Pope Leo visits site of miracle cures, meets people whose unexplained healings stunned doctors

Pope Leo XIV arrived in Lourdes from Paris on Saturday evening for his first-ever visit to the renowned place of miracle cures.

Back in 1858, a 14-year-old peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous reported having 18 visions of the Virgin Mary at the Lourdes Massabielle Grotto. This ultimately led to her being named a saint.

The pope prayed at the Grotto Saturday night before leading an open-air Mass on the Prairie on Sunday, with hundreds of thousands expected to be in attendance. 

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He also planned to meet with bishops, the sick and the support staff.

I spoke with Dr. Alessandro de Franciscis, who recently retired as president of the Lourdes Office of Medical Observation after 17 years of reviewing treatments and possible miracle cures.

He discussed his upcoming meeting with the pope, who he said was visiting Lourdes in the name of purification and healing, including healing from the Church's recent sexual abuse scandals.

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"I think I love him," he told me. "I think he's doing very well (as pope). He's talking of the challenges that we have. You must have heard about his first encyclical letter on artificial intelligence ... all the good that this technology can bring to today's world. He's a guy from Chicago. I love him. We all love him!"

Dr. de Franciscis said the pope would meet with people whose miracle healings were investigated and later recognized by the Church. 

Those include Sister Bernadette Moriau, who was cured of a spinal condition and was able to walk again, and Antonietta Raco, who in 2009 was cured of the severe neurodegenerative disease primary lateral sclerosis.

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"He's also going to meet with a young woman (Delizia Cirolli) who was cured when she was only 7 years old of a Ewing's Sarcoma, a right knee cancer, back in the late '70s."

But for Lourdes, as well as for the pope, spiritual and physical healing lead to both minor and major miracles, according to de Franciscis.

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He also spoke with me for my new book, "The Angels Among Us," about the hospitaliers, the aptly named "angels of Lourdes," who care for the sick there.

In the book, de Franciscis emphasizes the vital role of the hospitaliers, as well as the fact that much of the healing associated with visits to Lourdes and the Grotto is spiritual and often goes unrecognized — remaining below the radar.

"I think that statistically, these so-called spiritual cures are so, so much more numerous than the physical ones that we know," he said to me from Lourdes, as he eagerly anticipated the pope’s visit.

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"People come here to serve, they think they come here to help others — and instead they come out of this experience being so much better," de Franciscis went on.

"And they go back to their work and their lives and their families, and they're so relieved, I would say, they've really changed. So I think this aspect is very, very interesting."

In Lourdes this weekend, in the name of repentance and accountability, the pope also planned to sit down with seven victims of sexual assault committed by clergy of the Church.