Our Lady of Lourdes:
Immaculate Conception
"I do not promise to make you happy in this world, but in the next."
Grotto of Massabielle
In-depth overview of the 70th, 71st, and 72nd recognized miracles in Lourdes, France, with detailed medical commentary.
By Chris and the Editorial Staff
Acknowledgements: I wrote this article in collaboration with a physician and freelance writer (MD, Harvard Medical School) to ensure the quality of the medical analyses. Special thanks to Dr. Alessandro de Franciscis (president of Association Médicale Internationale de Lourdes) and Dr. Kieran Moriarty CBE (member of Le Comité Médical International de Lourdes) for providing extensive source materials used in this article.
Antonia Raco from Italy in Lourdes, France, before and after her cure from primary lateral sclerosis, a neurodegenerative disorder similar to ALS. On April 16, 2025, Raco’s complete and sudden recovery, which had occurred during her Lourdes pilgrimage in 2009, was recognized as the 72nd miracle at Lourdes. ⓒ Association Médicale Internationale de Lourdes
Frenchwoman Sister Bernadette Moriau, who suffered from debilitating back pain and a deformed left foot due to cauda equina syndrome, went to Lourdes in 2008 (left) and then experienced a complete recovery. She gave a press conference after being declared the 70th recognized miracle at Lourdes in 2018.
English soldier John Traynor left for Lourdes on July 20, 1923 (left), while suffering from multiple ailments including epilepsy and paralysis of his legs and right arm. He was cured after being submerged in the Lourdes baths several days later, and he pushed his own wheelchair afterward (right). In 2024, Traynor’s healing became the 71st recognized miracle at Lourdes.
Why do pilgrims go to Lourdes?
In 1858, in a grotto in the French countryside of Lourdes, the Blessed Virgin Mary reportedly appeared 18 times to Bernadette, an uneducated 14-year-old girl, promoting prayer (especially the Rosary), peace, and spiritual conversion. This event shares many parallels with the 20th-century Marian apparitions at Fátima, Portugal.
At first Bernadette did not know the identity of the woman and referred to her only as “the Lady.” The woman eventually identified herself (in Bernadette’s local dialect) as “the Immaculate Conception,” a title for Mary associated with a Catholic dogma declared in 1854. Like the Fátima children, Bernadette consistently recounted her experiences despite immense pressure and severe intimidation from religious and civil authorities who initially suspected she was either lying or delusional. Bernadette later lived a quiet life as a nun and was canonized as a Saint by the Catholic Church in 1933.
On February 25, 1858, during one of the apparitions, Bernadette reported that the Lady instructed her to drink from a spring, where she initially found only “a little muddy water.” This muddy water, however, soon transformed into a spring that eventually yielded 25,000 gallons per day. Within days, people began to experience miraculous cures by touching this water.
St. Bernadette of Soubirous (1844-1879) in 1858
The first officially recognized Lourdes miracle involved Louis Bourriette, a 54-year-old stonecutter from Lourdes who had been blind in his right eye for about two decades after a mine explosion. He experienced an abrupt and complete recovery of sight on March 1, 1858, after washing the injured eye with water from the newly discovered spring at Loudes. He immediately reported being able to read and recognize faces again. Dr. Pierre-Romaine Dozous, the municipal physician, examined him and judged the cure medically inexplicable. Dr. Dozous documented the incident in his book La grotte de Lourdes, sa fontaine, ses guérisons and affirmed that in 1874 Bourriette’s sight was still excellent.
As part of the Church’s investigation into the healing of Bourriette, Dr. Henri Vergez (Faculty of Medicine, University of Montpellier) was appointed to independently scrutinize the cure. Dr. Vergez began by examining the grotto water itself and found no special properties that could explain the reported healings. Later geochemical studies of the water have confirmed the absence of any abnormal substances or unusual concentrations of minerals.
International Medical Committee of Lourdes
To this day, thousands claim to have received miraculous healings at Lourdes.
