THE VATICAN X-FILES

Catholic Church takes a fresh approach to assessing claims of the supernatural

The Catholic Church has always tried to keep a tight grasp on decisions regarding which visions, weeping statues, stigmata, levitations, incorrupt nuns and so on are approved as miracles and declared “de supernaturalitate” (of the supernatural) by the Pope, and which are not. However, the process of discernment by which this is decided typically takes years, and sometimes decades, with only six phenomena being declared officially supernatural since 1950. As a result, there is a major backlog of cases, and this has only got worse in the 21st century as social media has made it possible for news of alleged miracles to travel around the world in minutes. To deal with the problem, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), which investigates claims of the supernatural, has…

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Fortean Times (Digital) - 1 Issue, 446

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