Scientific Tests on the Medjugorje Seers?

by Marco Corvaglia

Preamble

I veggenti durante gli esami medici del 1984

Over time, the visionaries of Medjugorje have changed their behavior during the apparitions.
In the first months, in fact, they used to speak loudly to Our Lady; besides, they listened to questions and requests of those present and immediately reported the answers, always elementary, of the Virgin. They appeared to be fully vigilant

For example, in December 1981, when the visionaries, as they had done several times previously, got to queue the faithful and guided them so that they could "touch" the Madonna:

Vicka: Recently I was going through some notes of mine and I saw that just before Christmas of the first year of the apparitions, many touched the Virgin at the evening apparition.
Janko: How did they touch the Virgin?
Vicka: Well, we told them where to touch and they touched.
[Janko Bubalo, A Thousand Encounters with the Blessed Virgin Mary in Medjugorje. The Seer Vicka Speaks of Her Experiences, Friends of Medjugorje, Chicago, 1987, pp. 108-109]

Since January 1982 they ceased to do so, conforming to the behavioral model that tradition considers as distinctive of ecstatic phenomena. So, in 1983, Vicka, interviewed by Father Janko Bubalo, claimed:

We see the Virgin, but we don’t see anything else or sense anything else [....]

When the Virgin appears, I no longer see nor hear anything except her.
[Ibid., pp. 47 and 167]

The Scientific Reports on Medjugorje

So far, these study groups had the opportunity to collect physiological measures and run experimental (and not only observational) studies:

- Prof. Henri Joyeux’s (1984)

The report of their research was published in René Laurentin and Henri Joyeux, Scientific and Medical Studies on the Apparitions at Medjugorje, Veritas Publishing, Dublin, 1987 (French edition: Études médicales et scientifiques sur les apparitions de Medjugorje, O.E.I.L., Paris, 1985).

The team of Prof. Joyeux (an oncologist physician close to the movement of Charismatic Renewal) was formed at the request of Father René Laurentin, who has been the most prominent Medjugorje campaigner for fifteen years:

On 20 March at 8 a.m. we telephoned René Laurentin who informed us of his desire to put togheter a medical team to carry out a scientific examination of these extraordinary phenomena.
[Prof. Joyeux in Laurentin, Joyeux, Scientific and Medical Studies on the Apparitions at Medjugorje, p. 46]

This team concluded that "The phenomenon of the apparition in Medjugorje [...] is scientifically inexplicable" [ibid., p. 74].

Prof. Théophile Kammerer, President of the Lourdes International Medical Commitee, objected:

As to their level, these tests remain superficial [....] Despite this, all the sophisticated techniques impress the simple-minded readers.
[Théophile Kammerer, Critical Study of Medical Explorations of the Medjugorje Seers, LIMC, 20 September 1986]

Queen of Peace Society (1985)

A report of their investigation was published in Italian, as Luigi Frigerio et al., Dossier scientifico su Medjugorje ("Scientific report on Medjugorje"), Associazione Regina della Pace, 1986 [a digitized version is also available].

The team was formed on the spontaneous initiative of Dr. Frigerio, a gynecologist, and was named “Associazione Regina della Pace“ (“Queen of Peace Society”) as a tribute to the apparition. It was named this way before the beginning of their investigations by medical instrumentation [cf. Frigerio et al., Dossier scientifico su Medjugorje, p. 55].
In the report there is also an excerpt of the Statute of the Association, stating that it has the "apologetic aim to highlight the harmony of Science with Faith" [ibid., p. 56].

On 21 November 1985 Dr. Frigerio stated:

Through various scientific missions we have collected some data, I can't say some proofs of the presence of the Virgin, because the proof is of a spiritual nature, ie, the conversion, but certainly some important clues that for now are all in favor of the autenticity of this phenomenon. [....]
My experience leads me to say, without presumptuousness, with great simplicity, that the changes of this century, from the methodological point of view, in order to live the Church, are two: the movement of C.L. [Comunione e Liberazione] and the insistent apparitions of the Virgin at Medjugorje. I believe that following this change one can come to a concrete experience in his own life, even in the workplace.
[Emanuela Sala, Piero Mantero, Il miracolo di Medjugorje, Edizioni Mediterranee, Rome, 1986, pp. 119 and 129]

Researchers from these two teams, together with a number of theologicians, held a meeting in Paina (Milan) in 1986, with the goal of discussing and comparing their results.