In 1883, the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes created the Lourdes Medical Bureau to document and clinically assess the rapidly growing number of reported cures. Its physicians collect and verify prior diagnoses, review complete medical records, and examine the people who claim they were healed to compare findings before and after the event. Since 1954, cases that appear exceptional are then submitted to the International Medical Committee of Lourdes (CMIL)—an expert panel of about thirty respected physicians (typically professors, department heads, and specialists in fields such as surgery, psychiatry, neurology, and oncology)—to judge whether the healing is medically inexplicable. Members are selected based on medical expertise, and they serve without religious bias, focusing solely on the scientific assessment of cures.
CMIL applies the classic Lambertini criteria to determine whether a cure is remarkable: it must involve a grave, well-documented disease with a severe prognosis; cure that is sudden, complete, and lasting; and no adequate medical or natural cause. If CMIL affirms that the cure is inexplicable, the bishop of the person’s diocese reviews the spiritual circumstances of the case and decides whether to formally recognize the healing as a miracle.
Dr. Alessandro de Franciscis, the current president of the Lourdes Medical Bureau, explained in an interview with 60 Minutes that what separates the more than 7,000 recorded claims of cures from the 72 that church officials have recognized as miracles, is a tremendous amount of medical documentation and “a patient’s willingness to put their life under a microscope.”
Testimony from a Nobel Laureate
In 1912, the French surgeon Alexis Carrel won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for pioneering vascular suturing and organ transplantation. He is also remembered for something else: witnessing two dramatic healings at Lourdes.
The first, in 1902, involved 23-year-old Marie-Louise Bailly, dying of tuberculosis (which had claimed the lives of both of her parents). Her abdomen became massively distended and painful from tubercular peritonitis. After attendants washed her three times with water from the Lourdes baths, Carrel observed that within hours she was “sitting up in her bed, chatting with her nurses,” and that examination showed “the total disappearance of its huge inflatedness and of the peritoneal tumors aggravating it… This is a complete, rapid cure; in a word, marvelous [merveilleux]” (The Voyage to Lourdes, 16-17). Bailly later served as a Sister of Charity for three decades.
On his third pilgrimage, in 1910, Carrel also reported an 18-month-old child born blind who suddenly gained sight.
He congratulated Dr. Gustave Boissarie, director of the Lourdes Medical Bureau, on a clinic where “tumors disappear, the blind see, the cripples walk… If pilgrimages did not exist, they should be invented.”
Though Carrel remained agnostic for years, he eventually professed faith, writing in 1942, “I believe in the existence of God, in the immortality of the soul, in Revelation and in all that the Catholic Church teaches, in its admirable doctrine of sacrifice which is its very core.”
Dr. Alexis Carrel (1873-1944)
Antonia Raco (1958-)
Recognized as 72nd Lourdes miracle in 2025.
Antonia Raco first realized that something was wrong in 2004 when she was 45 years old and started getting debilitating headaches and had trouble walking. These neurological symptoms led her to Dr. Adriano Chiò, a professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Turin in Italy, who saw Raco regularly and eventually diagnosed her with primary lateral sclerosis.
Primary lateral sclerosis is a slowly progressive neurodegenerative disorder that damages motor neurons, the nerve cells that control the muscles in the body. These include the muscles that control breathing, chewing, swallowing, and talking. There is no cure, and treatment is directed toward managing symptoms that grow worse over time. Primary lateral sclerosis is similar to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), another type of motor neuron disorder.
Raco’s symptoms worsened over the next few years as her arms and legs grew steadily weaker. She had to use a wheelchair because she could not walk without assistance. She developed slurred speech and difficulty swallowing, with a videofluoroscopic swallow study confirming that she was at risk for aspirating food into her lungs. She had trouble breathing, with a lung spirometry test in 2007 showing that the forced ventilatory capacity (FVC) of her lungs was 56%. Dr. Chiò’s clinic notes from 2008 show that Raco only had muscle strength of 1 (on a scale of 0 to 5) in her left leg, with only trace muscle activation. As expected with her condition, she had increased muscle tone and hyperactive deep tendon reflexes in all of her limbs.
