The miracle discourse will continue until morale improves.
Okay, all jokes aside, as there’s so many miracle claims making the rounds on substack, I decided to look into the most compelling mystery I had heard about in the last few months: The “miraculous” healing of Sister Bernadette Moriau.
Before getting into this, however, I want to make some things clear:
A naturalistic explanation to this event does not falsify theism, Christianity, or Catholicism
Miracles could very well be real, even if this event is not a miracle.
I’m not trying to be a “debunker” in the sense that I can conclusively say this event wasn’t supernatural. My task is not even to prove that a specific naturalistic explanation is more likely than not, but that it’s more likely than a miracle. That is, the specific explanation doesn’t have to be likely, it just has to be more likely than a miracle. Admittedly, a low bar!1
The reality of this situation is that a woman who was sick and in pain for 40 years prayed for healing and to be free from pain, and eventually she was healed and free from pain. Does it really matter if the cause was supernatural or not? I feel the need to write like this not to devalue the heart-warming story of Sister Moriau, but so that opportunists do not use her story to (basically) exploit people. I think there is something existentially comforting if you’re a religious or spiritual person, hoping or praying for something important, and somehow getting that thing. Those stories shape our lives, and though a buzzkill may bring up the problem of evil, in my experience I don’t think that’s an effective argument. It may be logical, but it’s not speaking to what makes these experiences compelling. But that’s a post for another time.
I am not a doctor. I asked AI to help me find case studies and statistics and to explain different ailments, what they mean, and entail, etc. You should take my specific claims about the ailments and the actual medicine with a grain of salt. I feel a little icky writing this post because I am not a doctor. I don’t want people to trust what I say, but look into what I say. That’s where the value of this post will come in, but in breaking down the components of this case, examining the details, and seeing what science says about the probability of those specific details.
I’m okay if people stop reading after reading #5. But keep in mind that the people who are prancing around with these miracle claims are also themselves not doctors. All I would say is, if you’re going to hold my lack of credentials against me, I support you in that endeavor, just be consistent with holding those who disagree with me to the same standard.
I will also say that my skepticism in this case is not predicated on the case I will outline. As a Humean, I’m confident that the explanation is not supernatural or miraculous for at least two reasons:
Three million people visit Lourdes every year. It’s unclear in that statistic if all of them seek healing in Lourdes’ waters, but it’s safe to say more than 99% of the people seeking healing do not receive it. In science, when we’re trying to pin down a causal factor and running an experiment, the fact that an effect is correlated with a cause 1% of the time doesn’t imply any sort of meaningful causality. If we ran a drug trial of some sort and only 1% of the people taking the drug got better, it wouldn’t be considered a useful drug.
I do not believe that the absence of current explanations leads to a miracle being the most likely explanation. A miracle is a non-explanation. As I’ve written before, supernatural claims contain less causal content than naturalistic ones. What’s more, I’m not confident we can formulate a model of when God heals someone. Even if we assume these cases happen, they are so different from each other and represent a minority of cases where believers pray for healing, that we can’t draw reliable inferences.
Do not challenge me to debate this miracle. I will not debate people on general miracle claims because I have found believers (unfortunately) are too credulous about miracle claims to the point where they actively spread misinformation on the facts of the matter. And so, a live debate would be counterproductive, as it would more likely misinform people.
The publicly available documentation (that we can easily access) for this is scarce. Many of my inferences can be invalidated with that documentation. I’m fully open about that. But when I say there isn’t any evidence for something, please understand that I’m not saying it definitively doesn’t exist, but that it’s just not available. In fact, so much of what the internet knows about this case comes back to this document, which is a report, not the data itself.
The Story, As We Are Told
For this section, I used AI to help me summarize the general overview of how the facts are generally given. You can find the general “pitch” just by googling “Bernadette Moriau.” Here’s a link to a story 60 minutes ran on her in the 2020s.
I’m going to put this AI assisted summary in quotes, that way you know where my words are and where the AI is.