Dr. Giorgio Gagliardi and Father Dr. Andreas Resch’s (1998)

Their original report was published as Andreas Resch and Giorgio Gagliardi, I Veggenti di Medjugorje. Ricerca Psicofisiologica, ("The seers of Medjugorje. Psychophysiological inquiry"), Resch Verlag, Innsbruck, 2000.
This team was put together at the insistence of the priest of Medjugorje, Father Ivan Landeka [cf. Resch, Gagliardi, I veggenti di Medjugorje. Ricerca psicofisiologica, p. V]

The scientific coordinator, Dr. Giorgio Gagliardi, has developed an attitude of great caution [see Received from Dr. Gagliardi (Coordinator of Scientific Medjugorje Commission)].

*****

A vast popular mythology flourishes about these medical investigations. According to the stories circulated among believers and supporters of Medjugorje, the seers stoically lent themselves to painful testing procedures, and have been under constant scientific scrutiny for years. This is far from being the case.

Let us consider all the instrumental tests that could be conducted during the seers’ “ecstasies”. This excludes all the (prevalently or solely) observational tests, as well as those tests that were run while the seers were not having an “apparition.” Altogether, these tests only cover 12 presumed apparitions, each lasting just over a minute, in this period of thirty years.

These are the details: Prof. Joyeux’s team managed to perform their studies on June 10, October 6 and 7, and December 28 and 29, 1984. The average duration of an appartion was 79 seconds (range: 62 to 102 seconds. See Laurentin, Joyeux, Scientific and Medical Studies on the Apparitions at Medjugorje, p. 50).

Researchers from the “Queen of Peace” group could study only three of the six seers (Ivan, Marija, and Jakov) during three days (September 7, 8, and 9, 1985). In this case, the average duration of the three apparitions was 61 seconds (range: 49 to 75 seconds. See Frigerio et al., Dossier Scientifico su Medjugorje, pp. 66-69. In March of that year, Vicka, Ivanka and Marija had undergone an eye examination, but the report [pp. 49-51] does not provide any information about the duration of the apparition).

Finally, the team lead by Resch and Gagliardi could work on two seers, Ivan and Marija (as previously stated, we are considering only those subjects who claimed to have an “ecstasy”) and for two days only: April 22 (a 90-second apparition) and 23 (a 100-second apparition for Marija; 154 seconds for Ivan) 1998.

They were also able to collect data from one single seer (Marija) on December 12, 1998 (duration: 185 seconds. See Resch, Gagliardi, I veggenti di Medjugorje. Ricerca psicofisiologica, pp. 45-47-75-96).

One could find mention of some tests of Ivan and Marija, performed on June 25, 2005, by Dr. Philippe Loron. However, no report has ever been published on these recordings. We have no information on the member of the investigating team. There is no accurate description of which tests were performed. And no results were reported in quantitative (and, therefore, precise and verifiable) form.

Dr. Loron can be considered an associate of Joyeux.

Scientific Method?

On October 7, 1984, Joyeux’s team ran a “test” consisting in putting a paper card before Ivanka’s and Marija’s eyes, during an apparition (see the picture).

Let us follow the report:

Screening test for Ivanka and Marija wich consisted in placing a sheet of opaque cardboard before their eyes during the ecstasy.
[Laurentin, Joyeux, Scientific and Medical Studies on the Apparitions at Medjugorje, p. 64]

The results:

After the ecstasy they said that their vision of Our Lady was not impaired and that they did not see the screen in front of them.
[Ibid., p. 65]

Their conclusions:

The screening test does not impair the vision, therefore the normal visual pathways are not used.
[Ibid., p. 72]

These are odd assertions in the context of a scientific report, since they are not based on objective results but solely and exclusively on the subjects’ claims, whose sincerity is taken for granted.