After suffering from primary lateral sclerosis for five years, Raco made a pilgrimage to Lourdes, something she had wished to do since childhood. When she was brought to the baths on July 31, 2009, and heard a young female voice call out to her “Don’t be afraid!” three times, she burst into tears and prayed. During her immersion in the water, she felt an unusual sense of well-being and thought she might be able to walk again but remained in her wheelchair until she went home. It was only when she was back home and heard the same voice again that she finally stood up independently for the first time in years and told her husband what had happened. They cried together as they realized that she had been cured.
[PDF] Detailed medical commentary on Antonia Raco compiled by Dr. Alessandro de Franciscis, president of Association Médicale Internationale de Lourdes.
ⓒ Association Médicale Internationale de Lourdes
In September 2009, Raco returned to Dr. Chiò’s clinic for a full assessment. Her chronic disabilities had been stable at her last clinic visit in June, with continued weakness in her arms and legs. Dr. Chiò was startled to see how much she had improved just two months later. Raco was strong enough to be able to walk on her own after being confined to a wheelchair for five years. Her lung spirometry testing showed that her lung flow and volume were now within normal limits, with an FVC of 93%. Her swallowing was back to normal, as shown in a normal video fluoroscopic swallow study.
In 2010, Raco declared her cure to the Lourdes Medical Bureau, and the CMIL opened an investigation into her case. In 2013, the CMIL asked Raco to undergo an additional assessment by Dr. Vincenzo Silani, a neurologist at the University of Milan and a specialist in primary lateral sclerosis, to supplement Dr. Chiò’s observations and notes. Dr. Silani agreed that she likely had primary lateral sclerosis. While applying the Lambertini criteria to Raco’s case, he considered the following question in his meticulous report:
Does medical literature describe any episodes of spontaneous remission of the disease comparable with the case on hand?
… I was able to observe in the course of the years, in the framework of my personal clinical experience of over three decades with this kind of illness, some clinical fluctuations in the progression of PLS. Apart from a slowdown of the progression in some cases for longer or shorter period of time, in some other cases I have witnessed some functional clinical recovery, which, however, was always partial, but which lasted for a period exceeding one year. I remember one patient affected by PLS who—after treatment with riluzole—was again able to write for at least one year, but then the illness progressed again and spontaneous remission of PLS (such as it is defined in international medical literature) was never reported and was not reported to me from the experience of the four experts I have consulted. As opposed to the above, Ms. Raco shows without doubt an exceptional development due to the almost complete normalization of the pyramidal clinical picture reached through a progression that started in August 2009, after an initial sudden improvement. In fact, in 2009 clinical signs of an involvement of the corticospinal pathway could still be found, but the situation progressively normalized until our clinical and instrumental assessment shows an almost completely normal (clinical and instrumental) clinical picture.
Raco continued to feel well after her cure, returning to Lourdes as a volunteer caregiver every year. The CMIL met multiple times to discuss her case, but one challenge was determining whether she truly had primary lateral sclerosis, a rare illness where experts disagreed about the diagnostic criteria. Once consensus diagnostic criteria for primary lateral sclerosis was published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry in 2020 and validated in 2024, the CMIL felt confident in voting in November 2024 that Raco was cured of PLS “in an unexpected, complete, lasting and unexplained manner according to medical knowledge.”
On April 16, 2025, the bishop of her diocese declared that Antonia Raco’s cure was the 72nd miracle of Lourdes. At her press conference, Raco smiled and stood tall in the white uniform of a Lourdes volunteer caregiver as she described what had happened 16 years ago when she first went to Lourdes, confined to a wheelchair and short of breath.
Bernadette Moriau (1939-)
Recognized as 70th Lourdes miracle in 2018.
After four decades of progressive and debilitating back pain, Sister Bernadette Moriau had accepted that this would be her condition until the end of her life. She was just as surprised as everyone else when she was cured at the age of 68 after a pilgrimage to Lourdes.
When she was in her late twenties, Moriau felt like she had found her calling as a nurse working in a busy clinic in Paris alongside her St. Franciscan sisters. At first she ignored the twinges of low back pain that started in 1966, but soon they were impossible to ignore. As her back pain grew worse, she had a total of four spinal operations over the following years that did nothing to alleviate her symptoms. By 1975, she had developed irreversible inflammation of the lumbar and sacral nerve roots, also called cauda equina syndrome, and her chronic back pain meant that she couldn’t work as a nurse anymore.
In 1987, Moriau’s neurologist put her on disability after determining that she had “more or less total impairment of the lumbar and sacral base.” To control the sharp, shooting pains in her lower back and legs, she had a neurostimulator implanted in her spinal cord and took morphine twice a day. She had to wear a permanent cervical-lumbar corset to support her spine. By 1999, she needed to catheterize herself six times a day to urinate. Her left foot became paralyzed and twisted backward in 2005, and she had to wear a splint to keep the foot in the correct position. Walking became more and more painful as her range of motion diminished.
It was in this condition that she saw Dr. Christophe Fumery, her primary care doctor in Bresles, France, in early 2008. During one of her monthly visits for a morphine prescription, he suggested that she go on the summer pilgrimage to Lourdes on the 150th anniversary of the apparitions. Despite several previous visits to Lourdes, she had never considered going as one of the sick until Dr. Fumery encouraged her to go.
The twelve hours the train took to get to Lourdes were excruciating, but once she arrived, Moriau found the experience spiritually invigorating. Going into the baths on July 4, 2008, felt like being baptized again, and she was struck by the peace and spirituality of the grottos. Afterward, when the bishop blessed her during the Benediction, she felt “burnished by the infinite love of God” (Moriau 16) and filled with a new inner peace.
Despite the joy in her heart, her body was wracked with pain during the long train ride home. She stayed in bed recovering for the next three days, finally emerging from her room to attend Adoration at the chapel in her convent. During prayer, she experienced a new sensation: “I felt a great relaxing of my body, like a warmth from my heart suffusing everything. That warmth filled me” (Moriau 18).
When Moriau returned to her room, she heard an inner voice tell her to take off her braces. She promptly took off her corset and leg splint. Even without those supports, she no longer had any pain, and her left foot pointed forward normally, no longer deformed. She turned off the neurostimulator in her spinal cord since she no longer needed it. She was able to urinate without a catheter for the first time in years. She stopped taking morphine from that moment on. Moriau left her room and met another nun in the convent who was flabbergasted by her transformation. They wept and prayed together in awe and joy.
[PDF] Testimony by Bernadette Moriau and Dr. Christophe Fumery
ⓒ Association Médicale Internationale de Lourdes
Moriau’s memoir, published in 2021 (Amazon)
Moriau was eager to show Dr. Fumery, her inspiration for the pilgrimage, how she had been cured. When she went to his clinic several days after her healing, he told her that there was “no trace” of her condition left. He was also surprised that she was able to stop morphine immediately without any side effects; people like her on chronic high doses of morphine need to have their medication tapered slowly to avoid withdrawal symptoms. Dr. Fumery, recognizing that Moriau had been cured with no feasible medical explanation, started keeping a detailed record for the investigation he expected from the Lourdes Medical Bureau. He also recommended that she be reevaluated by the doctors at Nantes University Pain Center, where she had been seen since 2000.
One of the doctors there, rheumatologist Dr. Christophe Alliaume, wrote the following letter after her clinic visit:
I have re-examined Sister Bernadette Moriau, born 1939, and am totally astonished to discover no disorder beyond, of course, the scars of multiple surgical interventions on her spine. Her symptoms dramatically disappeared a few days after a pilgrimage to Lourdes. I can today only confirm that she can walk on the tip of her toes and on her heels, that there is a total ante-flexion of the spine, and painless mobility. The examination of the knees, the seat of an osteoarthritis, is clearly normal. We note simply a slight muscular deficiency requiring continued, regular physiotherapy…. I can thus only confirm her current condition, with satisfaction but without being able to offer an explanation. Beyond physiotherapy and viscoelastic injections in particular for the knees, I have stopped all treatment. (Moriau 40)
Moriau never had to go back to the pain clinic again. After 42 years of progressive back pain, she was suddenly pain-free. Without any medical intervention, she had experienced a sudden, complete, and lasting cure of a condition only expected to get worse over time. Once she told her local bishop what had happened, she was not surprised that the Lourdes Medical Bureau opened a file for her, but she did not expect the level of scrutiny she got from the CMIL.
In addition to providing all of her previous medical history and documentation, Moriau underwent three medical examinations by the three successive physicians appointed to her case. These included a thorough interview, clinical exam, and new tests and imaging such as another CT scan and electromyography to determine how her muscles responded to nerve stimulation. In 2011, two psychiatrists put her through extensive psychological testing. A large, diverse group of health professionals met at Lourdes in 2009, 2013, and 2016 to discuss her case. The CMIL reviewed her case at multiple meetings. In total, over 300 physicians examined her case over the course of eight years. Finally, on November 18, 2016, the CMIL determined that Moriau had experienced “an unexplained healing in the current state of scientific knowledge” (Moriau 137).
Her records were then sent to her local bishop to decide whether her healing had been a miracle. After a year of review, and in agreement with a canonical commission that had been set up to review her case, he declared that Bernadette Moriau’s healing was the 70th miracle at Lourdes on February 11, 2018, the 160th anniversary of the first Lourdes apparition.
Moriau’s healing was also the beginning of a close collaboration between her and Dr. Fumery in the care of end-of-life patients, which she found deeply fulfilling after having had to give up nursing in her thirties because of her disability.
Dr. Fumery wrote the following in 2019:
After the cure, Bernadette was bursting with life, and we had to keep her busy! I suggested that she look after sick people at the end of their lives, and we established deep relationships with these people. This transformed my life and my way of practising medicine. The physical transformation brought with it a spiritual transformation in many of the people around her.
Moriau has remained humble and thankful for her good health. In an interview with 60 Minutes in 2022 at the age of 83, she stands tall and moves easily as she shows the interviewer the old corset and leg splint she used to wear and her binder full of old medical records. She admits in her memoir that she has wondered why God would choose to heal a 68-year-old woman, but perhaps the idea does not seem so strange when one sees how she has inspired all those around her and how joyfully she has lived the almost two decades of her life since the miracle.
John Traynor (1883-1943)
Recognized as 71st Lourdes miracle in 2024.
John Traynor was a soldier in the British Royal Navy who was wounded several times during World War I. In October 1914, he was hit in the head by shrapnel that left him in a coma, regaining consciousness only after an operation five weeks later. Since he appeared to fully recover from his head injury, he rejoined his battalion in January 1915.
Traynor was then shot by three bullets during a bayonet charge on May 8, 1915. Two bullets went through his chest, while the third one lodged in his collarbone after severing his right brachial plexus, an important network of nerves responsible for controlling the muscles of his right arm. His right arm was completely paralyzed and remained that way despite three different operations to suture the nerves back together. Finally, in November 1915, a medical board advised him to amputate his right arm since it was a useless dead weight and not expected to improve. Traynor refused to have the surgery, and he was discharged from the Navy as “permanently unfit.” Yet another arm surgery a year later in November 1916 was also unsuccessful.
In the meantime, Traynor experienced his first seizure while recovering from his bullet injuries in 1915. These seizures grew progressively worse over the next few years. He had an operation in 1920 to remove shrapnel fragments from his head and create an open flap in his skull in the hopes of decreasing his seizures, but there was no improvement.
Traynor was discharged from the hospital in 1920 as an invalid. His paralyzed right arm had become shrivelled from disuse, and his right hand was frozen into a claw. He developed partial paraplegia (paralysis of the legs) and was unable to stand or walk, requiring someone to transfer him between his bed and wheelchair. He could not control his bladder or bowel movements. He suffered from chronic sores and ulcers because of his immobility. He experienced several seizures a day and continuous headaches. The Minister of Pensions awarded him a permanent allowance to maintain a caregiver on top of the 100% invalidity pension he had already been receiving.
