Home | A Glimmer of Humanity in a Dark Chapter of History Claims Conference in the Media | Press Inquiries | Publications | Videos | Updates “I never thought that for doing something good but normal one can receive any compensation in this world.” These were the words of Bronislawa Bakun last week upon hearing that she would be recognized by the Claims Conference Righteous Rescuer Pension Fund. Bronislawa lives near the small village of Janów the former shtetl from which my grandfather came It was on a visit that I made to the village last year that I first met her She is not a Holocaust survivor; she bears a title even more rare This small population of people are non-Jews who saved the lives of Jews during the Holocaust risking their own lives and the lives of their families in the process The round-up by the Nazis of 950 Jews from Janów took place on November 2 “The Germans ordered the Poles to load these poor people onto carts and take them to a transfer point from where they were to continue on to Kiełbasin-camp.” The fate of most of the inhabitants of Janów was described in testimony given in 1947 by Abraham Lipcer one of a small number of survivors of the shtetl many were transported to their death in Treblinka My grandfather left Janów around 1920 as a young man making his way across Europe to end up in Ireland A visit to Janów in 1938 was the last time he would see them A photo from that visit shows him sitting amongst the family that remained in Janów I walked the streets where the Jews had lived together with the magnificent wooden synagogue that once stood in the former Jewish area of the village Probably it was at that bimah where my grandfather had stood at his bar mitzvah Among the grass there are a few dozen fragments of weathered matzevot (gravestones) on some of which the barely legible Hebrew writing can be made out A register from 1929 lists all the businesses there many of them with Jewish names including butchers My grandfather’s father and brother-in-law Research turned up a greeting from 1926 by students of the second grade of the school in Janów There is Mottel’s name signed along with her classmates Fifteen postcards and letters spanning 21 years in cramped Yiddish handwriting from his family in Janów to my grandfather tell a story of a hard life right up to the last postcard dated March 24 there is not much left of the former Jewish community had helped the Jews of the town during the Shoah and after a drive through rolling hills we pulled up to a farm sitting outside the house in the sunshine greeted us with a big smile. After telling us about the happy time that she spent as a nanny with a Jewish family in Long Island many years before she then shared with us the story of a darker chapter of our collective history ensuring dignity and honoring those worthy.  Bronislawa’s heroism is now recognized under this program.  I spoke again with Bronislawa in a moving virtual reunion while Claims Conference staff member Gosia Quinkenstein was visiting her to present her with the formal recognition the city with the largest number of Jews in the world reconnected me once again to a tiny village in Poland and brought us back to a dark time when fear and death reigned. Since I first met her might one of those Jews who fled Janów and found temporary shelter with Bronislawa’s family have been Mottel or one of my other family members?  Bronislawa remembers some of the names but hers is not among them Was she one of those cold hungry Jews who found temporary sanctuary in a desperate effort to survive amidst the horrors of the Shoah only later to perish?  Like so many others only fragments of her story remain. In a world of rising antisemitism growing intolerance and emerging threats against the Jewish people also a time to take a moment to remember that the world still contains people who represent the very best of humanity. Gideon Taylor is an extension of the Claims Conference’s commitment to supporting those who risked their lives and the lives of their families to save Jews during the Holocaust This program is facilitated through a collaborative agreement with the German Foreign Ministry The act of saving one life is revered as equivalent to saving the entire world – embracing this ethos the Claims Conference chose to administer this program to honor the bravery of “Righteous Rescuers – non-Jews who saved Jews during World War II Righteous Rescuers have been recognized by many organizations most notably Yad Vashem and the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous Address: PO Box 1215New York, NY 10113 Tel: (646) 536-9100E-mail: info@claimscon.org The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) a nonprofit organization with offices in New York secures material compensation for Holocaust survivors around the world Founded in 1951 by representatives of 23 major international Jewish organizations, the Claims Conference negotiates for and disburses funds to individuals and organizations and seeks the return of Jewish property stolen during the Holocaust. Learn more. All content ⒸConference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) on the altars of Catholic churches around the world the greatest miracle possible takes place: the transformation of bread and wine into the true Body and Blood of Christ we can only touch its true nature with our faith because our senses only perceive bread and wine two weeks after the beatification of Servant of God Fr During the Holy Mass celebrated at the parish church of St a consecrated host fell from the hands of one of the priests during the distribution of Communion The priest interrupted the distribution of Communion and picked up the host placed it in a small container of water—in this case one found in some churches beside the tabernacle where the priest may wash his fingers after distributing Communion The host was expected to dissolve in the water of the Congregation of the Eucharistic Sisters she poured the water and the host into another container Knowing that the consecrated host would take some time to dissolve she placed the new container in the safe located in the parish sacristy Only she and the pastor had the keys