Saints whose bodies are incorrupt after buried... for centuries

[distracted]

Very interesting information at this site:

catholicapologetics.info/library/gallery/incorrupt/incorrupt.htm

 

[doanli]

Amazing!

 

[Mijoy2]

Are there any examples of people, who are not declared saints by the church, incorrupt? Without extreme measures having been met I mean. Such as placed in a vacumm or frozen or whatever.

 

[LoyalViews]

Thanks! Amazing!

 

[Lutheranteach]

Are there any examples of people, who are not declared saints by the church, incorrupt? Without extreme measures having been met I mean. Such as placed in a vacumm or frozen or whatever.

Yes. Quite a few

 

[koshakoji]

I think I remember reading about a Buddhist Monk a few years ago who died in the early 20th Century whose body was incorruptible.
I wonder if there are any "non-religious"people whose bodies didn’t decay though.

 

[benidict]

Yes. Quite a few

interesting my friend. who? ive only seen this with Holy People connected with the Catholic Church. ok i understand mummys in egypt, and such. but some of these Saints, have not decayed at all. Peace

 

[LaSalle]

Quite amazing.

I wonder if this just happens within catholicism. It’ll be pretty amazing if it does.

So where’s St John of the Cross’ body?

 

[Hesychios]

I wouldn’t get too worked up over this particular phenomena. Early Christians were likely to be impressed but most saints by an overwhelming margin throughout history in fact are not incorrupt by any definition.

Also, they do not retain a naturally supple state, or retain a lifelike color, and usually are not nice to look at.

There have also been attempts to fake it, which the Vatican is aware of and looks for when it does investigations.

Then there is the fact that the phenomena appears outside of Christianity, probably as often.

There are a lot of reasons a corpse might not seem ‘corrupted’ to the lay observer. I am not a medical professional but I gleaned a few things over time from different sources. Others may have more to say on it.

There are two big contributors that I am aware of to corruption in nature (aside from being attacked by worms and such). One is the large body of bacteria in the intestines. This will spread from there to engulf any moist part of the body after the immune system shuts down.

Some victims die after serious bouts with a disease which empties their bowels. Some can only sip broth until death overtakes them. The death might even be hastened by some (now outdated) medical treatments, some of which might kill the natural flora in one’s digestive track. The death can be very unpleasant but that also impedes the corruption process later.

Fungus is the other major attacker of corpses, and this accounts for most of the damage that happens after the bacterial breakdown is not possible. In most tombs this can go on for years until even bones might be eaten.

Fungus doesn’t always take hold for a variety of reasons.

Sometimes the encasing materials or location might act as a natural desiccant. Sometimes the tomb’s temperature can affect the process.

When the person is from a religious order the possibility that the body will be well cared for is pretty good. It may be nicely washed (which may or may not affect the corruption process) and redressed in nice fabrics, perhaps buried with flowers and spices or incense and encased in more than one type of casket. The tomb may be of any type of stone and it’s location may be fairly dry.

Of course, we must not discount the possible intervention of God, but this uncorrupted corpse phenomena happens often enough outside of the church that it is not a guarantee of anything certain.

 

[Bob_Crowley]

To me it seems to happen too often to declared saints to be merely coincidence. Mind you not many of them have the almost complete incorruption of St. Bernadette Soubirous or St. Maria Goretti.

I’m not a great fan of relics. I think however that the incorruption of some saints is a sign, but it’s a sign for believers. An atheist could look at St. Maria Goretti for example, and think the whole thing was a fraud. In other words, seeing would not be believing. A Protestant could look at her and think the same thing, because he or she is hostile to Catholicism.

It helps to affirm the faith of believers, while standing as a silent witness to the unbelief of others.

 

[Mijoy2]

interesting my friend. who? ive only seen this with Holy People connected with the Catholic Church. ok i understand mummys in egypt, and such. but some of these Saints, have not decayed at all. Peace

Is this true. No others, if we disregard extreme favorable natural or man induced causes?

 

[crazzeto]

Totally amazing! Completely astounded by St. Silvan! Other than the wound on his neck, it almost looks like he could get up and start walking around! All the way from the fourth century!

 

[Mayita30]

interesting topic. It made me remeber when I saw St. Clare’s incorrupted body. Truly amazing!!!

In the future, I would want to see St. Bernadette. She is such a beautiful saint.

 

[KathleenGee]

St. Bernadette asked Mary her name, and she answered, “I am the Immaculate Conception”…before the dogma…1800 years debating Mary’s conception without sin.

St. Bernadette’s body speaks to us…she becomes more beautiful in reference to our earthly linear time the longer she is in heaven.

Her priest said she never lost her baptismal innocence, meaning she never wanted to sin.

For me, St. Bernadette and her body are the answer to those who refute the Immaculate Conception.