But I will now present an example taken from the records of the second study group on Medjugorje (the Italian A.R.PA., “Queen of Peace” team), lead by Dr. Luigi Frigerio.

Let us consider this test’s methodology.

The doctors’ goal is to show that, during the ecstasies, the seers’ neurophysiological responses change. In this case, they focus on the spontaneous blink rate, that is, the frequency of rapid closings and openings of the eyelid. Instead of using real data from the subjects, the analysis was run on tape recordings of Marjia and Jakov.

In both cases, the analysis follows a procedure that, for various reasons, does not conform to any scientific protocol. As an example, let us pick Jakov’s case.

During his apparition, Jakov’s blink rate was of one blink every 7.4 seconds. By itself, this value seems well within the physiological range.

Then, to demonstrate that this value is actually significantly different from that of Jakov’s non-ecstatic periods, the A.R.PA. doctors make a peculiar claim: That Jakov, when he’s not having an ecstasy, blinks every 1.7 seconds.

The truth is that no healthy person blinks so frequently, as anybody can verify by himself. How did the A.R.PA. doctors come to this conclusion?

Let us read their report:

8.9.85 - Jakov Colo

During the ecstasy
The duration was 52’. There were 7 blinks, and precisely at 4”-10”-25”-31”-33”-38”-43” (arithmetic mean: One blink every 7.4 seconds)

After the ecstasy
The control recoding was 12” long. There were 7 blinks with this frequency (sic)1”-2"-3"-5"-7"-9"-12" (arithmetic mean: One blink every 1.7 seconds).

Conclusions
An analysis of the spontaneous blink rate shows that during the ecstasy the blink rate decreases prominently.
[Frigerio et al., Dossier scientifico su Medjugorje, p. 77]

This is unthinkable: the control condition consisted of a tape recording of just 12 seconds, which was not even remotely representative of real-life conditions, and where, on top of everything else, Jakov’s blinking rate was entirely abnormal.

In 1987, Margnelli and Gagliardi (the only two doctors experienced in this field) wrote:

The results of the September 1985 research have not yet been debated in the high-level scientific contexts, nor published in specialized journals. They appeared in a popular and summerized form in non-scientific volumes (H. Joyeux, R. Laurentin, Études médicales et scientifiques sur les apparitions de Medjugorje, O.E.I.L., Paris, 1985 and Dossier scientifico su Medjugorje, by L. Frigerio, L. Bianchi and G. Mattalia, printed in-house, Milan, 1986).
In the practice of the scientific work, it is customary to submit the results of research to the criticism of colleagues: it is a very important step because it is legitimate to draw conclusions only after having excluded methodological errors, after having eliminated the doubts and after having discussed all the hypotheses.
These objectives are achieved, usually, by the authors presenting themselves to conferences and publishing articles in specialized reviews. Every respectable review has a reading committee composed of specialists of international level that very critically assesses how the experimental data have been obtained, what are the purposes of the research and what are the conclusions the authors want to reach.
[Marco Margnelli, Giorgio Gagliardi, Le apparizioni della Madonna, Riza Scienze, Milan, 1987, pp. 17-18]

In all these years the international scientific community has never considered worthy of attention the theses suggested by the physicians who have worked in Medjugorje, and no paper on the Medjugorje results has ever been published in a recognized, peer-reviewed specialized journal. Being published in this kind of journal is exactly the kind of credit that a study must receive in order to be considered “scientific”.

Science does not depend on the principle of authority, or on “trust”. It is “Science” only what the scientific community, impartially and after examining the data, accepts concordantly. The documentation on the Medjugorje seers has never received (and could have never received) this type of recognition and validation.

For further information on the topic and a more thorough critical examination see the 2017 book Medjugorje. La frode e l'estasi [Medjugorje. Fraud and Ecstasy] (in Italian) by neurophysiologist Dr. Francesco D'Alpa.

One-Sided Doctors

Some of these doctors who examined the visionaries were already devotees of Our Lady of Medjugorje, while others carried out practices inspired by New Age mysticism but rejected by mainstream science.

It must be added also that, with very few exceptions, they were completely inexperienced in the type of investigation at issue.
The parish priest of Medjugorje himself, Ivan Landeka, who took the initiative to form a new study group in 1988, noted:

During our difficult search for a team of scientists capable of an up-to-date technical assessment of the Seers' claims, we eventually asked theologician and psychologist Father Andreas Resch, Redemptorist, professor of clinical psychology and paranormology [...], to coordinate the desired research group. Even Father Resch was unwilling to accept, since there is a paucity of researchers in this field of religious phenomena.
[Ivan Landeka, in A. Resch, G. Gagliardi, I veggenti di Medjugorje. Ricerca psicofisiologica, Resch Verlag, Innsbruck, 2000, p. V]

Prof. Henri Joyeux

In 1984, Father René Laurentin decided to assign the task of conducting a scientific study of the six seers to a physician who was close to the Charismatic Renewal movement. This person was the oncologist Prof. Henri Joyeux.
Prof. Joyeux was particularly close to Dr. René Lejeune, one of the most notable Charismatic Renewal leaders in France, author of "The angels, secret army of the Heavens" [René Lejeune, Les anges armée secrète du Ciel, Parvis, Hauteville, 1998] and of "Fasting, healing and feast for the body and the soul" [René Lejeune, Jeûner, guérison et fête du corps et de l'esprit, Parvis, Hauteville, 1988)]. Joyeux actually wrote the preface to the latter.

Joyeux (co-author of the book Scientific and Medical Studies on the Apparitions at Medjugorje [Veritas, 1987] with theologian Laurentin) elaborated and internationally promoted the (unproved) thesis of the "scientific inexplicability" of the Medjugorje apparitions.

A disciplinary proceeding has been ongoing on Dr. Joyeux since 2016. He still risks removal from the French National Medicine Board due to the spread of pseudoscientific claims about vaccines, as reported by the important French periodical Le Point.

In September 2019, the Agence Nationale de Sécurité du Médicament et des Produits de Santé (ANSM) banned the continuation of the illegal experiments conducted on 350 elderly Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients by oncologist Henri Joyeux and pharmacologist Dr. Jean-Bernard Fourtillan (the founder of a medical-religious association called Fonds Josefa) in the abbey of Sainte-Croix near Poitiers. The experiments were (literally) called "quackery" by the French Medicine Border [see: Essais cliniques "sauvages" : l'Ordre des médecins poursuit le Pr Joyeux pour "charlatanisme", Sciences et Avenir, 4 October 2019].

Patients were required to spend a night in the abbey after patches were applied containing substances whose effectiveness had not been scientifically proven. This efficacy, however, had been allegedly mystically revealed to Dr. Fourtillan through God's will (according to Fourtillan himself). On 19 September 2019, the leading French newspaper, Le Figaro, wrote in an article entitled, Un essai clinique «sauvage» mené dans une abbaye sur 350 malades a été interdit:

He [Jean-Bernard Fourtillan] and Henri Joyeux are known for having positions not accepted by the medical community, especially with respect to vaccines. The Josefa Fund was named after a nun from the early 20th century, Maria Josefa Menéndez. On the foundation’s website, Jean-Bernard Fourtillan indicates, using a very mystical vocabulary, that the “Sleep-Wake System” was “unveiled to him in April 1994”. (The hormone) Valentonine “revealed itself to me within seconds, when I was in exceptional circumstances. I was undoubtedly the right person at the right time (...), in my insignificance as a man of faith, loving and listening to God […]. I understood that the Sleep-Wake System had been revealed to me to treat the many patients suffering from the dysfunctions of this system,” he says.

[Soline Roy, Un essai clinique «sauvage» mené dans une abbaye sur 350 malades a été interdit, Le Figaro, 19 September 2019 (updated on 24 February 2020)]

In another leading French newspaper, Le Parisien, on 20 September 2019, we can read:

This Friday, the minister of health, Agnès Buzyn, interviewed on France Inter, said she was “shocked and horrified" by the scale of of these illegal clinical trials.

[Florence Méréo, Essais cliniques illégaux : 1 500 € demandés à un malade de Parkinson, Le Parisien, 20 September 2019]

On October 25, 2019, Joyeux wrote in a communiqué:

MY ROLE AS VICE PRESIDENT OF THE JOSEFA FUND

I had a friendly supporting role and spread scientific data made available to the general public.

[Communiqué du professeur Henri Joyeux, 25 October 2019]

The leading Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, on 21 September 2019 stated:

"The causes and treatment of Alzheimer's have finally been discovered!" This is the title of a video published on YouTube by the Josefa Fund during Christmas of 2016. If it were true at this time, we would know it. Yet on the website of the “non-profit” Josefa Fund, the notorious professors Jean-Bernard Fourtillan and Henri Joyeux, known and opposed by the scientific community for their battle against vaccines, continue to insist that they have identified the mechanisms of neurological diseases linked (according to them) to the sleep-wake system. They speak of a "science bomb" and of clinical testing on chicks and dogs. What they do not say is that they have already begun human trials, in secrecy and in violation of all health rules. [...]

"Discovering a wild clinical trial of this type is very rare, especially if we consider its size,” says Bernard Celli, Director of Inspections at ANSM (the national agency for drug safety). We are talking about charlatans who have abused the trust of the sick.”

[Stefano Montefiori, Alzheimer, scandalo in Francia. «Test illegali su 350 malati», Corriere della Sera, 21/9/2019]

On September 20, 2019, Professor Joyeux, interviewed by France 3 Occitanie, sarcastically replied to the Minister of Health (below is the video with the original statement):

I'm worried, because the minister is "shocked". She's losing her cool, she'll have to be resuscitated! What's the problem? This is a scientific study which is, by no means, a clinical trial.

[Le controversé professeur Henri Joyeux, de Montpellier, au cœur d'un essai clinique "sauvage", France 3 Occitanie, 20 September 2019]

And here’s the video, published on December 24, 2016 on the Josefa Fund’s YouTube channel, in which Vice President Joyeux, conducting a promotional interview with President Fourtillan, tells him, "You have just made a fundamental discovery regarding the sleep-wake system" (Tu viens de faire une découverte fondamentale sur le système veille-sommeil) [0: 06], and "This discovery is a real scientific bomb” (C'est une véritable bombe scientifique que cette découverte) [1:29]:

In 2020, documentary evidence emerged of the money that Professor Fourtillan had collected and continued to collect illegally, soliciting his patients to make donations to the Josefa Fund. For example:

On March 20, 2020, a new request for donations arrived in patients' inboxes. It would be the last one, promised Marianne Fourtillan [the pharmacologist's wife]: "Jean-Bernard asks you to make a single and final donation to the Josefa Fund, in the highest amount possible.”

[Laetitia Cherel, Mis en examen après des essais thérapeutiques sauvages, le professeur Fourtillan persévère, France Inter, 12 February 2021]

At this point, Professor Joyeux starts backtracking:

When asked if he had ever suspected that experiments in which he participated in 2018 were not legal, he [Joyeux] exclaims, “It’s evident now, but actually, no, I didn’t.”

[Ibid.]

Joyeux added:

Jean-Bernard Fourtillan had a tendency to think that his discovery would cure a great number of diseases: Alzheimer's and Parkinson's among many others. I absolutely disagreed with this because there was no evidence. I said to him, “About sleeping, yes. As you have demonstrated it on animals, it must be present in humans, but be careful!"

[Ibid.]

If this were really the case, Joyeux's responsibilities would be even greater. He, in fact, openly propagated the method, although he was aware that its effectiveness was to be demonstrated and that, in addition, volunteers were encouraged to pay significant amounts of money. Joyeux himself wrote in his 2019 communiqué:

Those who contributed donated according to their financial means, knowing the real cost for each patient (from 1,000 to 2,500 euros, depending on the duration of the treatment), as Professor Fourtillan himself explained to the people willing to test the patches.

[Communiqué du professeur Henri Joyeux, 25 October 2019]

*****

On April 22, 2002, the world-famous French newspaper Le Figaro published an article by Laurence de Charette, entitled “Families of France: A president called into question” [“Familles de France : un président contesté”].

The president is Prof. Joyeux himself, who was the head of Familles de France, a French association devoted to supporting and protecting families.

About Joyeux, the article reads as follows:

His opponents see in his writings connections with the thesis espoused by certain sects, such as instinct therapy and crudivorism (eating raw food). Henry Joyeux, they stress, has written the preface to many books on these topics by Bruno Comby, who personally showed up at the Castle of Montrâmes, which has been labeled as a “sect” by the [parliamentary] committee for the defense against sects.
[Laurence de Charette, Familles de France : un président contesté, Le Figaro, 22 April 2002]

The article also notes that Joyeux also authored a preface for a book by Jean Seignalet, another figure with connections to the world of instinct therapy. The book's title is "Nutrition, or the Third Medicine" [Jean Seignalet, L’alimentation ou la troisième médecin, O.E.I.L., Paris, 2001], and in his preface Joyeux defines it as "well documented, and truly scientific".

In his book, Jean Seignalet claims that a crudivorist diet (and, in particular, a method known as Burger) can treat a huge number of ailments.

Such a food regimen has been qualified as a “pseudo-scientific theory” by Dr. Jacques Frexinos, professor at the School of Medicine of the University of Toulouse, France, and head of the Gastroenterology department at the local hospital. In his article, Dr. Frexinos points to the crudivorists’ claims that their diet can be successfully applied “to dozens of disorders, from rheumatoid polyarthritis to cancer and leukemia, and also to ankylosing spondylarthritis, autoimmune rheumatologic diseases, autoimmune thyroid diseases, multiple sclerosis, active chronic hepatitis, myasthenia, tendinitis, osteoporosis, cephalgia, manic-depression disorder, schizophrenia, endogenous nervous depression, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, functional colon diseases, colitis (RHC and Chron’s disease), acne, eczema, psoriasis, asthma, bronchitis, and so on. There is not even enough room to quote them all! In fact, it would be easier to make a list of those pathologies that are not treated by this diet."

Dr. Philippe Loron

A collaborator of Prof. Joyeux during his Medjugorje investigation (although he joined the group only at the end of the 80s), and, as Joyeux, fellow adherent to Charismatic Renewal, is the neurologist Dr. Philippe Loron.

He himself stated, in a November 11, 1990 letter addressed to the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Damascus, Ignatius IV Hazim:

I am working together with Prof. Joyeux and Father Laurentin on the ecstasies experienced by the young seers of Medjugorje.
[Philippe Loron, Constat médical et analyses scientifiques des evénements de Soufanieh, ("Medical Report and Scientific Analyses of the Events in Soufanieh"), F.X. de Guibert, Paris, 1992, p. 73]

In his book Le Mystère de la Royauté Sacrée (“The Mistery of the Holy Royalty”) [Resiac, 2000], Dr. Loron states that the French monarchy will be restored, and "this French Great Monarch [...] will make it possible to relaunch France’s true mission” [P. Loron, Le Mystère de la Royauté Sacrée, p. 126].

The “true mission” consists of no less than “restoring the true Catholic faith” [ibid., p. 99]. Dr. Loron adds what follows:

In my view, it is not a matter of being a royalist, and even less to support one or the other candidate to the throne. These events will simply take place by means of divine will, according to the many prophecies that have been already published on these matters.
[Philippe Loron, Le Mystère de la Royauté Sacrée, Resiac, Montsûrs, 2000, p. 100]

In the same book Loron gives credit to a story (which originates in the Early Middle Ages) according to which the Gospel figure of Mary Magdalene introduced the Christian religion in Provence, and had her body completely covered of body hairs, a characteristic that she shared with many Old Testament prophets.

