EUCHARISTIC MIRACLE OF BUENOS AIRES 1996

20 years in the making, unseen original material seen for the first time. This is the official first-hand account of the investigation of the Eucharistic Miracle of Buenos Aires by Lawyer and Documentary Filmmaker, Ron Tesoriero.

This is the account given by an Australian lawyer, Ron Tesoriero, who was central to the scientific investigation on the 1996 miracle, requested by Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires.

“On 18 August 1996 after Mass at the Santa Maria Church, a Communion host was found abandoned. The priest put the host in a bowl of water and placed it in the tabernacle until it dissolved. Within days a blood-like substance issued from the host. It grew in quantity and transformed over the next 10 days. Forensic pathology and DNA testing conducted over 20 years has found the substance to be human heart from a living, traumatically injured human. The Science leads to answers that Jesus is truly present in the Communion host and that He is the author of life.”

It was on 5 October 1999, that I went to Buenos Aires to commence my investigation upon the invitation of Dr. Ricardo Castanon. We interviewed the priest, Padre Alejandro Pezet and other witnesses and took samples. I documented on film the essential parts of my entire investigation. My approach was to prepare the case as a lawyer who would go before a judge.

On 21 October 1999, we presented a sample for DNA testing to Forensic Analytical Genetics laboratory in San Francisco. On 1 May 2000, they reported to me that whilst there was the presence of human DNA, no human genetic code could be obtained. This was unusual.

Different scientists had different opinions.
Who was right? I proceeded to study forensic pathology and cell biology.

For more than one year I researched hundreds of histology images and eventually found one that resembled the Buenos Aires case. It was inflamed human heart tissue due to a compromised blood supply. I realized that when the heart suffers trauma, it looks very different from standard textbook images of normal heart tissue. The scientists that I had engaged thus far were not experts in heart trauma.

The next step was to find a world expert who was not only a forensic pathologist, but also a cardiologist. I found him in New York: Dr. Frederick Zugibe. On 20 April 2004, a leading Australian investigative journalist, Mike Willesee, accompanied me to New York to present Dr. Zugibe with my case samples. Dr. Zugibe had been told nothing of the history of the samples or my research.

In our presence, as I filmed, he microscopically examined the samples. The only true statements made by Dr. Zugibe are contained in what I recorded and documented at that original meeting. They have since become historic:

“I am an expert on the heart. The heart is my business. This is flesh. This flesh is heart muscle tissue, myocardium, from the left ventricle wall not far from a valvular area. It is the muscle that gives the heart it’s beat and the body it’s life. This heart muscle is inflamed. It has lost its striations and is infiltrated with white blood cells. White blood cells are not normally found in heart tissue. These cells are produced by the body and they escape from blood and infiltrate the tissue to address trauma or injury.”

Dr. Zugibe continued:

“The presence of those white blood cells in the tissue tell me two things:

Firstly. this heart has suffered traumatic injury. There has been a compromising of the blood supply to the heart. This is not unlike what I have seen when someone has been beaten severely over the chest in the region of the heart.

Secondly. This heart was alive. This heart is from a living person not a dead person. I am looking at a snapshot of a living heart.

I can date the injury. I can date when the compromising of the blood supply occurred. It happened 3 days before the snapshot in time captured in the microscopic slide.”

I asked a theologian what this could possibly mean in the context of Jesus. He said that Church teaches that the Eucharist is a memorial of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. When we receive Communion, we are receiving Jesus at the moment of his Resurrection, 3 days after His Passion.

What astonished Dr. Zugibe was that the white blood cells and the heart tissue were in such a good state of preservation despite having been kept in distilled water for 3 years:

“The good state of preservation is what might have been expected if they had been placed in a preservative like formalin. It would be impossible for the white blood cells to be present in the sample if the sample had been kept in water.”

On 26 March 2005, Dr. Zugibe sent me his formal report on the findings. In part it reads:

“The tissues of the heart had undergone degenerative changes of the myocardium possibly due to an obstruction of a coronary artery that supplies nutrients and oxygen to an area of heart muscle. This obstruction may be the result of… a severe blow to the chest over the heart.”

Mike Willesee summed up the case this way:

“When a Communion host, which is bread, bleeds and becomes living human heart, it is more than just a WOW moment. It is a traumatic day for Science.”

Why traumatic? Because for the first time ever life has come into existence from inert non-living matter.

What has been revealed in my ongoing work is unprecedented. It provides, for the first time ever, a scientific basis for the Catholic Church’s belief in:

1. God as the sole recorded creator of human life.

2. Jesus as truly alive, resurrected and present in the Communion host.

3. Jesus giving us his heart in the Eucharist.

Ron Tesoriero has published his work in a new book, My Human Heart: Where Science and Faith Collide and in documentaries available here on the Reason to Believe Shop.