Lourdes: gets up from the stretcher and walks with his feet

COMMUNICATION ON THE MIRACLE OF LOURDES
by Maurizio Magnani

The miraculous is Anna Santaniello of Salerno, now over ninety years old but little more than forty years old when in 1952 she was healed from her illness, after a pilgrimage to Lourdes.

Let's clarify the terms of the story and try to understand why, once again, like the other 66 miracles of Lourdes, declaring this healing event as "supernatural" or "beyond nature" is a risky conclusion that does not find me in any agree.

Here is a summary of what the newspapers wrote about the case (eg La Stampa, 17/12/2005). Anna suffered from Bouillaud's Syndrome, a serious heart disease, believed to be incurable at the time, which had already killed two of her brothers since childhood. The disease manifested itself with respiratory attacks and pains in the arms and legs that forced the woman to live most of her time in bed.

In 1952 the woman decided, not recommended by the doctors, to undertake a trip to Lourdes which she carried out by train, lying on a stretcher; before reaching her destination she saw a female silhouette silhouetted in the sky saying "you must come, you must come". Arriving in Lourdes Anna was immersed in the swimming pool of the Massabielle cave after being hospitalized for 3 days in the local hospital.

Immediately after the dive, carried out with difficulty for the swollen and cyanotic legs, the women felt an immediate sensation of well-being and great warmth in the chest. After a short time the woman managed to get up on her legs; it was August 20, 1952.

Upon returning from Lourdes, Anna was able to move independently and, stopping in Turin, she was visited by a doctor, such Dr. Dogliotti, cardiologist, who, knowing nothing of the disease, found the patient in excellent heart condition.

Upon arrival in Salerno, the case of Anna Santaniello was presented to the then bishop who summoned a medical commission which did not reach a unanimous opinion, so the investigation remained suspended without reaching a definitive judgment.

On August 10, 1953, one year after recovery, Anna returned to Lourdes for a preliminary visit while another visit was repeated in 1960. Two years later, in 1962, Santaniello's clinical dossier reached the International Medical Committee of Paris which in 1964 decreed that there was an extraordinary recovery and sent the response to the archbishop of Salerno.

The high prelate kept the file in the drawer for over 40 years, until 2004 when a further cardiological examination was made, carried out on 21/09/2005, which definitively confirmed the healing, paving the way for the official proclamation of the miracle that took place a month does. Lourdes' last miracle had been proclaimed in 1999 and concerned Jean-Pierre Bely, a 51-year-old Belgian man.

Having no specific clinical documentation in hand on the case of Anna Santaniello, I cannot make a complete and detailed judgment, but the history of healing and the miracle leaves, as in the other cases of Lourdes, very doubtful, indeed decidedly perplexed.

In the chapter of my book on Lourdes I explained what is the process of recognizing the miracle and in Anna's case I don't see anomalies compared to the other cases but the real problem is that all the cases of Lourdes are an anomaly according to the clinical perspective- modern experimental. The modern clinical researcher and investigator must, in fact, comply with a series of rules, warnings, precautions that were not respected at the time of the Lourdes clinical investigations, starting from the systematic errors of clinical data collection (bias) regarding which today medical literature warns.

Not only did there not exist in the past adequate technological instruments capable of achieving certain and above all standardized diagnoses but there was no modern epidemiological discipline on which to build serious prognostic evaluations, with acceptable confidence intervals (a very important statistical parameter).

Anna's illness, which in any case had inexorably no inadequate outcome (as has been written in the newspapers) given that Bouillaud's S. is none other than Acute Articular Rheumatism (RAA) or Rheumatic Disease (treated effectively in millions of cases in all over the world with penicillin, aspirin and corticosteroids) in the past showed a very variable prognosis that could lead to death in children or very slowly undermine health, sometimes allowing an almost regular life until old age.

The fact that Anna had reached the age of 41 suggests that her condition was not among the most serious and the prognosis had not been assessed in terms acceptable today.

As for the clinic, doctors have always found sometimes significant discrepancies between the symptomatology, which may appear dramatic, and the instrumental and laboratory results and in doubt, credit is given to these latter and not to the former in formulating the diagnosis of severity and prognostic evaluation .

But in 1952 there were few reliable tools for an evaluation that eliminated all the problems deriving from systemic and statistical interferences on clinical tests (remember Bayes' warnings). In fact, RAA, a disease caused by a bacterium, a beta streptococcus located in the pharynx, mainly affected the heart (especially the endocardium with problems with the heart valves and the myocardium) and the joints (which became inflamed and swollen from spills intracapsular) and led to death mainly due to serious valve anomalies.

The disease was very affected by hygienic conditions, nutrition, healthy climate and housing and could be cured with cortisone, aspirin (exists since the time of the Egyptians) and penicillin (industrially prepared as early as 1946 in the USA), drugs certainly available in Italy and France in 1952 (what was done to Anna during those 3 days of hospitalization in Lourdes?).

The RAA is today called in a different way and is framed among the diseases of the connective tissue: PNEI (psiconeuroendocrinoimmunology) considers it a pathology with a psychosomatic component. The RAA prognosis could have been reliably pronounced (acceptable test sensitivity) only with modern technologies, such as echocardiography, which evaluate the volumes and pressures of the heart cavities and parameters such as the Ejection Fraction (the blood flow of the heart) that once, in the 50s, was calculated with instruments such as the phonocardiogram, invasive manometry (cardiac catheterization) and other methods now abandoned by medicine because they are too coarse and which, however, at the time knew how to perform well in very few hospitals. Then there are other considerations.

- As I have repeated many times in my book, when a disease has a high prevalence (frequency in the population), its Gaussian distribution allows the realization of very numerous "tail" statistical phenomena, ie events very far from the average behavior: a certain number of unexpected healings, considered extraordinary (miracles!) and a number of very early deaths (of which no Church speaks and no Lourdes uses to make statistical comparisons and calculate tests of statistical significance ... the so-called anti-miracles or missed miracles!) .

- Lourdes' healing tests are always comparisons of “before and after” clinical conditions but long waits for a serious clinical evaluation (the first visit of a well-trained medical team often comes a year or more after the alleged facts of healing) affects the reliability of the comparison, as well as the experimentalists of today know, unless all the clinical reports are absolutely certain and without any doubts, conditions often impossible to respect even today, let alone in 1952. The cardiological examination recently of 21/09/05 confirmed a current clinical condition of cardiac health and nothing else. The true anatomo-pathological and instrumental condition of the disease was not definable at the time of healing with reliability, certainly not according to today's criteria and therefore the comparisons are necessarily random.

- Of the visit of 1952, performed in Turin by Dr. Dogliotti, defined eminent cardiologist, I cannot say much but every good doctor must make an anamnesis (clinical history) before each visit and thereby learn of the precedents: how come is it said that Dogliotti knew nothing about the disease? The fact that the Turin cardiologist did not perform extensive clinical investigations (hospitalization) and hastily certified the patient's health status casts doubt and not clarity, also because if his testimony (very important because it occurred a few days after the alleged miracle) had been incontrovertible, how come the medical commission convened by the archbishop of Salerno immediately after Anna's return home did not reach unanimity of judgment? Evidently our doubts today, had been raised by competent doctors 50 years ago who had not been convinced about the different aspects of the whole affair.

- The believer in the supernaturality of the miracle often accuses the non-believer of being skeptical beyond measure and of not giving up prejudicedly on the evidence of the presence of God in the world. It is an unfounded accusation, not only because a miracle is not necessarily proof of the presence of God in the world (and if it were a demon or a non-divine spirit or something else to favor miracles?) As evidenced by the faith of many, even bishops and cardinals, who do not believe in miracles but, above all, because the skepticism "beyond measure" does not exist in formal logical terms. How can we speak of an irrational doubtful attitude to us Italians who do not manage to see an important judicial case resolved (Ustica, Italicus train, Bologna station, Piazza Fontana in Milan, etc.) when the interests at stake are enormous, such as can they be those of the defense of a religious dogma that moves millions of faithful in the world together with their portfolios? How can we believe in the sincerity of witnesses who yearn for the miracle and who, although unconsciously, perpetrate self-delusion and self-deception? How can we passively accept the verdict of ecclesiastical authorities who have been lying for millennia knowing they are lying (did Christ really exist? Where was he really born and lived? Why were hell invented, purgatory, with which millions of men in the world were terrified? etc. etc.) As long as the perspective of faith and not the critical one is adopted, no service is done in search of the truth of things. Faith (= trust) can be a positive attitude but it contains the intrinsic risk of leading to a oriented vision of reality, a monochordic and often intolerant vision. Therefore, let us lay people who have no religious prejudices be allowed to critically investigate religious phenomena, including alleged miracles. On the other hand, as Anna Santaniello's "miracle" also confirms, there are many reasons for doubting, including what concerns the question: "because the bishop of Salerno in the 50s decided to keep Anna's file in the drawer for 40 years while a bishop of 2005 decided to pull it out, just today, in that 50st century that so much "in short supply" of healing "miracles" (those of statues instead there are plenty), years in which millions of pilgrims continue to go to Lourdes (what a business!) without seeing a miracle officially recognized for a long time? ” Okay, the prudence of the church and the respect of the rule that we must be sure of the persistence of miraculous healing, but 15 years are not too many considering that for other miracles they expected 25 - XNUMX years?

Finally, even admitting that the Virgin intercede for the sick (etsi virgo daretur, as if the Virgin were given, really existed) how can we not doubt the supernatural nature of healings that the Church of Rome uses and manipulates subjectively, without the scientific verification of really critical commissions? Unfortunately there is now a lot of evidence accumulated by many scholars confirming that the Church has been manipulating historical truths and facts to their advantage for 2000 years, without much hesitation or scruple, as confirmed by the healings of Lourdes, never clear, never without shadows, never monde from suspicions.