After suffering eight years of disability, Traynor had planned to enter Mossley Hill Hospice for the Incurable on July 24, 1923. Instead, he heard about the first Liverpool pilgrimage to Lourdes and resolved to go even if it meant his wife would need to pawn her jewelry to afford the trip on their limited income. Three doctors—Dr. Azurdia, Dr. James Marley, and Dr. Denis Finn—examined him once he arrived in Lourdes and issued the following certificate:
This is to certify that on 24th July 1923 we examined at Lourdes Mr. John Traynor, of 121 Grafton Street, Liverpool.
We found him to be suffering from:
1. Epilepsy - We were able to observe several attacks during his trip to Lourdes.
2. Radial, median, and ulnar paralysis of the right arm, the hand is clawed, the wrist drooping, with muscular atrophy;
3. Corresponding atrophy of the muscles of the scapulo-humeral and pectoral region;
4. Surgical opening about 2.5cm to the right of the skull, in the parietal region. The pulsations of the brain are palpable. A metal plate protects the opening.
5. Absence of voluntary movement of the lower limbs and loss of sensitivity;
6. Incontinence of urine and faeces.
[PDF] 1926 official minutes (English) on John Traynor by the Lourdes Office of Medical Observations
ⓒ Association Médicale Internationale de Lourdes
[PDF] The original minutes (French) published in Journal de la Grotte
ⓒ Association Médicale Internationale de Lourdes
The following day, Traynor was immersed in the baths at Lourdes nine times. He then attended the Eucharistic Procession and felt a sense of well-being suffuse his entire body as the Blessed Sacrament passed by. It seemed to him that his whole body was coming back to life, and he could now move all three of the previously paralyzed limbs of his body. He was suddenly able to move his right arm, which burst through its bandages as he blessed himself for the first time in many years. All of his sores, including the chronic ulcer on his right arm, had disappeared. The aforementioned doctors examined him later that day and discovered that he could now walk a few steps, although with pain and difficulty.
The next morning, Traynor startled everyone in the ward by jumping out of bed and racing several hundred yards to the grotto so he could kneel and pray there in gratitude, still barefoot and dressed in his pajamas. He wanted to make some sort of sacrifice in return, and, lacking any money, he resolved to give up cigarettes to show his thankfulness to the Lady of Lourdes.
When the three doctors examined him again the next day on July 27, they recorded the following:
1. He can walk perfectly;
2. That he has recovered the use and function of his right arm;
3. That he has recovered feeling in his lower limbs;
4. That the cranial orifice has considerably decreased in width; no pulsation is perceptible. The patient has removed his protective plate. No epileptic seizures.
No reasonable medical explanation can be offered for the sudden and lasting improvement in Traynor’s symptoms or the ability of his skull to grow noticeably in just three days. After his recovery, he became an active coal merchant, developing powerful muscles from loading heavy bags of coal onto his lorry, and returned every year to Lourdes as a volunteer stretcher-bearer. Traynor went on to live a full and healthy 20 years with his wife and children, including a daughter he named Bernadette.
Three years after his cure, Traynor, accompanied by the three doctors who had witnessed his recovery in 1923, went to the Lourdes Medical Bureaufor a thorough medical assessment. The following report was published by Dr. Auguste Vallet, its president, on October 2, 1926:
Were it not for his right hand, which is still clawed, but no longer atrophied, and which he can use well enough, since he is a stretcher-bearer and easily loads bags of coal onto his car at home, you would not think that this man was badly wounded in the war and discharged for incurability. His right arm is completely free of atrophy. There is barely 1.5 centimetres less circumference in the middle of the forearm than on the left. The pectoral and shoulder muscles have fully recovered. All wrist movements are possible.
The surgical opening in the skull has completely disappeared. All you can feel under your finger is a slight depression in the bone.
Traynor had not had another epileptic seizure since 25 July 1923; on that day, they stopped for good.
So, instantly, the pathological museum that was this man alone, since, apart from his left arm, all the other parts of his body were affected, this pathological museum, I would say, was closed. But how extraordinary, how prodigious was the simultaneous work of repairing Mr. Traynor’s damaged organs!