Dr. Loron notices that body hairs share "the same embryological origin (ectodermal) of the nervous system" [ibid., p. 93]. Thus the doctor asks himself:

May hairiness be a sign of sensitivity, of sharp intuition?
[Ibid., p. 94]

Body hairs, one reads in Loron’s book, should be studied thoroughly and very soon, that is:

... before culture, fashion, social conditioning, and rational and skeptical education choke this vital tendencies. In fact, we do witness the rejection, culturally acceptable in so-called ‘evolved’ societies, of body hairiness on women, who, with the excuse of elegance and hygiene, shave their legs and their armpits. One poll has shown that in 1995 67% of French women admitted to shaving, while they were only 48% in 1981.
[Ibid., p. 83]

We should also mention Loron’s defense of Vassula Ryden [P. Loron, J’ai vu écrire Vassula. Analyse scientifique de la Vraie Vie en Dieu, F.-X. de Guibert, Paris, 1994)], who espouses an eccentric mixture of Christianity and New Age, who claims to receive, through a procedure akin to automatic writing, messages from Jesus Christ.

Dr. Loron also investigated Myrna, a supposed mystic of Soufanieh (a neighborhood of Damascus, Siria). He actually authored a book on the subject, Constat médical et analyses scientifiques des événements de Soufanieh (Medical report and scientific analyses of the events in Soufanieh) where, for example, two pages are devoted to a “study” on the “Morphopsychological profile of Myrna, based on a dozen pictures taken during the Easter Week by a morphopsychologist not involved in the case”.

The “study” contains astonishing passages, like the following excerpt:

Myrna possesses an instinctual dominant trait […] betrayed by her well developed jawbone, which reveals «grounding» into material reality, joy of living. […] Her second dominant trait is affective: her downward nose reveals a tendency to devote herself to others with a very spontaneous trust. However, she also shows a latero-nasal retreat (compression of the cheeckbones), which causes her to interiorize her generosity and avoid social interaction.
Therefore, she possesses a basic extroversion (large face) and a need to interact with others, together with a morphology that pushes her towards interiorizing her feelings. This condition might result in a conflict, whose roots can be found in her childhood relationships (a impediment in relationships, or one of affective nature, which she probably encountered during her childhood) […]. It is possible that she did not feel sufficiently appreciated in her childhood or teenage years; the latero-nasal retreat on her face denotes a serious emotional frustration. […] Her big eyes, open over the world, testify to her imagination, her intuition.
[Loron, Constat médical et analyses scientifiques des événements de Soufanieh, F.-X. de Guibert, Paris, 1992, pp. 80-81]

Dr. Loron is also a follower of Hildegard medicine, a holistic therapeutic approach based on the theories of the XII century nun Hildegard of Bingen. This medical system is claimed to derive from Hildegard’s own divine revelations. It depends on the usage of medicinal herbs and stones, which are applied on different parts of the body.

On the website of the association Les Jardins d’Hildegarde ("The Gardens of Hildegard") one can find a catalog of Hildegard medicine products. Among those, on pages 23-26, is a list of “therapeutic stones”.

Le pietre ildegardiane e le loro presunte qualità terapeutiche

It should also be noted that Dr. Loron, in an article published on Chrétiens Magazine (“Christian Magazine”, a periodical close to Father Laurentin) has made the following statement about Hildegard medicine treatments:

They can certainly offer important contributions (certain gems in particular, which Hildegard indicates as bearing a tri-dimension divine impression). This has nothing to do with magic, since everything is related to Faith and Hope in God and His Word.

Il programma del convegno a cui Loron partecipò nell'aprile 2008

The “Les Jardins d’Hildegarde” website contains references to many speeches given by Dr. Loron. For example, on April 26, 2008, Dr. Loron gave a speech about Hildegard medicine, and also about “France’s divine mission”: link.

Marco Corvaglia

Last update: 27 January 2021

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