds, available for purchase at the Catholic Answers shop.
[1] Julen Urzika, “La canonización de santa Teresa de Jesús,” Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra 29 (2020):234.