I’m also going to use AI (Gemini) throughout this post. I’m being completely honest here! I’m not an expert, and I want to differentiate the scientific claims (which I’m not qualified to evaluate) from methodological ones (which I want to scrutinize)
Let’s dive in:
In 1966, at the age of 27, Bernadette Moriau was diagnosed with Severe lumbosacral neuropathy and cauda equina syndrome, a serious condition caused by extreme compression of the spinal nerve roots. This caused her to feel constant, severe bilateral sciatica, partial paralysis of her lower limbs, and a fixed structural deformity (equinus contracture) that caused her left foot to drop and twist permanently inward. By the mid-1990s, she was unable to walk unassisted and relied on a wheelchair, a rigid spinal corset, and a lower-limb brace. Her pain was managed via an implanted spinal neurostimulator and maximum daily therapeutic doses of morphine prescribed by a specialized anti-pain clinic.
In July 2008, Sister Moriau attended a diocesan pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes. During the trip, her physical condition remained unchanged. Her recovery occurred four days after her return home to her convent in Bresles, France, on July 11, 2008.
According to her account, at approximately 5:45 PM—coinciding with a period of adoration being held at Lourdes—she experienced a distinct sensation of warmth and relaxation throughout her body. She felt an internal voice prompting her to remove her medical equipment. Upon doing so, she found that her intense chronic pain had ceased, her left foot had returned to its natural alignment, and she was able to stand and walk completely unassisted. She immediately stopped taking her daily morphine medication and reported no subsequent withdrawal symptoms.
On July 15, 2008, her general practitioner examined her and documented the complete normalization of her lower-limb reflexes and gait. In September 2008, her regular rheumatologist confirmed full mobility, noting a minor residual muscular weakness that eventually resolved with standard physical therapy.
In 2009, her medical care team formally submitted a comprehensive dossier to the Bureau des Constatations Médicales (BCM) in Lourdes. Over the next several years, the bureau ordered repeated, independent examinations by external neurologists, orthopedists, and psychiatrists across France. These evaluations included high-resolution spinal MRIs and needle electromyograms (EMGs) which verified that her long-term nerve damage and conduction blocks had entirely disappeared.
In November 2016, the International Medical Committee of Lourdes (CMIL)—a panel consisting of approximately 30 independent global professors and medical specialists—reviewed the compiled data. By a secret vote of 26-to-1, the committee officially concluded that Sister Moriau’s complete and lasting recovery was “medically unexplained in the current state of scientific knowledge.
Okay, so that is the story we are told, let’s get into some details.
About The Disease
Here’s how AI explains her condition:
Cauda Equina Syndrome is triggered by severe mechanical compression, narrowing (stenosis), or physical trauma to this concentrated nerve bundle. Prolonged compression restricts microscopic blood flow to the nerves (ischemia), leading to progressive axon degeneration, demyelination, and localized scar tissue formation (neural adhesions).
Clinical guidelines universally dictate that acute CES is a surgical emergency. Decompression surgery performed within 24 to 48 hours offers the highest probability of motor and sensory recovery. In cases of chronic, slow-onset spinal compression lasting decades (such as Moriau’s), the likelihood of spontaneous or complete neurological reversal drops significantly due to permanent fibrosis (fibrous tissue scarring) of the nerve roots and muscle atrophy from long-term denervation. Statistical models for chronic radiculopathy show that if motor deficits (like foot drop) persist beyond 12 to 24 months despite conservative treatment, axonal loss is usually permanent, leaving less than a 5-10% probability of meaningful functional recovery through natural regeneration.
The bolding here is mine. This is obviously a dire diagnosis for Moriau, but notice that there is a 5-10% probability of meaningful functional recovery. That’s low, but not impossible. I will sound like a broken record throughout this post when I say this, but 5-10% probability is also more likely than a miracle.
What’s more, it’s also worth mentioning that she had surgeries on her back throughout her life that may have mitigated the risk of permanent fibrosis. I asked AI if there was any evidence or documentation that suggested she had permanent fibrosis, to which the answer was no and:
In her pre-2008 medical files, her diagnosis was strictly documented as severe nerve root compression and chronic denervation misfiring caused by cauda equina syndrome. Her nerves were starved of blood flow and heavily pinched, but they were still biologically viable.
