WHEN is a miracle not a miracle? Lourdes, the French town and religious resort whose spring water is believed by many people to possess healing properties, is considering a change in the rules to allow more cures to be put down to divine intervention, writes Matthew Campbell.

The Catholic Church has recognised only a few dozen miracle healings since Lourdes began attracting pilgrims after the Virgin Mary was said to have appeared to a 14-year-old shepherdess called Bernadette in 1858.

Worryingly, however, the number of cures has been declining, even as the number of pilgrims has risen. In its infancy, the shrine notched up a miracle each year but these days the figure is an average of only one every decade.

Some say that is because the church is too strict, often swearing a cured pilgrim to silence while a “medical committee” investigates the possibility of a scientific explanation. It is an expensive process that can drag on for years.

Miracle-making is governed by 18th-century guidelines that rule out divine intervention if the person was taking medicine that could have aided recovery. According to Jacques Perrier, the Bishop of Lourdes, advances in medical science mean that most potential miracles these days fall at the first hurdle.

“For example,” he said, “it makes it impossible these days to recognise any miraculous cancer cure. Even the most Catholic of doctors, discovering that his patient has cancer, will begin some kind of treatment.”

He went on: “Even if the treatment seems ineffective and the person is cured while praying at Lourdes, the cure can never be accepted [as a miracle].”

With the church facing stiff competition from evangelists, apparently less picky when it comes to proclaiming miraculous cures, Perrier wants the guidelines to be changed so that news of an unexplained cure can be announced as soon as it happens. Cures could be categorised as “unexpected” or “exceptional” — a sort of sub-miracle category.

The bishop denies these would constitute “second class” miracles since all the other criteria for determining divine intervention laid down by Cardinal Prospero Lambertini in 1738 would still be valid: the cured illness must be, from a medical point of view, incurable and the cure sudden, total and without after-effects.

In the end, however, it is up to the Vatican to decide what makes miracles. It is said to be sympathetic to Perrier’s pragmatic approach and, in any case, believes that investigations could be carried out more quickly.

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