11 February 2026
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Lourdes Miracle Reveals Merciful God
The International Medical Committee of Lourdes, which determines if a healing is miraculous, is open to all doctors, including atheists.
From Aleteia
By Ary Waldir Ramos Diaz
Healing, faith and forgiveness all come through blessed watersPope Francis has said that “prayer makes miracles,” and there really is proof.
The 69th miracle to be certified at Lourdes was recognized by the beneficiaries’ local bishop in 2013. It was a miracle that involved bodily healing but also growth in faith and forgiveness, and is thus a miracle that reminds us again of God’s readiness to pour out his mercy.
In 1980, at the age of 34, Danila Castelli began suffering from spontaneous and severe blood pressure hypertensive crisis.
The wife of an Iranian gynecologist living in Italy and the mother of four, Castelli had previously enjoyed an entirely normal life.
But by 1989, her sickness had reached a point that she felt she couldn’t stand anymore.
She’d already undergone seven years of surgeries and treatments, and there were plans to see more doctors in the United States, but then her husband decided to take her to Lourdes.
The thought crossed her mind that this could be her last trip with him; “Mom and Dad have left,” they told their children, who were unaware of their father’s plans, when they were already on the way.
From the time that she was an adolescent, Castelli had wanted to visit Lourdes. Her husband, however — despite having converted to Catholicism — thought the idea absurd. That’s why she sees his faith as a second miracle of the Lourdes waters.
“We are called to Lourdes, as Bernadette was called there,” Castelli reflects in a moving video testimony. “It seems that we come out of curiosity. But it is she (Our Lady) who calls us.”
Castelli recounted that the trip was very difficult but that on the fourth day, “I was healed.”
Her weak and deformed body felt an inexplicable relief when she came out of the baths where she had been submerged: “In the baths, I was healed,” she says.
Her husband, awaiting her outside the baths, sensed the same and assured her that everything was now behind them, and, affirming her faith in God, he said, “You were right.”
After so many years of painful illness, some months later she returned to Lourdes for exams. The process of verification lasted over various decades.
The Lourdes Office of Medical Observations (Bureau des Constatations Médicales de Lourdes) certified the healing with a unanimous vote after five meetings — in 1989, 1992, 1994, 1997 and 2010.
Bishop Giovanni Giudici of Pavia, Italy, the diocese where Danila Castelli lives, declared the miraculous character of the event on June 20, 2013.
In addition to her own bodily healing, and her husband’s gift of faith, Castelli sees another miracle that came at Lourdes: the gift of forgiveness within her own family.
Now, Castelli reflects that Jesus is asking something different of her: “For 13 years I loved Jesus on the cross. Now he asks me to love him with health.”
Being the beneficiary of a miracle hasn’t taken away her humanity, her “miseries and weaknesses,” Castelli confirms. “I still commit sins. The miracle has given me normalcy. … Holiness will come at the end.”
For more information, including a video from the doctor who leads the Lourdes Office of Medical Observations, visit http://en.lourdes-france.org/deepen/cures-and-miracles/danila-castelli.
Pictured: One of the baths at Lourdes, fed by the miraculous spring
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The Lourdes Miracle That Brought a Nobel Prize-Winning Doctor to Faith
Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. By the power of God, she performs miracles not only of healing but also of conversion, as shown in this true story.
From Aleteia
By Lindsay Rudegeair
Dr Carrell was standing behind Marie Bailly when three pitchers of the blessed water were poured over her abdomen …
From the time of the Blessed Mother’s first apparition to Bernadette Soubirous, the water from the Lourdes Grotto has been a source of miraculous healings, both for those who have visited the Grotto and for those who used the water in remote places. Since the time of Bernadette, more than 7,000 miraculous cures have been reported to the Lourdes Medical Bureau by pilgrims who have visited Lourdes (which does not include miracles that have taken place outside of Lourdes).
There were so many purported cures associated with the water and Grotto of Lourdes that the Catholic Church decided to set up the Lourdes Medical Bureau to be constituted by and under the leadership of physicians and scientists alone. The objective of the Bureau is to render a judgment that a particular cure was near instantaneous, efficacious throughout the remainder of life, and in all other ways, scientifically inexplicable. The Bureau is constituted of 20 physicians and scientists. Its records are open to any physician or scientist who wants to make their own investigation or challenge to any particular case recognized as “miraculous.”
Since 1883, only 69 cases have been recognized as “miraculous” according to the strict standards of the Bureau. But this does not mean that the 7,000 other cures were not miraculous by other standards. These cases simply cannot be shown to be completely scientifically inexplicable – though their occurrence could be truly extraordinary and possibly, or even probably, miraculous.
The 69 cases approved by the Lourdes Medical Bureau have been inspected by large numbers of physicians and scientists, and the vast majority of them have been shown to be permanent and inexplicable cures. A list of cures can be found here.
One of the most significant cases was the healing of Marie Bailly. Her case was witnessed by Dr Alexis Carrell, and it eventually brought about his conversion.
The miracle of Marie Bailly
In 1902 a physician friend of Dr. Carrell invited him to help take care of sick patients being transported on a train from Lyons to Lourdes. Carrell, at that time, was an agnostic who did not believe in miracles, but consented to help out, not only because of friendship, but also an interest in what natural causes might be allowing such quick healings as those taking place at Lourdes.
On the train, he encountered Marie Bailly, who was suffering from acute tuberculous peritonitis; her abdomen was considerably distended with large, hard masses. Though Marie Bailly was half-conscious, Carrell believed that she would pass away quite quickly after arriving at Lourdes – if not before. Other physicians on the train agreed with this diagnosis.
When the train arrived at Lourdes, Marie was taken to the Grotto, where three pitchers of water were poured over her distended abdomen. After the first pour, she felt a searing pain, but after the second pour, it was lessened, and after the third pour, she experienced a pleasant sensation. Her stomach began to flatten and her pulse returned to normal.
Carrel was standing behind Marie (along with other physicians) taking notes as the water was poured over her abdomen, and wrote: “The enormously distended and very hard abdomen began to flatten and within 30 minutes it had completely disappeared. No discharge whatsoever was observed from the body.”
Marie then sat up in bed, had dinner (without vomiting), and got out of bed on her own and dressed herself the next day. She then boarded the train, riding on the hard benches, and arrived in Lyons refreshed. Carrel was still interested in her psychological and physical condition, and so asked that she be monitored by a psychiatrist and a physician for four months.
After that, Marie joined the Sisters of Charity – to work with the sick and the poor in a very strenuous life – and died in 1937 at the age of 58.
Carrel’s conversion
When Carrel witnessed this exceedingly rapid and medically inexplicable event, he believed he had seen something like a miracle, but it was difficult for him to part with his former sceptical agnosticism – so he did not yet return to the Catholic faith of his childhood.
Furthermore, he wanted to avoid being a medical witness to a miraculous event because he knew that if it became public it would ruin his career at the medical faculty at Lyons.
Nevertheless, Marie Bailly’s cure seemed so evidently miraculous (being so rapid, complete, and inexplicable) that it became public in the news media in France and throughout the world. Reporters indicated that Carrel did not think the cure was a miracle, which forced Carrel to write a public reply stating that one side (made up of some believers) was jumping to a miraculous conclusion too rapidly and the other side (the medical community) had unjustifiably refused to look at facts that appeared to be miraculous.
As Carrel feared, his advocacy of the possibility of Bailly’s miraculous cure led to an end of his career at the medical faculty of Lyons, which ironically had a very good effect on his future – because it led him to the University of Chicago and then to the Rockefeller University. In 1912, he received the Nobel Prize for his work in vascular anastomosis.
Carrel returned to Lourdes many times, and on one occasion, witnessed a second miracle – the instantaneous cure of an 18-month-old blind boy.
Despite these two miracles, Carrel could not bring himself to conclusively affirm the reality of miracles until 1942, when Carrel announced that he believed in God, the immortality of the soul, and the teachings of the Catholic Church.
Pictured: Alexis Carrel, Nobel Prize Laureate in Physiology or Medicine