to the safe when the pastor asked her about the condition of the host she noticed a delicate aroma of unleavened bread in the middle of the host—which was still largely intact—a curved like a blood stain: a living particle of a body The sister immediately informed the priest who brought in the other priests at the parish and the visiting missionary They were all amazed and left speechless by what they saw They kept a discreet and prudent silence about the event considering its importance; this was a consecrated host which by the power of the words of Christ at the Last Supper it was difficult at that point to define if the altered form of the remainder of the host was the result of an organic growth They immediately notified the metropolitan archbishop of Bialystok who went to Sokolka with the chancellor of the Curia and other diocesan officials They were all deeply moved by what they saw The archbishop ordered that the host be protected while they waited to see what would happen the container with the host was transferred to the Divine Mercy Chapel in the rectory the stained host was taken out of the water and placed on a small corporal The host was kept this way for three years until it was solemnly brought to the church on October 2 the Church authorities reflected on what to do since they were dealing with a sign from God which needed to be interpreted the altered fragment of the host had dried out naturally and remained like a blood stain or clot; since then the archbishop requested histopathological studies be done on the host he created an ecclesial commission to study the phenomenon A piece of the altered host was taken and analyzed independently by two experts in order to ensure the credibility of the results Both are histopathologists at the Medical University of Bialystok The studies were carried out at the university's Department of Pathomorphology The specialists' work was governed by the scientific norms and obligations for analyzing any scientific problem in accordance with the directives of the Scientific Ethics Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences The studies were exhaustively described and photographed The complete documentation was given to the Metropolitan Curia of Bialystok the undissolved part of the consecrated host had become embedded in the cloth This transformed part of the host was dry and fragile inextricably interwoven with the rest of the fragment The sample that was taken was large enough to carry out all the necessary studies The results of both independent studies were in perfect agreement They concluded that the structure of the transformed fragment of the host is identical to the myocardial (heart) tissue of a living person who is nearing death The structure of the heart muscle fibers is deeply intertwined with that of the bread in a way impossible to achieve with human means The studies proved that no foreign substance was added to the consecrated host; rather part of the host took the form of heart muscle of a person near death This kind of phenomenon is inexplicable by the natural sciences the Church teaches us that the consecrated host becomes the Body of Christ by the power of His own words at the Last Supper repeated by priests during the consecration of the Mass The results of the histopathological studies were included in the dossier given to the Metropolitan Curia of Bialystok the Metropolitan Curia of Bialystok stated: "The Sokolka event is not opposed to the faith of the Church; rather the bread is transformed into the Body of Christ this is an invitation for all ministers of the Eucharist to distribute the Body of the Lord with faith and care and for the faithful to receive Him with adoration." Articles like these are sponsored free for every Catholic through the support of generous readers just like you Please make a tax-deductible donation today Help us continue to bring the Gospel to people everywhere through uplifting Catholic news Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker WASHINGTON | All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware." My aunt showed me this quote by German philosopher Martin Buber she had written on the front page of her travel diary as we boarded our plane in New York City for Eastern Europe We didn't realize how true it would be to our voyage plans were made between my dad's sister and our mutual paternal cousin to travel back to "the old country" and see where our ancestors had lived before coming to America (The first to come over on my father's paternal side was my grandfather's uncle in 1871; he changed our family name from Tikotzinski to Epstein.) I have been working on my family's tree for many years so my aunt and cousin decided I should be a part of the trip as well where my grandfather was born (then part of Russia) Our cousin's mother's side of the family was known to have perished outside Panevezys so we would make a pilgrimage there as well Three other major cities were included — Warsaw Lithuania — to give us a chance to see the sites there Warsaw was a major center of Jewish life and culture with one-third of the population consisting of Jews The Jewish community of 394,000 was the largest in both Poland and Europe and second largest in the world the Germans began their anti-Jewish measures — prohibiting Jews from riding in public transportation Thirty percent of Warsaw's population was to be confined to an area that comprised of just 2.4 percent of city lands Christians were moved out of the area as Jews from Warsaw and other outlying areas were moved in and the population of the Warsaw Ghetto reached more than half a million people The ghetto was almost entirely leveled during an uprising in 1943 but a number of streets and buildings survived We spent most of a day at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw where Jan Jagielski gave us a tour of the museum as well as his library archives He had walls full of binders for each city and town in Poland These binders showed photos of the synagogues and yeshivas as well as of some of the Jewish people who lived there We also were shown a screening of "912 Days of the Warsaw Ghetto," a sobering documentary about the ghetto and eventual extermination of the Jews "I can still see their faces" is a project created by Golda Tencer Two rows of old tenement houses in the center of the city show what Warsaw probably looked like before the war and ultimate destruction of the city Tencer appealed for people to send in photographs of Polish Jews so that an exhibition could be created commemorating those who died These large photographs hang on the outer buildings' walls for everyone to see the diversity of Polish Jewry Our first stop in Sokolka was the train station to get our tickets for the next day's trip to Grodno I knew that my great-great-grandfather worked with coal In the lot in front of the station was a huge truck transporting coal; I realized then how special it was to be in this town is in the eastern part of Poland bordering Belarus and is situated on the international road and train route Warsaw-Bialystok-Grodno In the center of town is a museum devoted to the history of Sokolka We saw rooms full of costumes and crafts of the town we walked several blocks to an old cemetery on a hill I stood among the few headstones remaining which were all worn away except for one that still had a faint Hebrew inscription knowing that I had spent the afternoon where my grandfather his father and his father had walked and lived which we had applied for and received before our trip and upon arrival in Grodno we were told we had to buy health insurance for four euros before entering Although the passport agents were very brisk we found that the power of a smile overcame the language barrier Belarus had the highest per capita mortality of the occupied countries in World War II There is a different understanding of the Holocaust there There is no history of pogroms (violent riots) and everyone maintains that they have some Jewish blood in them Belarus became part of the Russian Empire; before that it was Polish it reverted to being part of Poland and in 1939 it fell into Russian hands Grodno was not badly damaged in World War II as it came under German occupation on June 23 1941 — the first day of Operation Barbarossa The city is naturally divided into two districts by the Neman River The left bank district was built up mainly after the war The right bank is comprised of the historical center with architectural and cultural monuments of the 12th to the first half of the 19th centuries My grandfather's seven brothers and sisters came to America from Grodno two at a time I knew where my great- grandparents were buried I had always hoped to see their headstones but we were unsure whether the cemetery was still standing or was in disrepair the cemetery — in the "Zaniemanshi Forshtat" area of Grodno — was in very good condition A caretaker lives on the grounds and the cemetery is behind a wall and locked gate Volunteers have been lifting and resetting the stones that had fallen over We weren't able to find the exact grave locations as the cemetery no longer is organized in aisles and rows of plots but we stood looking over the area where people from that era are buried Beyond our wildest dreams was the stunning connection we were able to make by spending a day with Gregory Hosid who led us to the site of the destroyed Zanemanye wooden synagogue where my grandfather remembered playing in the balcony as a child It stood in what was the Jewish neighborhood of Grodno-Forshtat (" before the city" ) an elevated area on the banks of the Neman River Zanemanye meant "behind the Neman River." We were overcome to be standing where we believed my grandfather lived as a child of how he had jumped from the train that was taking him to the Treblinka death camp and hid in the woods They joined up with the partisans to fight the Germans Hosid took us to the Jewish ghetto and the execution sites of Grodno We saw the Great Synagogue that was built in the 16th century It burned down in 1902 and was rebuilt by the Jewish community My father's mother's family came from Minsk but we had no information other than that so our guides took us to the Belarusian State Museum of the Great Patriotic War which is the world's largest collection of World War II memorabilia general everyday-living items used by the partisans and more We also went to the Jewish ghetto and The Pit a memorial on the site of the main execution pit in Minsk (5,000 Jews were murdered in one day) with a sculpture depicting the victims and saw The Choral Synagogue — the only active synagogue remaining in Vilnius the head of the Jewish community of Panevezys Although we were there for my cousin's family history to "give back to the old country." My cousin showed Kofman her grandmother's passport and photos of her grandparents she had brought with her which he gladly made copies of for their archives Our guide took us to a park which was once the only Jewish cemetery in Panevezys The tombstones had been taken as foundation stones and walkways during the Holocaust but some had been reclaimed and used in a memorial at the site of the cemetery From there we were driven out of town to a dirt road where a sign stated "Jewish Genocide Victims Cemetery." It was here that 8,000 Jews were killed in the pits outside Panevezys Friends asked me why I wasn't going to the concentration camps on this trip In Panevezys it hit me — I wanted to see where my ancestors had lived I had seen the Jewish ghettos in all the cities we were visiting I saw where the Jews were forced to live during the Holocaust not death — to see where and how my family and other Jews lived in the land of my ancestors GetReligion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics But the reporter's task is to let the facts drive the story and to allow the principles of the drama to speak. The writer's craft is then displayed by  having "A sense of the fitness of things, my dear" as Waldo Lydeker observed in Otto Preminger's Laura It courses through all his work by imparting faithfully the facts the setting and the worldview of those involved -- and allows a reader to draw his own conclusions This imperative is made difficult for a wire service reporter who must cram as much as possible into 400 words or less A wire service religion story can hit