Stigmata

Stigmata- consists of five classic points where wounds appear: the side, both hands and both feet. Traditionally these are known as the Five Wounds or the Sacred Wounds of our Lord, because they are the marks that occurred at the time of the Crucifixion. Some people are said to suffer the Passion of Christ which includes: the agony at Gethsemane (including the tears or sweating of blood); scourging; the crowning of thorns; beatings; the shoulder sound from carrying the Cross; and the Five Wounds inflicted during the Crucifixion itself.

Cases of The Past

ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI (1186-1226)
• The marks he received were not wounds which bled but impressions of the heads of the nails, round and black and standing clear from the flesh.

BLESSED HELEN (1237)
• Dominican sister at a convent in Veszprim in Hungary
• Received a mark in her right hand on the Feast of St. Francis and later received the wound in her side.

ST. CHRISTINA OF STOMMELN (1268)
• Received wounds in her hands, feet, on her forehead and on her side.
• Her wounds bled every Easter
• Harassed by terrifying demonic experiences
• She was seen to be hurled against a wall by an unseen power and according to one report "be spattered and polluted with deluges of indescribable filth."
• Experienced religious raptures and divine ecstasies

BLESSED ANGELA OF FOLIGNO (13TH CENTURY)
• Experienced ecstasies. • The first stigmatic who was able, it was claimed, to live long periods without food
• Subjected to what were described as diabolic temptations.
• Another of her experiences which was later to be repeated by other women stigmatics involved a vision in which she felt herself being given the Christ child to hold.

LUKARDIS OF OBERWIMAR (1276-1309)
• Ecstatic experiences • Died at the significant age of 33 (the age at which it is believed Christ died on the cross).
• She was known to have involved herself in practices of self-mutilation, i.e. repeating the hammering of nails into Christ's hand. She used the fingers of one hand as nails and struck at the palm in her other hand. "The tip of her finger seeming somehow to be pointed like a nail. Though it appeared a finger to sight and tough, neither flesh nor bone could felt in it and those who had handled it declared that it had the hardness of a piece of metal."
• The wounds, as has happened with so many other stigmatics, bled regularly on Fridays.

ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA (1347-1381)
• Died at the age of 33
• Felt the pain of Christ's suffering in her own body at the age of 26 and two years later received five visible wounds.
• Experienced the symptom of being unable or unwilling to eat. It is said she went for eight years without taking any food or liquid other that the Blessed Sacrament.
• There are reports of her levitating.
• After her death, as in the case of a number of stigmatics, her body is said not to have decomposed in the normal way.

ST. VERONICA GIULANI (born 1660)
• Received the stigmata in her hands, side, and feet at the age of 37.
• Thirty hours after her death professors of medicine and surgery conducted a postmortem examination and said that on her heart were imprints similar to those which she had visualized and drawn when she was still alive (images of various kinds including a cross, a crown of thorns, and a chalice). The postmortem also revealed "a very considerable curvature of the right shoulder, which bent the very bone just as the weight of a heavy cross might have done."
• Emitted the sweet odor of sanctity during her ecstasies.
• It is also claimed that she had levitated.

MARIA DE MOERI (1830's)
• Franciscan tertiary who in the late autumn of 1833, received the five bleeding wounds.

DOMENICA LAZZARI (1830's)
• Her wounds were said to have bled every Friday from the time of their first appearance through her death in 1848, at the age of 33.
• Several witnesses described the wounds as going right through the palms of her hands. In addition to the five wounds she received the marks of the crown of thorns.
• She lived without food, only taking Holy Communion. It is said she was hypersensitive to the presence of food as well as light, touch, and heat.

ANNE CATHERINE EMMERICH
• An Augustinian nun from near Westphalia in West Germany
• She received the wounds in 1812, including one in her side shaped like a crucifix
• She was yet another of the stigmatics to fast and to find it difficult to eat.

TERESA HIGGINSON (1880's)
• Stigmata appeared on her body at Easter time in 1874.
• Had ecstatic experiences.
• Reluctant to eat.
• She is said to have never slept and was subject to trances which appeared to serve in place of sleep.

