Miracle in Missouri.

Hundreds of curious onlookers from near and far come to see the “miracle in Missouri”, and the phenomenon at the monastery has caught the attention of CNN.

Even after four years after its death, it appears intact, not everyone sees it for the miracle it is
People pray near the body of Sister Wilhelmina on Sunday, May 28, 2023, near the town of Gower, Missouri. 

It’s only been a few weeks since news broke in the Catholic media that the U.S. Archdiocese of Hartford is asking the Vatican for guidance on how to proceed with an investigation into a possible Eucharistic miracle.

At the end of March, the Eucharist, stored in a ciborium during the distribution of Holy Communion, was allegedly miraculously multiplied at St. Thomas Church in Thomaston, Connecticut.

These days, in turn, there is talk of a “Missouri miracle”. The supernatural phenomenon in this case is said to lie in the fact that the corpse of the nun, after four years in the grave, shows no signs of serious decomposition.

The US diocese is asking for guidance on how to proceed with the investigation into the miracle. The eucharistic miracle American diocese asks for guidance on how to proceed in the miracle investigation Catholic News Agency.
The Archdiocese of Hartford is asking the Vatican for guidance on how to proceed with an investigation into a possible Eucharistic miracle. In late March, the…

Thousands of curious
“It is truly remarkable. You don’t even smell the stench of decay. It looks like it’s only been dead a day.” Those are the words of a CNN reporter who visited the monastery near the town of Gower, Missouri. The subject has captured the attention of not only the Christians but also the secular world media.

It all started on April 28, when local nuns exhumed the remains of the founder of this monastery. Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster died on May 29, 2019, she was buried in a classical grave at the monastery, but they planned to move her remains to the new St. Joseph’s Chapel in the church.

As the Catholic News Agency reports, the nuns expected to find only bones when they opened the grave, only to be surprised to find that her body and monastic habit were still remarkably intact.

Pilgrims who visited the site also spoke of not smelling any odor of decomposition near the body of the deceased. The nuns had left the remains on display in the church for several days.

The surprisingly well-preserved remains have attracted hundreds of people to the site from near and far. Some have travelled as much as five hours by car to see her body.

On Palm Sunday, two hundred cars an hour were arriving at the abbey grounds, the local sheriff’s office reported. He estimated that 15 thousand visitors in all would come, and expected the onslaught to continue for months to come. The high interest in visiting was also related to the anniversary of Sister Wilhelmina’s death on May 29.

An EWTN News photojournalist witnessed pilgrims touching parts of Sister Wilhelmina’s body with their hands or rosaries and even kissing her hands.Some are taking home dust from the grave where Sister Wilhelmina was buried until recently. There was a line waiting for a chance to get a closer look at the dead nun’s body on Sunday, May 28, 2023.

 

However, such direct contact is no longer possible. On the afternoon of Monday, May 29, the nuns placed the remains of nun Wilhelmina in a glass coffin, so that her body will still be accessible to the public in the convent church. This was preceded by a procession with the praying of the Rosary.

The bishop wants an inquiry, experts’ opinions differ so far, none of the church leaders have officially decided whether Sister Wilhelmina’s remains are “intact”, which could also be a sign of sanctity. There is not even a beatification process currently underway.

The local bishop of the Diocese of St. Joseph in Kansas City visited the convent to see her remains and expressed that a “thorough investigation” was needed to answer “important questions.”

However, it is not yet known if or when such an analysis will take place. A spokeswoman for the diocese said she was mistaken when she initially told CNA that the local bishop “had been in contact with someone in Rome” about what happened at the abbey.

People pray near the body of Sister Wilhelmina at the Abbey of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles near the town of Gower. Meanwhile, contradictory statements from people in the funeral industry have appeared in the media.

“If you’re saying that this woman was buried without embalming in a wooden casket with no outer covering and the ground was not the temperature it was in Alaska, I’m telling you I’m going to start worshipping this sister because there’s something strange going on there,” Barry Lease, president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Burial Institute, told CNA.

On the other hand, Newsweek magazine carried skeptical comments from an associate professor and director of forensic anthropology at Western Carolina University.

Nicholas Passalacqua pointed out that the rate of decomposition depends largely on the environment of the grave as well as the method of burial. “The main factor that affects the rate of decomposition is temperature,” Passalacqua said. “The warmer it is, the more active the bacteria and enzymes will be, and the more active the insect scavengers will be because their metabolism is related to the ambient temperature.”

Whether Nurse Lancaster’s body remained in this intact state due to natural causes is unclear.

“When we bury a body in our facility, we generally expect it to take about five years for the body to become skeletal,” Passalacqua opined. “That means without a casket or other container or wrapping to surround the remains. So in the case of this body, which was buried in a coffin, I’m personally not too surprised that the remains are well preserved even after four years,” he added.

Regardless of the controversy over the condition of Sister Wilhelmina’s remains, her life profile also remains remarkable.

She fought to wear the habit, it remained almost intact after her death
The St. Louis native founded the Convent of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles in 1995 at the age of 70. A life journey preceded it, with its various pitfalls.

As CNA introduces her, Sister Wilhelmina, by her name Mary Elizabeth Lancaster, was born the second of five children to devout Catholics in St. Louis on April 13, 1924.

According to the current superior of the convent, Sister Cecilia Snell, and according to a biography published by her community, the late Sister Wilhelmina had a mystical experience as a nine-year-old at her first Holy Communion in which Jesus invited her to belong to him.

“At her first Holy Communion, she saw something in him. Maybe not very clearly, but she saw that he was handsome,” says the abbess. Jesus allegedly asked her: “Will you be mine?” and she supposedly said: “He is so handsome, how can I say no?”

When she was 13, a parish priest asked her if she had ever considered a religious vocation. She quickly became enthralled with the idea and wrote to the Sisters of the Oblates of Providence in Baltimore (the first community of black nuns in the U.S.) seeking permission to join their ranks, only she had to wait because of her young age.

Mary Elizabeth grew up during racial segregation, was ridiculed by her peers, and had to endure the nickname, Chocolate Drop.

When the local Catholic high school also went the way of segregation and it seemed that public school was the only option, her parents helped found St. Joseph’s Catholic High School for Blacks, which operated until the local archbishop ended segregation in the diocese.

After graduation, Mary Elizabeth entered the aforementioned Religious Sisters of the Sisters of Providence. She lived with them for 50 years.

Sister Wilhelmina lived through a period when the trend of abandoning habits was spreading after the Second Vatican Council, which also affected her home community. But her opinion on the issue was clear, and she tried to continue wearing the habit, even making her own when the sisters stopped making them.

“She spent many years fighting for the habit,” said Abbess Cecilia, who said Sister Wilhelmina took seriously the idea that the wearer of the habit was the bride of Christ.

One day, a fellow Sister asked Wilhelmina if she would wear that self-made habit all the time.

“Yes!” She replied, later joking: “I’m Sister WIL-HEL-MINA – I have a HELL OF A WILL and I MEAN IT!” (I am sister WIL-HEL-MINA – I have a HELL of a WILL and I MEAN it).

EWTN News report in which two nuns also tell of a surprising moment after the exhumation of Sister Wilhelmina’s body.

Later, also in the context of the struggle to wear the habit, Sister Wilhelmina was enthralled by the traditionalist environment, specifically the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter and the pre-conciliar liturgy.

With the help of a member of the fraternity, she founded a community of sisters in 1995. Priorities included “wearing a uniform habit, handing over all money to a common economist, obedience to legal authority, guarding the cloistered space and time and place of silence, and living an authentic sisterly life together.”

The new community first began in Scranton, Pennsylvania, following the Rule of St. Benedict from the beginning and chanting the Liturgy of the Hours in Latin. In 2006, the sisters accepted an invitation from the Bishop of the Diocese of St. Joseph in Kansas City and moved to this diocese.

The consecration of the new abbey took place in 2018, and a year later seven sisters had already left to establish a branch house, also in Missouri. The sisters at Gower celebrate an extraordinary form of Mass and use the 1962 monastic office with a traditional Gregorian chant in Latin, CN adds.