 

[Bob_Crowley]

St. Bernadette asked Mary her name, and she answered, “I am the Immaculate Conception”…before the dogma…1800 years debating Mary’s conception without sin.

St. Bernadette’s body speaks to us…she becomes more beautiful in reference to our earthly linear time the longer she is in heaven.

Her priest said she never lost her baptismal innocence, meaning she never wanted to sin.

For me, St. Bernadette and her body are the answer to those who refute the Immaculate Conception.

Sorry, but it was after the dogma, not before. From Wikipedia …

“According to Bernadette’s account, during that same visitation that she claimed, she again asked the lady her name but the lady just smiled back. She repeated the question three more times and finally heard the lady say, in Gascon Occitan, “I am the Immaculate Conception” (Qué soï era immaculado councepcioũ, a phonetic transcription of Que soi era immaculada concepcion). Four years earlier, Pope Pius IX had defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception; that, alone of all human beings who have ever lived (save for Jesus, Adam, and Eve), the Virgin Mary was conceived without the stain of original sin. Her parents, teachers and priests all later testified that she had never previously heard the expression ‘immaculate conception’ from them.”

Bernadette was nearly illiterate and had difficulty writing her own name. She lived in a backwoods village, and certainly would not have been au fait with the latest theological pontifications from the Vatican, even four years after the dogma had been proclaimed.

For an informative article on this issue, see the essay by Bishop Fulton Sheen which is included at the following link -

freerepublic.com/focus/news/2298170/posts

 

[crazzeto]

Bob is correct,

But this remains a miricle non-the-less because St. Bernadette could not have known about the very recent doctrinal declaration of the eccumenical council. She was a poor farmer girl, with aboslutly no means to obtain this information (hey, I hear they didn’t have facebook back then! Freaky!).

So I hear what you’re saying Bob, technically the doctrine was declared first. But it really doesn’t take away from what happened here at all, or even really change the nature all that much.

 

[KathleenGee]

I was not sure if the dogma came before or after…but she was totally not knowledgeable of the current theological debates, being a 14 year old asthmatic who lived in a former city jail, her family very poor.

Not only that, but Mary appeared next to a garbage dump. So out of the dump what we have remaining are the healing waters of Lourdes and the corpus of St. Bernadette that seems to become more beautiful with the passing of time.

Protestants use Scripture quotes to disprove Catholic doctrine. But the Holy Spirit was promised by Christ to help the Apostles, and continuing helping through their successors…

The next chapter in Salvation History comes after Revelations, the Kingdom of Christ found in the faith of the believers, Word Made Flesh…and you really can’t honestly debate Scripture without the expression of Jesus Christ and His mission found in His followers…who have a testimony incarnated with the Word of God.

 

[distracted]

To me it seems to happen too often to declared saints to be merely coincidence. Mind you not many of them have the almost complete incorruption of St. Bernadette Soubirous or St. Maria Goretti.

I’m not a great fan of relics. I think however that the incorruption of some saints is a sign, but it’s a sign for believers. An atheist could look at St. Maria Goretti for example, and think the whole thing was a fraud. In other words, seeing would not be believing. A Protestant could look at her and think the same thing, because he or she is hostile to Catholicism.

It helps to affirm the faith of believers, while standing as a silent witness to the unbelief of others.

i will never believe that someone can see such things or hear about such things and not … wonder…

a person must be really blinded by the evil one… and sin… to totally dismiss such things as the incorrupt bodies of people who have been dead for centuries…

 

[benidict]

Is this true. No others, if we disregard extreme favorable natural or man induced causes?

hi mijoy. apart from man induced causes, such as embalming fluids, i really have never heard of this outside of the Catholic Saints. so i really do not know. but another poster made a very good point. it does happen too often to declared st.s to be mere coincidence. also, no one has mentioned any outside the Catholic Church this has happened to. i will have to research this and find out i guess. Peace

 

[Bob_Crowley]

i will never believe that someone can see such things or hear about such things and not … wonder…

a person must be really blinded by the evil one… and sin… to totally dismiss such things as the incorrupt bodies of people who have been dead for centuries…

I myself had the peculiar experience of my father appearing in my room the night he died. He started with an apology, we argued and conversed, and at the end he gave this terrifyng scream and disappeared. Four days later one of my uncles turned up to tell me he’d died four days before. I still remember turning towards the bedroom and thinking, “What the hell was that the other night??”.

But then I dismissed it. I was an atheist at the time, and my next thought was, “Nah! I don’t believe in things like that. It must have been a bad dream or something.”

And that was despite the fact that during the episode I actually asked the question, "What is this? A dream or something?’ My father even looked a bit bemused, and replied “No, it’s not a dream. I died tonight.”

As Christ said, “A man is as he thinks”. I’ll tell you now that atheists, and hardline anti-Catholic Protestants, will dismiss the evidence of incorrupt bodies of saints, for the simple reason that they “don’t believe in those things.”