DOROTHY KERIN (1889-1963)
• One of the stigmatics outside of the Roman Catholic Church.
• She was the founder of the Burrswood Fellowship and Healing Ministry.
• Her mystical experiences began with a period in which she was deaf, blind and semiconscious.
• As in the cases of others who have received the marks, it was some time after her initial "healing," and once she had been established as a focus of awe in the community, that her stigmatization took place.
• It was reported that she was consciously able to leave her physical body when at prayer at night to minister to the suffering of those for whom she was praying.
• She spoke of religious ecstasies and of two visions in which she experienced the feeling of holding the Christ child in her arms.

THERESE NEWMANN (BORN 1898)
• In 1926 she had a vision of Christ at the Mount of Olives and she had a pain in her side and felt blood trickling from it. Later she found a wound had indeed opened up in her side.
• Nail wounds on her hands and feet also appeared.
• She also refrained from eating.
• There is one celebrated photograph of her lying in a blood-soaked bed with blood streaming from her eyes and hands.

Cases of The Present

HEATHER WOODS
• 43 year old widow
• She is a deacon in a small Episcopal Church.
• She has received wounds on her feet and hands, a crescent-shaped red mark on her right side and twice a vivid cross has appeared on her forehead.
• Marks first appeared in May 1992 and the first sign was an itching of her left hand. Something akin to a blister appeared on her hand with a halo-shaped mark around it. Over a period of a few days, her right hand and her feet were similarly marked and, at their most active, the wounds have been the size of an old ten pence piece and have seeped blood and clear fluid. They have not taken the form of indentations but round flat areas of tender scarred skin.
• The arrival of the marks on her hands coincided with her first experience of what she believes to be mystical writing and drawing. She received what she describes as spiritual messages which she wrote rapidly on whatever paper was at hand, little aware, she says, of what she was writing. Her writings were recorded with her left hand even though she is normally right-handed. The handwriting is clear but the style can vary distinctly from paragraph to paragraph.
• As the stigmata on her left hand began to emerge, she had a vision of Jesus being baptized. Four days later she had a vision of Christ on the cross and she was told that in sixty-three days she would witness a transfiguration that would take her from her old life to a new beginning. Within the next 63 days her health deteriorated to a point where her friends didn't think she was going to live. On the night she was in her lowest and in greatest pain she had another vision and experience which she now interprets as the climax of the prophecy. The next day she had renewed vigor and health.
• Like many stigmatics before her, Heather has had a difficult life.
• During service on Good Friday in 1993, she felt a pain in her side and a feeling of deep insolvent with the suffering of Jesus on the cross. She and others present examined the wound on her side and it was seen to have been bleeding. Two days later, Easter Day, she had a mark of a cross on her forehead, the second time this has happened to her. It remained visible to her and others for a number of days.
• Television pictures of her experience on Good Friday were shown on network television in Britain.
• One curious event which took place, which could not have been replicated by the earlier stigmatics in the age before photography, was that a vision of an arc of light which Heather describes seeing in the chapel at her home, was captured by a camera. When this picture was developed, an arc of light appeared on the exposed film which corresponded to the light of the Holy Spirit she could see.

ETHEL CHAPMAN (1921-1980)
• She was 53 when she received her stigmata.
• On Easter in 1974, while in the hospital and in constant pain from multiple sclerosis, she had a dream, "In the early hours of the morning, I felt myself being drawn onto the cross. I felt the pain of the nails through my hands and through my feet. I could see the crowds all jeering and shouting. It was in a foreign language so I don't know what they were saying. I felt in myself all the pain and all the agony the Lord himself went through. I myself was in the Lord's body." Early on Easter morning when the nurses came to wash her, they noticed Ethel's hands were bleeding.
• She relived the experience of her vision each year around Easter. The vision never changed.
• Apart from Easter, her wounds bled and reopened from time to time at moments of stress or, as she believed, to warn her of events.
• The marks on her hands were just off-center and her feet were marked similarly. She also had other forms of bruising and what appeared to be a rope mark on her wrist. Around her forehead she had a few dotted pinpricks which could have corresponded to the marks of a crown of thorns.
• After a vision in which she saw herself walking on water with Christ, her multiple sclerosis went into a period of remission and she was able to walk unaided.
• She described how she was aware of a fragrance of roses when her hands bled.
• Ethel's visions gave her a feeling of contentment and tranquility.
• She also described feelings of lightness, as if being lifted off her bed.
• Both local and national newspapers ran articles telling of her story.
• It was said that she had extraordinary gifts of insight. She believed she had a gift of clairvoyance and could foresee the deaths of people close to her. She was able to sense Pope John Paul's death when it happened without being told (he came to her in a vision).

JANE HUNT - UK
• She was 28 years old when she received the wounds and the marks remained with her for two years.
• On the evening of July 24, 1985, she reports seeing the face of Jesus on her pillow and that night had a vision of him standing by her bed.
• The next morning, which was the feast of St. James, her hands seemed to itch and burn. When she left the house to go shopping she experienced a sudden and tremendous pain in her hands as if needles were being driven through them. Blood began to flow from the center of her palms. It just started seeping through the skin with no holes or anything.
• Around Easter and on a number of Sundays, the wounds were particularly sensitive and in a 24 hour period, she estimated she could lose up to a pint of blood. When active, the centers of her hands appeared to blister and then burst. Deep fissuring was observed but her hands were not pierced. In addition to the marks on her hands, Jane twice reported seeing small marks on her feet and felt a severe pain in her right side.
• The first "mystical" experience Jane recalls was an "out-of-body" sensation. While in the hospital, she described seeing her own body being worked on by the medical staff.
• One time she heard the voice of Jesus reassuring her that he would never leave her. She often spoke of sometimes feeling as if she was inside of Christ.
• In another vision, she tells of the feeling of being transported to Bethlehem and being allowed to hold the Christ child. Another time, she saw Mary in her own house.
• She also experienced a vision of the Devil who tried to undermine her faith.
• She has also detected an unexplained sweet smell of roses in her house, a scent which her mother and husband also noticed.
• Her stigmata lasted until 1987 and faded following a hysterectomy.

GEORGE H. - SCOTLAND
• His marks appeared at the same time as Jane Hunt.
• He is a Roman Catholic in his forties.
• His marks first appeared shortly before Lent in 1986.
• He woke one morning to find the backs of his hands bleeding. The marks on top of his feet appeared later but they did not bleed immediately. Subsequently, his hand have bled regularly. Occasionally small marks appear in his palms. The upper sides of his feet also bleed and the soles of his feet, he reports, are pail to walk on. He has also received marks, as of scourging, on his back, a wound in his right side, and bruising on one shoulder, as if he has been carrying a heavy object or as if his shoulder has been dislocated or punched. He says he experiences severe pain most days.
• By 1992 he was unable to eat and retain any food. He had become very thin and had a tube inserted through his nose through which liquid food could be passed to his stomach.
• His pain was often worse when the marks were quiet. His wounds were beginning to follow an anticipated cycle of activity with new bleeding occurring in Lent leading up to Holy Week.
• He experiences what can perhaps be described as a religious ecstasy when taking communion.
• He finds he loses sense of time and place, and to others, appears to be under the influence of a drug.
• He reports having visions of Jesus twice, when he felt as if he had entered another world.
• He believes the Devil threatened him with harm and thinks it was carried out when the front door of his house was set alight and a dead cat was exhumed from his garden.
• A particularly alarming incident occurred when he heard a voice speaking to him and mocking him from a tape of music which he had put on his cassette player. George was convinced the voice was not pre-recorded as it addressed him by name and reacted to his responses. He no longer has the tape.
FATHER BRUSE - US • He became a stigmatic the day after Christmas in 1991.
• His experience was widely reported in the press, attracted considerable attention from tv stations and the numbers of people attending the church, where he was an assistant priest, rose dramatically.
• Statues began weeping after he touched them.
• Wrists, feet, and side began bleeding. His blood would defy gravity. Instead of trickling downward, it would go off to the side.
• He could smell roses from his blood.
• At other times he had what he called an "inner stigmata" whereby his wrists, feet, and side would get very painful. Along with this pain came beautiful and peaceful sensations accompanied by a serene sound and intense color sensations. The sound was almost like singing, a sound of nature. He said it sounded like voices but he couldn't be sure. As for the color, he said "it's like feeling and touching color, and the colors come up into a fan shape, and come into me, I can feel that happening at times."
• He also describes a time when he had the feeling he could see the hill of Calvary with the crosses.
• He describes a time when, after blessing a statue of Our Lady of Fatima during confession, the colors started moving on it. About two hundred people witnessed this statue adding colors, subtracting colors, and rotating colors for about fifty minutes.

CLORETTA ROBINSON - US
• In 1972 she had bleeding from the palm of her left hand which occurred from two to six times daily.
• The bleeding began when she was in her classroom at school. She experienced no pain with it and gave no sign of any emotional change at the time. They found dried blood on her left palm yet no lesions were visible after the blood was washed away. Her left hand was bound and she was sent back to school. Within three hours her right palm began to bleed. On the sixth day of her experience there was bleeding from her left foot, a day later the right foot, the day after that there was bleeding from her right side, and on the fourteenth day she was bleeding from the middle of her forehead. This was the seven days before Easter Sunday. For a total of nineteen days she usually bled one to five times daily, but the frequency decreased to once every two days. She bled from the hands more frequently than the other sites.
• Several accounts were reported of skin, which appeared to have no marks or lesions, oozing blood over a one- to four-minute time span.
• On Good Friday, the l9th day of bleeding, she bled from all sites simultaneously and she felt as if "it was all over." From that day, no further bleeding took place.
• The only significant history as background for the stigmata was her religiosity.
• She talked of voices telling her to go and pray with certain people. Her doctors said that the most striking psychological quality present was Cloretta's identification with the figure of Christ.
• She never reported seeing any visions and the voices she heard were clear and gave a simple message that her prayers would be answered.
• As well as reading the Bible she had also read the book "Crossroads" by John Webster. This religious book about the crucifixion made an impact on her when she read it a week before the bleeding began. Also, four days before the bleeding, she had watched a tv program about the crucifixion.
• She denied any knowledge of the phenomenon of stigmata before she experienced it herself. After her experience she identified herself with St. Francis of Assisi.
• It is reported that on one occasion, during her short period of stigmatization, she was drawing pictures of St. Francis and her left palm began to bleed.

GEORGETTE FANIEL OF MONTREAL - CANADA
• 74 year old woman
• At the age of twenty she fell ill with inexplicable paralysis and pain. For the next fifty years she was virtually bedridden and spent her life in constant pain and prayer.
• She said her stigmata began in 1950 with wounds to her wrists and feet and then on April 25, 1953 she received the crown of thorns.
• She also described a wound in her heart and how she bore the pain that Christ had suffered from carrying the cross.
• As with many stigmatics, she described how the pain increased on Fridays and at the point of consecration during Mass.
• In 1982 she described how "God manifested himself with a terrible pain and be leaving a sign in my flesh in the shape of the figure two. This indicated that God and I are two in one same flesh. The doctor who examined it said it was unbelievable and looked like luminous neon and the blood could be seen circulating. He said that the number was made up of seven dots, which Jesus has told me indicate the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit."
• She said that Satan spoke to her, tried to distort her prayers, and told her that her whole life had been wasted in spiritual pride.
• After Mass, the writer John Cornwell said "her feet and ankles were very badly swollen and in the center of each foot was a distinct deep purplish mark, red and angry at the edges. The skin of the whole foot looked extremely tender and inflamed, but it was neither broken nor showed any signs of blood. It was as if the wounds had been painted on. But scrutinizing the marks very closely, the images seemed to be composed of broken or distended capillaries as a result of some trauma below the skin's surface. Next I looked at her wrists. There were no similar vivid signs, but instead monstrous swellings that had the appearance of an unusual kind of arthritis. The skin was drawn taut almost to breaking point and although I touched the pressure very gently, she shut her eyes and gasped as if in agonizing pain."

MICHELE IMPROTA - ITALY
• In 1991, at the age of 18, Michele had visions and his hand and feet exhibited painful bleeding wounds.
• He had visions of the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and the Madonna of the Rosary, the virgin of Medjugorge.
• He also talked about statues weeping in his presence.

AMPARA CUEVA (NOVEMBER 1980) - PORTUGAL
• 43 year old mother of seven.
• Says she was ordered by the Blessed Virgin Mary to recite the Rosary in a public olive grove on the outskirts of town.
• Symptoms include drops of blood on her forehead, hands, ribs, feet; and knees.
• The stigmatic trance lasted for almost two hours and has been repeated on the major feast days of the Catholic Church, especially those falling on a Friday, the traditional day of Christ's death.
• The description of the stigmata is vague - at one point they are described as "scars," and at another as "bleeding like sweat."

Side note: There is one pious legend that states there are always twelve stigmatics alive at any given time representing the twelve apostles, with the implication that when one stigmatic dies, the gift is passed on to someone new. Dates of the deaths of stigmatics and the re-occurrence of the wounds in new subjects do not tally neatly, but it is the case that for the last two centuries at least the number of people at any given time with the stigmata is roughly twelve.