Another way of putting this is that her nerves weren’t dying, they were being compressed, and that compression was causing pain and hurting her ability to walk, stand upright, and so on.
What Paralyzed Sister Moriau?
I bring up the point that we don’t have any publicly available evidence of her having permanent fibrosis because that’s a key factor in whether or not Moriau could, in the event of some sort of recovery of her Cauda Equina syndrome, likely make a full recovery in terms of walking normally. The answer, as far as I could tell via this AI research, is yes.
The reason why is because her nerves weren’t dead, but compressed. A good indicator that those nerves weren’t dead is that she was in a lot of pain. As a humorous digression: When thinking about this section, I couldn’t help but think of this scene from Talladega Nights:
So to this point, the evidence we have available is that Moriau was becoming paralyzed as a result of her Cauda Equina (CE) syndrome. The causality looked something like this:
CE Syndrome -> Nerves compressing causing extreme pain -> inability to walk.
In the event that the CE syndrome could be healed, the nerves would cease compression, and so long as the nerves weren’t dead, they could rehabilitate in time, giving her the ability to walk. In this way, Moriau’s paralysis wasn’t due to dead nerves or a psychosomatic explanation, but because she was in pain. In this way, she was less like a paraplegic and more like someone with a severe lower body injury (knee, ankle, foot, leg) that can’t walk due to pain and weakness. In this way, a recovery could be possible, but the only way to do that would be to somehow recover from her CE. How would that happen?
A Recovery Scenario
I had a good back and forth with Gemini about possible ways her CE could have recovered, and I was surprised at how common it actually is!
According to Gemini:
Sister Moriau’s severe sciatica was tied to spinal compression. Peer-reviewed spinal studies show that the body is surprisingly capable of reabsorbing herniated disc tissue. In cases of severe disc fragments breaking off (sequestration), the body treats the fragment as a foreign object, triggers an intense localized immune/inflammatory response, and macrophages physically digest and reabsorb the tissue. This can cause a dramatic, sudden drop in mechanical pressure on neighboring nerve roots, causing severe chronic pain to disappear rapidly.
And that
Many forms of primary lumbosacral plexus neuropathy are actually “monophasic” illnesses. This means the disease hits a severe peak, stabilizes, and then spontaneously resolves on its own over time once the underlying inflammation or immune system attack subsides.”
An important detail of the above linked peer review study is that (and this is a direct quote)
“The rate of spontaneous regression was found to be 96% for disc sequestration, 70% for disc extrusion, 41% for disc protrusion, and 13% for disc bulging. The rate of complete resolution of disc herniation was 43% for sequestrated discs and 15% for extruded discs.”
Keep in mind that one of the common causes of CE is a herniated disc.2 So, there’s a high chance (though not a certain chance) that her CE, if caused by a herniated disc, would have eventually regressed by itself, which then could have led to a full recovery. But why would such a recovery happen so close to an experience at Lourdes?
Okay, this is where we lean heavily on AI and speculative theories. I want to reiterate that I’m not presenting a definitive case, and we really should rely on someone with medical, neuroscientific, and perhaps endocrinologist to weigh in here. I think it’s possible that visiting Lourdes and having a spiritual event could have been a trigger for expedited recovery for fully natural reasons. Per Gemini:
Step A: Stress-Induced Analgesia (SIA) & Neurochemical Overdrive
Under conditions of intense psychological, emotional, or spiritual awe (such as a pilgrimage climax), the brain activates descending pain-modulatory pathways. It releases an unprecedented flood of endogenous ligands—including beta-endorphins, enkephalins, and dopamine—into the cerebrospinal fluid. This surge completely binds opioid receptors in the spinal cord, blocking the ‘gating’ mechanisms that transmit chronic nerve pain signals to the brain, inducing immediate temporary clinical anesthesia and removing muscle guarding. Studies on Stress-induced analgesia (available via platforms like ScienceDirect) map how severe acute stressors or profound emotional overrides trigger non-opioid and opioid-mediated descending inhibitory pathways, completely neutralizing severe physical pain loops instantly.
