A probable Eucharistic miracle is stirring up the Diocese of Ravenna, but the bishop is not providing the faithful who are asking for explanations, the necessary clarifications to reach a resolution in one sense or another of the matter. Indeed, according to the first responses from the Ravenna Church, it seems that all the material previously analyzed has been made to disappear or, worse still, thrown away.
The facts, which the Compass is able to reconstruct after hearing the witnesses of this event that questions faith and reason, begin in the parish of Savarna, a hamlet north of the Romagna town towards the Lidi di Comacchio. It is here, on January 28, 2023, the memorial of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the cantor par excellence of the Eucharist, author of the most famous Eucharistic hymn that goes under the name of Put Linguathat at the end of the 6pm Mass, the sacristan finds a consecrated host under a bench that had fallen after the distribution of communion.
Small semantic digression: we use the adjective “probable” for a specific reason. The first histological tests carried out by the parish priest on the host, in fact, gave positive results: traces of blood were found in the decomposing host. Therefore, the chances that we are faced with a real prodigy are very real. In order to have further proof, however, other scientific investigations are needed which are the responsibility of the diocesan bishop. And this is where things stop in a way that cannot fail to leave one perplexed.
THE HOST ON THE GROUND
Let’s go back to January 28th.
Manuela Segurini is the sacristan of the Savarna churchled by the parish priest Don Nicolò Giosuè. «I found the host at the end of the Mass in one of the pews, it was on the floor. I had the parish priest pick it up, who decided to keep it in the “purifichino”, the small glass chalice that is used to purify the fingers after Communion and closed in the tabernacle. Once dissolved in water, it would then be poured into the sacrarium as planned». The day after the sensational discovery: «At 9 in the morning on Sunday 29 January, the host had become blood red – he continues -. I immediately called the parish priest. Amazed by this reaction we decided to take some photos».
The parish priest also confirmed the reconstruction in a document sent to the diocese: “I knew that there are blood-red bacteria,” said Don Nicolò Giosuè, “that attack the flour, but what surprised me was the speed with which the host had transformed; usually, in fact, this coloration caused by bacteria emerges after several days.”
«THROW EVERYTHING AWAY»
Don Nicolò then telephoned Professor Pierluigi Baima Bollone of Turin, a famous Shroud expert, with whom he had contact thanks to his brother. He advises him to let at least a couple of months pass to give the host time to melt. And so he does.
On February 4, however, another priest arrives in the parish from the curia of Ravenna to replace the parish priest in the evening Mass. “It is Don Alberto Graziani, former vicar of the Diocese. I also showed him what we had discovered – the sacristan continues in her story -, but he told me to say a prayer and throw everything in the garden. But I didn’t listen to him because I wanted to get the go-ahead from the parish priest first.” The parish priest, once he returned to Savarna, then decided to transfer the mixture into an airtight glass container and keep it in the tabernacle of the private chapel of the nearby nuns.
THE INVESTIGATIONS
Months pass and the Host is still as the two found it the day after Mass on January 28: decomposing, but with evident reddish filaments as highlighted in the photo. Don Nicolò then tries to speak to a specialist to ascertain the nature of that colour. And he finds it through a friend, Giovanni Calisesi, also from the province of Ravenna, but from another parish. «I knew Dr. Cristina Antonini, an anatomopathologist from Schio – he says, reached on the phone by Compass -, I explained the facts to her and she made herself available to view the material”.
So the two, on May 10, 2023, go to Schio in the doctor’s analysis laboratory. Upon their arrival, the doctor takes steps to take tissue samples. Her first reaction is one of amazement, as also confirmed by the Compass subsequently: «Even a second year medical student is able to recognize the blood in those tissues – he explained -. As an anatomopathologist I deal with morphology and tissue examination; therefore, telling whether we are dealing with blood material is quite simple with the techniques at my disposal.” The doctor, with a very respectable CV, has dealt with fetoplacental pathology with fields of expertise among the most varied in pathological anatomy – he gets to work. After taking the samples and arranging them on a slide he returns the remaining part to the priest.
It’s BLOOD!
After a week, for the collection of the report, two more witnesses were added to the two, the journalist Pierluigi Bianchi Cagliesi and Don Federico Bortoli.
The results of the exams are surprising. This is what the report reads: “In a fragment there was blood material mixed with granulocytes”. That host, therefore, was transformed into blood.
Antonini explains today to Compass: «I examined the material after the priest blessed me because I felt a certain responsibility in “getting my hands” on a possible miracle for the first time in my life. In order to look under the microscope, the sample must be processed in order to provide a stable support to obtain a sample immortalized over time.
They are called “blocks” or “included”, this is material that will never be lost and which can be reproducible for subsequent examinations. What I can say with certainty is that the material from which the presence of blood is found can be seen by other doctors who know how to read blood, also using other techniques such as blood group typing, which is a test that belongs to the field of forensic medicine and which is not among my fields. But that’s the material covered.”
THE HOST ARRIVES IN THE DIOCESE
Strengthened by this scientific evidence, Don Nicolò informed the bishop of Ravenna, Monsignor Lorenzo Ghizzoni, and on 27 June 2023 delivered all the material to the diocese, both the slides analyzed by Dr. Antonini and the remaining part of that Host which in the meantime had hardened to the point of becoming similar to a piece of living flesh.
This is what the vicar general writes: «I received from Don Nicolò Giosuè a small glass jar containing the reddish material left from the immersion of a consecrated particle found on the ground in the church of Savarna on January 28. I placed it in the safe in my office awaiting further investigation and analysis».
“IT’S NOT BLOOD”
Months pass, but all is silent from the diocese. Only a year later, in the present day, the parish priest decides to ask the bishop what happened to that Host. The response from the successor of Sant’Apollinare arrives Whatsapp. It is the message that Ghizzoni would have received from Vittorio Sambri, director of the ASL laboratory of Pievesestina di Ravenna and which with a “forward” is delivered to the parish priest: «There is no presence of blood or other biological material of probable human origin». The issue for the Diocese is therefore closed.
After some articles in the local press, the Diocese is thus forced to publish a press release to say that «from the analyzes carried out by the diocese on the material delivered, entirely used, no elements emerged that could confirm the supernatural nature of the facts reported to the Curia last year. Given the degradation of the host (placed in a container with water), which might not even have been consecrated, we are not faced with the Eucharist as the real presence of Christ.”
But the press release lacks some information. First of all, nothing is known publicly about the reporting carried out by the ASL. Just a message Whatsapp can it be enough to unravel the tangle? And then, the reference to the Host that could also not have been consecrated, which is impossible given that by the parish priest’s own admission, unconsecrated hosts are not found on the floor, but in the cupboard in the sacristy, locked away. Furthermore, as reiterated by the sacristan, the church had been prepared for the Mass and that Host was not there before. It is impossible, therefore, that it could have been an unconsecrated particle. In fact, in receiving the Host, the curia itself had to write that it was a consecrated Host. Why then downgrade the nature of that particle as if it were just simple bread?
WAS IT THROWN AWAY?
Furthermore, at the insistence of the local pressthe Diocese was asked what happened to the material being analyzed. And here, the mystery thickens: there is no official answer. It seems that the material was lost or even thrown away after the analysis, but there are no official statements on the matter from the diocese.
Which is also the Compass he tried to ask. We wrote to the bishop of Ravenna to ask where the samples analyzed by Dr. Antonini and the remaining part of the Host analyzed by the ASL laboratory are now located and if it is possible to read the official report of the doctors who claim not to have found blood material. Bishop Ghizzoni responded to us in a rather laconic manner, referring us to a homily he himself gave on the occasion of the solemnity of the The body of the Lord in which, with a veiled nod to the events of Savarna we read: Corpus Domini “Brotherhood to Heal the World”: The True Eucharistic Miracle.
Evidently the prelate did not deem it necessary to give further explanations to public opinion and to the faithful, who in the meantime had asked through a petition to be able to have the Host back to carry out new analyses. Everything disappeared? Or even thrown away? And if it was thrown away, isn’t it perhaps a sacrilege since it is in any case a consecrated particle, regardless of the possible presence of a miracle?
In the text of that homily, then, the bishop, regarding the Eucharist he writes: «We are given that symbolic but real nourishment, which nourishes not so much our body, but our spirit, our interiority, the new man that is growing in us after baptism». Is the Eucharist therefore nothing more than a symbol, as Protestants understand it?
What is certain is that the Savarna events deserve attention very different from the authorities and – if the facts are as reported by the Diocese – some more explanation so that useless devotions are not fueled and suspicions and conspiracy theories are not given rise to. Given the times and considering what is happening in the Church for everything that has to do with the supernatural, between miracles and apparitions, greater clarity would be necessary.
