Such
was the case for Saint Bernadette of Lourdes. She was
born to a poor family in 1844.
After a miserable life of maladies including
asthma and tuberculosis she died at the age of 35 in
1879. Some thirty years later the body was dug up and
it was found to everyone's amazement that her body had not
decomposed, in fact, she hadn't even lost the color from her
face. She looked the same as the day she died and it
was now thirty years later.
They cleaned her up and put new clothes on her and put her back in the ground in a new casket. And ten years later, in 1919, they dug her up once more to find that she had not decomposed one bit. It was at this time she was pronounced a Saint of the Catholic Church and was fitted with a beautiful glass and gold coffin and put on display at the Chapel of Saint Bernadette at the motherhouse in Nevers.
The next story in our focus on Strange Saints is: The changing of the crystallized blood of a saint that has been dead for 1600 years. His name was St. Gennaro.
For
the last 600 years they have kept the crystallized blood of
this saint in a glass vial in Nepals Cathedral. Twice
a year, the first being the first Saturday in May and the
second being September 19th, the feasting day of the saints,
they gather and pray hard for an hour or so.
When they are done praying, this vial of
powdered blood has turned into liquid blood.
This has been done twice yearly for over 600 years. The only times that the blood has failed to liquefy inside the vial were times of great catastrophe. One of these times was when there was a great plague that killed over 40,000 people. Another time the blood failed to liquefy was when there was an earthquake that killed 3000 people in Italy.
This was sent in by Addie: BLESSED ANNA MARIA TAIGI, 1769
-1837 Mention must
be made here, Of the "mysterious sun" which she
first saw in This and
other similar stories can be found in the
fascinating book, " |
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