Blessed Carlo Acutis had conceived and created a beautiful traveling exhibition on Eucharistic Miracles. This exhibition continues to travel throughout Italy and the world; all the Eucharistic miracles featured in the exhibition have been compiled in the book Eucharistic Miracles in the World, from which this text is taken.
A seventeenth-century marble inscription describes this Eucharistic miracle that occurred in Lanciano (CH) in 750, at the Church of Saint Francis.
“A priest-monk doubted whether the consecrated host truly contained the body of our Lord.
He celebrated Mass and, after saying the words of consecration, saw the host become flesh and the wine become blood.
Everything was shown to those present.
The flesh is still intact, and the blood is divided into five unequal parts, all of which together weigh as much as each part does separately.”
In 1970, the Archbishop of Lanciano and the provincial minister of the Conventual Franciscans of Abruzzo, with authorization from Rome, commissioned Dr. Edoardo Linoli, head of the Arezzo hospital and professor of anatomy, histology, chemistry, and clinical microscopy, to conduct an in-depth scientific examination of the relics of the miracle that had occurred twelve centuries earlier. On March 4, 1971, the professor presented a detailed report on the various studies carried out. Here are the essential conclusions.
1. The “miraculous flesh” is truly flesh consisting of the striated muscle tissue of the myocardium.
2. The “miraculous blood” is real blood: chromatographic analysis proves this with absolute and indisputable certainty.
3. Immunological study shows that the flesh and blood are certainly of human origin, and immunohematological testing makes it possible to state with complete objectivity and certainty that both belong to the same blood group, AB, the same group as that of the man of the Shroud and characteristic of Middle Eastern populations.
4. The proteins contained in the blood are normally distributed, in the same percentages as those in the serum protein profile of fresh normal blood.
5. No histological section revealed any trace of infiltration by salts or preservatives used in antiquity for the purpose of mummification.
This report was published in Quaderni Sclavo in Diagnostica (issue 3, 1971) and aroused great interest in the scientific community. Also in 1973, the Supreme Council of the World Health Organization appointed a scientific commission to verify Linoli's conclusions. The work lasted fifteen months and involved 500 examinations. The investigations were the same as those carried out by Professor Linoli, with additional tests. More precisely, it was stated that the fragments taken from Lanciano could not be classified as mummified tissue. As for the nature of the piece of flesh, the commission declared that it was living tissue because it responded rapidly to all the clinical reactions characteristic of living beings. The flesh and blood of Lanciano are therefore exactly as they would have been if they had been taken that same day from a living person. In the summary excerpt of the scientific work of the WHO and UN Medical Commission, published in December 1976 in New York and Geneva, it was stated that science, aware of its limitations, stopped before the impossibility of providing an explanation.
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