the right chord but brevity sometimes robs the story of accuracy The balance between pitch and context is illustrated in a miracle story from the Associated Press. On Oct 2 newspapers around the globe ran a brief -- 330 word -- story whose title took some form of: "Catholics in Poland celebrate what they see as miraculous communion wafer." The AP has done a great job in finding the proper editorial voice but the absence of context does not give the general reader enough information to know what is happening The article begins by going through the "what," "where" and "who" says so Roman Catholics in Poland gathered Sunday for a special Mass celebrating what they see as a miracle: the appearance on a communion wafer of a dark spot that they are convinced is part of the heart of Jesus The communion wafer in question developed a brown spot in 2008 after falling on the floor during a Mass in the eastern Polish town of Sokolka Two medical doctors determined that the spot was heart muscle tissue The local archbishop offers his endorsement a brief history is offered and an explanation of Catholic doctrine is presented Bialystok Archbishop Edward Ozorowski said during the Mass that in history the “substance of Christ’s body or blood has become available to the human senses The dark-spotted wafer was carried aloft in a reliquary by a golden-robed priest in a procession and was put on display in the town’s church of St according to a report and footage carried by the TV station TVN Catholics believe that the bread and wine that priests use during the sacrament of communion -- or the Eucharist -- are changed into the body and blood of Jesus Christ The wafer was dropped by a priest celebrating communion in 2008 the priest placed the wafer in water to dissolve it Several days later a nun found that the wafer had not dissolved completely It winds toward a close by stating the miracle has not been confirmed by the Vatican and ends with the wry twist of local skeptics asking the police to investigate the Vatican is still examining the matter and has not yet officially decided whether to declare it a miracle A group of rationalists complained about the matter in 2008 and called on authorities to investigate if a murder or other crime was involved if human flesh was indeed found on the wafer Police say they have no evidence of any crime It is respectful to the Catholic principals while also giving skeptics the opportunity to scoff a surface reading of the story presents a quibble: "local" should have been inserted before "church" in the second sentence as we are not told until the end of the article that the Vatican has not yet ruled on this matter It the deeper issues of context and accuracy that troubles me The statement about what Roman Catholics believe happens in the Eucharist is true as far it goes but it is incomplete in explaining the theological importance of this story -- the "so what" factor Catholics believe that in the celebration of the Eucharist the the bread and wine are substantially changed into the body and blood of Christ by means of the consecratory Eucharistic Prayer The accidents -- the outward appearance of the bread and wine -- remain the same This change in substance is called transubstantiation What is claimed by the Catholic Church in Sokolka is a second, extraordinary Eucharistic miracle where the accidents have been changed also. In his Summa Theologica III Thomas Aquinas explains this second miracle by stating: (W)hile the dimensions remain the same as before there is a miraculous change wrought in the other accidents because it is done "to represent the truth," namely to show by this miraculous apparition that Christ's body and blood are truly in this sacrament And thus it is clear that as the dimensions remain which are the foundation of the other accidents the body of Christ truly remains in this sacrament Eucharistic miracles have been recorded in the past. A 2005 story in Zenit (one of the best Roman Catholic news services) describes a conference that offered the results of an investigation into the 8th century miracle at the Church of St who had doubts about the real presence of Christ in consecrated elements When he pronounced the words of the consecration the host was miraculously changed into physical flesh and the wine into physical blood The blood and flesh were preserved and these relics were examined by anatomists in 1971 who pronounced the flesh as being cardiac tissue An informed reader would have been aware of the significance of the second extraordinary Eucharistic miracle repoted in Sokolka and may have heard of the Lanciano miracle a general reader is not likely to have been aware of this background On 7 January 2009 the sample from the Host has been taken and examined independently by two professionals in pathomorphology of Medical University in Bialystok They have issued a common statement as follows: "the sample sent to assess (...) in our opinion (prof Stanislaw Sulkowski) looks like the myocardial tissue at least of all the tissues of living organisms it most resembles." The miraculous host "looks like" heart tissue is not the same thing as saying it "is" heart tissue The Bialystock metropolitan curial report states the files had been passed to Warsaw for review The Case of Sokolka does not oppose to the faith of the Church Church believes that the words of consecration transform a bread into the Body of Christ and wine into His Blood It also provides a call to ministers of the Holy Communion to distribute the Body of Christ with faith and attention and to faithful - to receive It with reverence In other words the report found that it could be true and belief that it is true is not contrary to the Catholic faith but the Vatican must make the final decision The AP story gives the impression that this is a new miracle (it isn't) that the scientific evidence says it is true (no it does not) and that the Catholic Church has an official view of the miracle (it does not) I do not expect a wire service story to offer Catholic catechesis nor to smack the story down as the ignorant vaporings of the Polish peasantry Would the story have been improved by the addition of a few words of historical and theological context and a dash of nuance Or is it impossible in this post-modernist age to be balanced © var today = new Date(); document.write(today.getFullYear()); GetReligion.org unless otherwise noted.All rights reserved Poland — Roman Catholics in Poland gathered Sunday for a special Mass celebrating what they see as a miracle: the appearance on a communion wafer of a dark spot that they are convinced is part of the heart of Jesus the "substance of Christ's body or blood has become available to the human senses nothing is impossible," Ozorowski said The dark-spotted wafer was carried aloft in a reliquary by a golden-robed priest in a procession and was put on display in the town's church of St Catholics believe that the bread and wine that priests use during the sacrament of communion — or the Eucharist — are changed into the body and blood of Jesus Christ The nun's discovery sparked huge interest among the faithful in this deeply Roman Catholic country sparking large numbers to flock to Sokolka Though some believers consider the object miraculous This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page Another edition of the Polish Billiards Championships has become history this time brought a lot of emotions to fans of this sport The competition ended with a 9-ball tournament won by Mieszko Fortuński Mieszko Fortuński eliminated Tomasz Kapłan and then in the game for the final he had to face Wojciech Szewczyk The Fortuński defeated Szewczyk 9:7 in the semifinals On the other side of the bracket were Daniel Macioł and Mateusz Śniegocki This match for entering the final ended with the victory 9:4 The final 9-ball competition was the highlight of the entire tournament He sealed his victory over Macioł 9:6 in great style with an almost artistic finish of a very difficult arrangement in the last set Izabella Jońska won the semi-finals of the 9-ball variety The bronze medalist in 8-ball defeated Katarzyna Wesołowska 6:4 in the match to advance to the medal zone In order to get to the final battle for the gold medal And so it happened – Jońska won 6:5 and reported to the final where Oliwia Zalewska was already waiting for her Jońska lost the game for the gold in 9-ball 2:6 and finished the tournament with silver The MVP of the Polish Billiard Championships – Kielce 2024 was Konrad Juszczyszyn (Baribal Lubin) a TOYOTA C-HR HSD – GR SPORT passenger car which the best player will use for the next 12 months Juszczyszyn will receive a nomination for the 2025 European Championships and funding for starts in two Euro-Tour tournaments The total value of the prizes is PLN 55,000 The Polish Championships also decided the competition within the Polish Ranking the prize for winning the Polish Ranking went to Oliwia Zalewska The medal classification was won by Nosan Kielce Polish Billiard Championship Medals – Kielce 2024: Go to discussion... © AZBilliards.com EPPA inc. 1998-2025 All Rights Reserved. Site design by GRIN tech we had something happen,” Father Joseph Crowley told the congregation March 5 near the end of Mass at St a parish once pastored by Knights of Columbus founder Blessed Michael McGivney speaking to those at Mass and watching the parish’s livestream “One of our Eucharistic ministers was running out of hosts Suddenly there were more hosts in the ciborium God duplicated himself in the ciborium.” “It just happened today,” he said The alleged duplication of the Eucharist is now under investigation by the Holy See’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith as a potential Eucharistic miracle it would join about 100 church-recognized Eucharistic miracles including a miracle in rural Honduras approved in July by Bishop Walter Guillén Soto of Gracias Four others have been recognized in the 21st century according to the California-based Magis Center While some recognized Eucharistic miracles involve circumstances like multiplication others involve the Eucharistic host taking on characteristics of blood or flesh three such miracles — two in Poland and one in Mexico — have been recognized by bishops overseeing the dioceses where they occurred a religious sister was distributing Communion at a retreat when a host she was holding appeared to begin to bleed The host was given to a team of scientists to study and their analysis reportedly found the reddish substance “corresponds to blood in which there are hemoglobin and DNA of human origin.” a consecrated host the priest dropped during Communion was placed in water to dissolve and it was locked in a safe in the sacristy which she discovered to have a red stain on it The host was removed from the water and as it dried the stain ultimately appeared to look more like a wound It was studied and found to include myocardial tissue that was inexplicably interwoven with the bread fibers A similar alleged miracle took place five years later across Poland in Legnica A consecrated host that dropped on the floor was placed in water Several research institutions examined the host with the Department of Forensic Medicine in Szczecin stating the specimen contained “cross-striated muscle,” most similar to heart tissue that had undergone significant stress Bishop Zbigniew Kiernikowski of Legnica approved the miracle for veneration in 2016 Honduran Bishop Soto confirmed an alleged miracle that occurred in a small rural parish with no resident priest an extraordinary minister of holy Communion opened the parish’s tabernacle to remove the wooden ciborium containing the Eucharist and discovered dark stains on the corporal The cloth was studied in October 2022 by a toxicology center in Tegucigalpa and according to the news agency ACI Prensa the stain was determined to be human blood of AB blood type with a positive Rh factor “the scientific evidence and the notarized oaths of the witnesses were collected and sent to the Vatican for further investigation” at the request of apostolic nuncio in Honduras the Lord chooses to manifest himself,” Bishop Soto told ACI Prensa Eucharistic miracle experts also frequently point to two other alleged miracles — one in Buenos Aires in 1996 where a desecrated host left in water in the tabernacle to decompose reportedly turned to bloody tissue where during Mass the consecrated body and blood of Christ became visibly flesh and blood Both miracles have undergone scientific analysis with results reportedly indicating the substance included human heart tissue as archbishop of Buenos Aires initiated the investigation of the 1996 miracle “The Lord passed and left his mark.” especially those that have been scientifically studied may inspire or bolster faith in people who need “a little bit of empirical verification” for the Real Presence which includes information about Eucharistic miracles among popular topics on its website Father Spitzer said that “good lab tests” on alleged Eucharistic miracles can help “convince a skeptical generation that’s scientifically clued-in” — particularly young people — that the Eucharist is truly Jesus’ body and blood He said that kind of evidence is available in the lab reports from the miracles at Buenos Aires “If you put together all the scientific data from those reports … it really forms a strong preponderance of evidence for authenticity — that human heart tissue from the region of the upper left ventricle is growing out of the substance of the host integrated with the consecrated host on the level of the thin filaments of the myofibrils a few microns of separation,” he told OSV News is on the Magis Center’s board of advisers and presents on the science behind the recognized 21st-century Eucharistic miracles He said those miracles show heart tissue and the presence of white blood cells which do not ordinarily live outside of the body beyond 30 minutes all scientifically studied Eucharistic miracles indicate the presence of the rare AB blood group the same blood group found on the Shroud of Turin Part of French’s motivation is a 2019 Pew Research Center survey that found 69% of Catholics don’t believe in the Real Presence “That’s why there’s all these Eucharistic miracles: God is shouting it to us And so that’s it: People need to hear it … particularly our youth,” he said scientific queries have shown that visible changes to a consecrated host are natural Paul and Minneapolis and in 2015 in the Diocese of Salt Lake City biological analyses of consecrated hosts with red staining determined the cause to be fungus which some skeptics say could be the cause of other alleged Eucharistic miracles Michael O’Neill — known as “The Miracle Hunter,” with a show by the same name on EWTN — said that when an alleged miracle occurs the diocesan bishop may choose whether to investigate it whether to approve the event as a miracle worthy of belief where we must put in some faith to really believe a miracle is happening,” he told OSV News “But when it comes to miracles that are the most scientifically testable Eucharistic miracles are remarkable and unique because we can see a true miracle really happening O’Neill is in the midst of a documentary project with interviews of experts and scientists who have studied the miracles at Lanciano He said the project has special relevance for the National Eucharistic Revival bishops underway to inspire greater understanding of and reverence for the Real Presence The documentary — and O’Neill’s accompanying book — are expected to be available ahead of the 2024 National Eucharistic Congress While Eucharistic miracles have been getting more attention through the revival including through the International Eucharistic Miracles of the World exhibit a traveling exhibit of Eucharistic miracles initially cataloged online by Blessed Carlo Acutis they fall under the category of private revelation and Catholics are not required to believe in them He emphasized that the most important miracle is the miracle of transubstantiation that occurs at every Mass — the bread and wine becoming Jesus Christ in his body and blood “That is the true miracle and that’s what Catholics are to believe — that’s a dogma of our faith,” O’Neill said “When it comes to Eucharistic miracles we might say it’s a miracle on top of a miracle It’s just a little bit of a bonus that God gives us because it is the hardest of all Catholic beliefs — that God would humble himself and make himself present to us in something that can be eaten.” cautions people from basing their faith solely in these miracles In the 2021 book “Behold It is I: Scripture and Science on the Real Presence” that Trasancos co-wrote with Father George Elliott of the Diocese of Tyler she examined the lab reports from analyses of the miracles at Lanciano and Buenos Aires and she said their results were less conclusive than reported “We’re Catholics and we’re after the truth,” Trasancos told OSV News “We don’t have to make exaggerations We don’t have to be ambiguous about the scientific data We don’t have to be afraid of what the science might reveal.” She said some oft-repeated narratives about some Eucharistic miracles also aren’t accurate such as a claim that a scientific commission appointed in 1973 by the World Health Organization conducted 500 tests on the Lanciano miracle and remained baffled by their results author of the 2021 book “A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles,” who reviewed the supposed WHO report to discover it was actually data from tests of Egyptian mummies placed between two pages about the Lanciano miracle If the church wants to promote the scientific basis for accepting Eucharistic miracles Trasancos advises the miracles be restudied with the same rigorous standards of proof and that scientists devise a standard set of procedures for the study of future reported miracles If the results show that there are natural “We don’t really need these miracles to be true in order for us to believe in the Real Presence,” she said “Our faith in the real presence ought to be primarily based on our faith in Jesus Christ.” Despite the weaknesses of individual tests “seems to suggest that now we’re crossing a threshold where it’s not unreasonable to believe that there really is living heart tissue growing out of these consecrated hosts.” “It’s not ‘proof,” he said “All we’re saying is there’s scientifically investigated evidence that supports probabilistic evidence — that is to say it supports a reasonable and responsible belief.” Your email will be used to send you The Tablet newsletter. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in our emails. For more details, review our privacy policy. More info Create your free account or log in to continue reading The Tablet is the newspaper of the Diocese of Brooklyn, serving Brooklyn and Queens since 1908.© 2025 DeSales Media Group, Inc. Website by 345 Design ' + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.webview_notification_text + ' " + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.redirect_overlay_title + " " + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.redirect_overlay_text + " Home - Sacraments - Scientific Evidence of Eucharistic Miracles It's a book that includes more than 40 photographs of miracles and scientific conclusions explaining what happened The book's title roughly translates to: 'Secret Evidence: Investigating the Supernatural.' Gazergorz Gorny and photographer Janusz Rosikon are very proud of the final product The first registered Eucharistic miracle of the 21st century took place in the Polish city of Sokolka on October 12 when a priest accidentally dropped a consecrated Host He then picked it up and placed it in water they turned out to be traces of heart tissue The second miracle happened in 2013 in  Legnica This event marked the first public exhibit of the newly published book The authors are hoping for a second exhibit in the Italian city of Lanciano  since the first registered Eucharistic miracle happened in that very city Grupa Granica claim activists simply gave humanitarian aid to family stranded in border forest amid deepening refugee crisis They currently face three months of pre-trial arrest “When they helped refugees from Ukraine they were heroes, now for providing that same help in Podlasie, they are criminals,” said Grupa Granica, an organisation helping migrants and refugees, to which the detained activists belong. The organisation said the activists were providing humanitarian aid to a family with seven children who had been stuck at the border for three months. Read more“The family had been in the forest for many days The activists saved their lives by providing transport in their cars,” the organisation said “The accusations are absurd because none of the activists helped anyone cross the border The aid they provided prevented exhausted people from dying on Polish territory.” told Polish press that he hopes his clients will not face pre-trial detention a measure he believes is unnecessary at this point I read with great interest your column on the Eucharistic miracle that Pope Francis approved when he was a bishop in Buenos Aires in 1996 Now a friend tells me there has been another miracle in Poland with similar scientific findings The miracle took place in 2008 in the town of Sokołka On 12 October 2008 in the church of St Anthony of Padua accidentally dropped a consecrated host during Mass placed it in a vessel of water and put it in the tabernacle to place the host and water in a glass bowl and put it in the safe in the sacristy Fr Stanislaw asked the sacristan if the host had dissolved and when Sr Julia opened the safe she discovered that there was a red stain on the host which looked like blood A few days later the Archbishop went with his Chancellor to see the host and on 29 October he asked Fr Stanislaw to take the host out of the water and lay it on a linen corporal which he then placed in the tabernacle of the chapel in the priests’ house The Archbishop appointed a special commission to investigate the matter with the aim of determining whether anyone had interfered with the host On 5 January 2009 he asked two pathomorphologists from the Medical University of Bialystok to conduct a scientific examination of the host Professor Sobaniec-Lotowska and Professor Sulkowski hold chairs in different departments of the university and have published widely in their fields having worked as specialists for over thirty years and others Professor Sobaniec-Lotowska removed a small piece of the host brownish in colour and with remains of the communion host attached After analysing the material under an electron microscope the two professors reported that it consisted entirely of cardiac tissue Various aspects of the material made them certain that it was indeed heart muscle tissue Professor Sobaniec-Lotowska described the sample as heart muscle This is proved by the presentation of a very strong phenomenon of ‘segmentation’ or damage to myocardial fibres at the site of the intercalated discs Such changes can be observed only in living fibres and they show evidence of rapid spasms of the heart muscle in the period just before death.” Professor Sobaniec-Lotowska elaborated on this finding: “The cardiac impact had been recent The sample analysed was not from a dead person he would die.” Pointing to a photograph of the tissue she repeated her amazement that even though it had been in water for weeks the cardiac tissue was still visible She said that if it had been in water even for one week it would not be visible The professors were also amazed that there had been no autolysis the process whereby a cell is destroyed by its own enzymes when the organism is injured or dying In their opinion there was no scientific explanation for this phenomenon “What is even more difficult to comprehend” Please believe me that even if someone intended to tamper with the sample it would be impossible to bind the two pieces of matter in such an indissoluble way.” So once again a communion host has been miraculously transformed into living heart tissue readily identifiable under an electron microscope and the tissue shows signs of great stress God is obviously going to great lengths to confirm the truth of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist The Catholic Leader is an Australian award-winning Catholic newspaper that has been published by the Archdiocese of Brisbane since 1929 accurate and balanced Catholic perspective of local national and international news while upholding the dignity of the human person We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians who have walked upon and cared for this land for thousands of years We acknowledge the continued deep spiritual attachment and relationship of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to this country and commit ourselves to the ongoing journey of Reconciliation Copyright © All Rights Reserved The Catholic Leader Poland — In his campaign to negotiate a new deal for the U.K David Cameron is taking aim at Tomasz Bancerek’s customers That’s because the U.K. prime minister’s goal of limiting benefits paid to migrants coming to Britain from other EU countries is in large part directed at the million or so Poles who have flooded into the U.K over the 12 years since Poland joined the EU in the process becoming the largest community of foreign citizens in Britain Those are the people Bancerek drives in his minibus as he makes his twice-weekly 20-hour a town of 18,000 hard by Poland’s eastern border with Belarus “People prefer the door-to-door service,” said Bancerek as he loaded his van decorated with a British flag and a “Sokółka-London” sign And he’s got some bad news for Cameron. His clients aren’t in the U.K. solely to take advantage of the country’s social benefits and they’ve got no intention of giving up a life that earns them significantly higher pay than they’d be able to make at home it’s hard to make a decent living around here,” said Ewa Unemployment in the region around Sokółka is 15 percent significantly higher than the national average of 10.3 percent The average pre-tax monthly salary in the region is 3,348 złotys (€760) That’s only a fraction of what a worker can make in London. The average salary for a construction worker in the U.K is £30,806 a year — that works out to 14,530 złotys a month an unimaginable salary for a Polish worker who stays home in Sokółka It is the difference in wages — not social benefits — that motivates Poles to go are among the reasons the birthrate among Polish women in the U.K is higher than in Poland — which has one of the EU’s lowest fertility rates That’s the case even though Poland’s cost of living is much lower than the U.K.’s Marta Kownacka is a stay-at-home mother in Sokółka Her husband also owns a transport business between Poland and the U.K. The couple met in Britain and recently moved back to Poland to raise their children closer to extended family The sight of divided families — where one parent is working abroad — is less common in Poland than when the borders first opened The (mostly male) migrants who travel back and forth to provide for their families are nicknamed “sailors.” whose children are over 18,” said Kownacka The draw of higher salaries keeps pulling Poles into the U.K — to the frustration of locals who have to compete against Polish workers It’s that irritation that is driving Cameron’s hunt for a way to stem the labor migration to the U.K. from poorer Central Europe. In negotiations with European Council President Donald Tusk (a former Polish prime minister), Cameron has tacit approval for an “emergency brake” on benefits for new EU migrants That still has to get the nod from the 27 other EU leaders at this week’s summit, which is why Cameron has been making the rounds of regional leaders like Poland’s Prime Minister Beata Szydło In meetings with Szydło and with Jarosław Kaczyński the leader of the ruling Law and Justice party and Poland’s most powerful politician the Poles made it clear they won’t countenance any steps that affect the benefits of EU migrants already in the U.K The Polish government wants to be seen to be protecting the rights of Poles in Britain — a cause especially important in its heartland of eastern Poland religious and socially conservative population has long been a bulwark for Law and Justice But the increasingly friendless government in Warsaw has also said that London will be Poland’s leading EU ally and wants help in pushing through the permanent stationing of NATO troops in the region you need to offer something and we simply cannot compete with British wages” — Adam Łajkowski “A lot of political capital has been invested in the relationship between the new government and the U.K.,” said Przemysław Biskup a lecturer in Polish-British relations at the University of Warsaw Away from the high politics of Law and Justice’s relationship with Britain’s Conservatives and Poland’s assessment of the threat posed by Russia people on the ground in places like Sokółka still calculate that it makes sense for them to move Of course they will happily take the more generous family benefits they get from the U.K they take them if they know how,” said Bancerek It’s like questioning if someone should have the right to take out his pension,” added his co-driver But that’s not the reason so many have left the birch forests and endless horizons of eastern Poland for the U.K “Would I leave my own family and go to a foreign country to sit at home on benefits?” asked Andrzej Bujniacki And the debate about benefits in London and in Brussels won’t stop that benefits will not affect people from leaving here in any way,” said Adam Łajkowski of Sokółka’s mayoral office you need to offer something and we simply cannot compete with British wages.” There’s no prospect of salaries quadrupling in eastern Poland So despite the drumbeat of negative coverage from U.K tabloids deploring what they call “benefit tourism,” Bancerek doesn’t foresee a quick end to the service he provides even if the atmosphere for Poles in the U.K people would ask me if Brits don’t like Poles,” said Bancerek Also On POLITICO Great benefits reform swindle By Emmet Livingstone Brussels turned a blind eye to many of Chisinau’s misdeeds Several countries around the world are building walls to check the movement of the refugees who have been forced to flee due to conflict Poland has started to build a wall along its frontier with Belarus to prevent asylum seekers from entering the country This wall cuts through a protected forest and UNESCO world heritage site The 5.5-metre-high wall will run along 186 kilometres (115 miles) of the border which is almost half the length of the border shared by the two countries It will cost €353m (£293m) and will get completed in June It will also be equipped with thermal cameras and motion detectors