Step B: Positional Decompression of the Nerve Bundle
CES is fundamentally a structural bottleneck. Chronic nerve compression often involves adhesive bands or mobile disc fragments lightly tethered by scar tissue. When Step A eliminated Moriau’s chronic, protective paraspinal muscle spasms, her spinal column experienced a micro-structural alignment shift. A positional change of merely 0.5 to 1.0 millimeter can drop mechanical pressure below the critical ischemia threshold. Once blood flow returns to oxygen-starved axons, electrical signal conduction can resume with rapid speed. Papers such as Spontaneous Regression of Massive Lumbar Disc Herniations (published in tools like Gavin Publishers) and case summaries on Spontaneous regression of lumbar disc herniation indexed on PubMed Central (PMC11439616) demonstrate that massive compressions can be immunologically digested by macrophages and reabsorbed, bringing rapid clinical recovery from motor paralysis.
Step C: Reversal of Dystonic Contracture & Muscle Reset
Sister Moriau’s ‘crooked foot’ was clinically described as a fixed deformity. In chronic nerve pain, limbs can lock into abnormal positions via fixed dystonia or functional contractures. This occurs when the brain sends continuous, involuntary ‘fire’ signals to the muscles to protect a damaged nerve. Once the mechanical compression was lifted (Step B) and the pain loop was broken (Step A), the persistent neuro-electrical hyper-stimulation ceased. The severely shortened tendons and muscles of her lower leg immediately relaxed, resetting her foot to its standard biological position. Extensive literature on Functional Neurological Symptom Disorder rapid remission in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry documents secular patients with years of rigid physical limb contractures or paralysis who experienced sudden, overnight remissions when a major chemical or psychological circuit breaker interrupted the brain’s faulty software signaling.
So, in short, it is possible that Moriau could have made a full recovery from her condition, including regaining the ability to walk normally again, after a time (weeks or months) of physical therapy and recovery (this, again, per AI). All of the biological machinery was there, she just needed a mechanism to have her CE go into remission. Visiting Lourdes could have been a tipping point in two ways.
First, having a profound spiritual experience (no matter its content) could have initiated the SIA process that kickstarted her remission.
Second, she was at her wits‘ end in terms of treating her condition that had got worse over the course of 40 years. The fact that her condition was so bad could have paradoxically meant it was likely to recover soon anyway. But that it was so bad also made it more likely that she would seek soon non-medicinal healing options. One could say it’s a weird coincidence that she got better after visiting Lourdes, but it wouldn’t be unexpected to have a spontaneous remission with her condition at roughly the same time you’d also expect her to explore non-medicinal options such as Lourdes.
What Makes This A Miracle
Let’s summarize the recovery scenario as SIA + Nerve Decompression + Muscle Reset. As we’ll see, it’s not the full explanation of her healing, but a big part of it.
Indeed, I don’t actually think this general hypothesis is controversial. The reason why is because we don’t have evidence of fibrosis or nerve death and spontaneous regression of the cause of CE is not uncommon. And so, in principle, that Moriau could make a full recovery (visually dramatic as that may be) is not a miracle.
Instead, what makes Moriau’s experience miraculous is the pace of the recovery. Indeed, that’s one of the things that one of the doctors interviewed says in the 60 minutes interview, linked above.
What’s more, one other aspect of this “miracle” that seems miraculous is how Sister Moriau, who was on a maximum dose of morphine before recovery, says she went cold turkey afterward. For those of you who don’t know, going cold turkey off of an opioid is really dangerous! For some opioids, the withdrawals could kill you.
In accounts of her recovery, the cold turkey story sticks out, and I think any anti-miraculous account should accommodate for that data, so I will below.
The Timeline
Here’s a timeline of events, summarized by AI
July 3–7, 2008: Sister Moriau traveled on her pilgrimage to Lourdes, accompanied by her regular general practitioner, Dr. Christophe Fumery. