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I asked Bernas about her wounds, noting that there were reddish scars on the backs of her hands. She replied that she also bled from the palms on occa- sion, but that no marks were left in those instances. She told me that she was “permitted” to retain those on the backs of her hands and also on the tops of her feet. Someone asked about cross-shaped wounds (she has, for example, an apparent cruciform scar on her right jaw near the ear), and she stated that before her genuine stigmata came she had periods of possession, and those stigmata were of the devil (Bernas 2002b).

I found the absence of wounds on the palms and soles highly suspicious. A sham stigmatist might well avoid those areas, which would be painful and dif-

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ficult to heal. But if a person were truly exhibiting the nail wounds of Jesus, his or her hands and feet would be completely pierced. When I attended another exhibition of Lilian Bernas’s stigmata at Niagara-on-the-Lake on March 1, 2002, my suspicions were increased. The bleeding was already in progress when she appeared, and the wounds were only superficial, limited to the backs of the hands and tops of the feet. In addition, there were small wounds on the scalp, supposedly from a crown of thorns (John 19:2), but they were only in the front, as if merely for show.

Significantly, there was no side wound, like that inflicted on Jesus by a Roman soldier’s lance (John 19:34; 20:25, 27). Such a large wound would rep- resent a real commitment by a fake stigmatist, so it rarely appears, and then usually in a questionable fashion. Bernas exhibits a photo of an alleged wound in her left side, but it lacks rivulets of blood and—conveniently—she claims that it disappeared without a trace. Bernas did say that she would be receiving a side wound later in the day (Bernas 2002a), but of course, the crowd would not be there to witness it.

The side wound was not the only one of Bernas’s stigmata with unique properties that were seemingly best displayed in photographs. Bernas exhib- ited other photos depicting a squarish nail head emerging from a hand wound (hark back to St. Francis), a thorn in her forehead that supposedly emerged over a week’s time, and even an entire crown of thorns that allegedly mate- rialized around her head—believe it or not! As we watched Bernas bleed, I regretted that we were not getting to see such remarkable manifestations. I observed that her wounds soon ceased to flow, consistent with their having been inflicted just before she came out.

After she had spoken to the audience for about an hour, people gathered around to get a closer look at Bernas (figure 18). One man attempted, rather surreptitiously, to obtain a sample of her blood, presumably as a magical “relic.” While shaking hands with her, he clasped his other hand, containing a folded handkerchief, against the back of her hand. Unfortunately, the blood had dried, and even rubbing did not yield a visible trace. Although I too shook Bernas’s bloody hand, I obtained a better look at the wound shortly before, when she hugged the woman in front of me and thus placed her hand virtually

under my nose. I noticed that the actual wound looked like a small slit, but surrounding that was a larger red area that appeared to have been deliberately formed with blood to simulate a larger wound, like one made by a Roman nail. (For my demonstration of a similar effect, see Nickell 2000, 27–28.)

Figure 18. Although Bernas attracts the credulous, her stigmata do not convincingly replicate the wounds of Christ’s Crucifixion. (Photo by Joe Nickell)

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Assessment

Bernas makes other supernatural claims as well. For example, she says that towels used during her stigmata sessions, put away in plastic bags, “disappear within 48 hours” (Wake 2001). (I would be willing to wager that they would not vanish while in my custody.) Such outlandish and unsubstantiated claims should provoke skepticism in all but the most gullible, yet a professor of phi- losophy at a Catholic college took exception to my views. I had told the Buffalo

News that, based on the evidence, I regarded stigmatics as “pious frauds,” and

I said of Lilian Bernas’s stigmata: “Everything about it was consistent with trickery. Nothing about it was in the slightest way supernatural or intriguing” (Tokasz 2003). Professor John Zeis (2003) replied with the astonishing state- ment that “trickery is consistent with any reported miracle (including Jesus’ resurrection) but that is no reason to reject belief in the miracle.” He found more reasonable a priest’s statement that “it is up to each person to believe or not.” CSI public-relations director Kevin Christopher (2003) responded: “Zeis is suggesting that objective evidence is irrelevant. What, in fact could be a more unreasonable conclusion?” And in reply to Zeis’s claim that “the

Skeptical Inquirer is biased against claims concerning faith in the miraculous,”

Christopher stated: “The magazine’s mission is to inform its readers about the state of the evidence for paranormal and supernatural claims. When the evi- dence is poor or nonexistent, it is not ‘biased’ to report that fact. It is, in fact, a moral duty.”

References

Bernas, Lilian. 1999. This Is the Home of the Father. Privately printed.

———. 2002a. Remarks to audience at Navy Hall, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, March 1 (transcript by Jenny Everett, Popular Science magazine).

———. 2002b. Talk at Resurrection Church, Cheektowaga, N.Y., February 17. Christopher, Kevin. 2003. Letter to the editor. Buffalo (N.Y.) News, July 7.

D’Emilio Frances. 2002. Italian monk and mystic raised to sainthood. Buffalo (N.Y.)

News, June 17.

Harrison, Ted. 1994. Stigmata: A Medieval Phenomenon in a Modern Age. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Nickell, Joe. 1993. Looking for a Miracle. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

———. 2000. Stigmata: In imitation of Christ. Skeptical Inquirer 24, no. 1 (July– August): 24–28.

Ruffin, C. Bernard. 1982. Padre Pio: The True Story. Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor.

Thurston, Herbert. 1952. The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism. Chicago: H. Regnery. Tokasz, Jay. 2003. In apparent stigmata, a question of belief. Buffalo (N.Y.) News, June

15.

Wake, Ben. 2001. The crucifixion of Lilian Bernas. Citizen’s Weekly (magazine of the

Ottawa Citizen), July 8, C7–C9.

Wilson, Ian. 1988. The Bleeding Mind. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Zeis, John. 2003. Letter to the editor. Buffalo (N.Y.) News, June 27.

Here and there around the world, mysterious artifacts are found: crystal skulls that many New Age enthusiasts believe possess mystical powers. Now new claims—and new reviews of the evidence—have sparked further contro- versy. What is the truth about these remarkable objects?