In cases where nerve suturing is successful, nerves usually take months to regenerate. Since Traynor’s right arm remained completely paralyzed seven years after the last attempt to reconnect his nerves, the nerves likely degenerated completely, leading to muscle wasting.
Therefore, the sudden ability to move his arm at Lourdes could not have been the result of his surgeries. The report emphasizes that the healing of his arm must have included “three distinct elements: regeneration or, better still, creation of nerve matter, elongation of the injured nerves, and their joining together, constituting, by the simultaneity and immediacy of their appearance, an admirable repair, which we never see in the usual practice of healing the wounded.”
Furthermore, all of his other neurological problems—the frequent seizures, paralysis of the lower legs, and bowel and bladder incontinence—disappeared as well.
For three years, his recovery has been definitive; no seizures have returned. As he likes to say, he has never consulted a doctor or taken any drugs, and all his natural functions are functioning normally. It’s a true resurrection, which this fortunate beneficiary attributes to the power of God and the merciful intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes.
As for us, obliged to confine ourselves to our role as doctors, we recognize and proclaim, along with our Confreres, that the process of this prodigious cure is absolutely outside and above the forces of nature.
The above report was not referred to any diocesan bishop for review when it was first published. It was only in 2023, the hundredth anniversary of the first Liverpool pilgrimage, that Dr. Kieran Moriarty, an English physician on the CMIL, rediscovered the report while reviewing Traynor’s archived file. He noted that three of his conditions—epilepsy, paraplegia, and ulcers—fulfilled all of the Lambertini criteria in the sudden, complete, and lasting cure of a serious disease that cannot be explained by a medical cause.
Traynor’s arm paralysis technically did not meet all the Lambertini criteria because he was left with some clawing in his hand and a slight difference in arm circumference years later, but, as Dr. Moriarty commented,
[…] it is clearly medically inexplicable that a man with a completely paralysed arm, with gross muscle wasting, impaired sensation and held on by catgut, such that several doctors advised amputation, could subsequently work as a coal merchant, lifting bags of coal weighing 200 pounds.
The report was translated from French into English, compiled with all the other supporting documentation, and sent to the Archbishop of Liverpool for review. After looking at the extensive evidence of how Traynor had been cured in multiple ways, Bishop McMahon decreed on December 8, 2024, that Traynor’s cure was miraculous. A celebration of the miracle on February 18, 2025, included a delegation from Lourdes and some 40 direct descendants and family members of John Traynor.
Witness
During my process of discerning whether to become Catholic, I was struck by the Marian apparitions, including the ones at Lourdes, because of the totality of the evidence:
The phenomena that confirmed the supernatural character of the apparitions, such as the healings at Lourdes and the Miracle of the Sun (predicted three months in advance) in the case of Fátima.
The credibility of Bernadette and other visionaries who were children and yet provided very detailed, coherent, and consistent testimonies despite immense pressure from both secular and religious authorities.
The holiness of the visionaries who not only conveyed messages of prayer and sacrifice consistent with the Gospel but also actively lived them out and went on to achieve sainthood.
Furthermore, many of these apparitions, including at Lourdes, promoted the recitation of the Rosary. After I became Catholic, my belief in the authenticity of the apparitions was reinforced by the fruits of this devotion, which I believe has delivered many graces to my family.
Beyond myself, I believe that the events at Lourdes will continue to touch the lives of countless many.
Sister Bernadette Moriau, in an event at Lourdes commemorating her cure, reflected:
I asked the Lord: “I don’t understand, I am an elderly person. There were people younger than me. Why didn’t you cure them?” I asked the Lord if he would explain his actions. Then I understood that I am not the master of my life, and that the Lord had chosen me to give me this grace. However, I am sure that this grace is not for me, it is for the Church, for evangelization, and if I accept this mission of witnessing to what has been confided to me by the Bishop, it is in order to witness to the marvels of God, because God really is capable of recreating us and helping us to get up again.
In other words, God healed her so that she could be a witness to you.
Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes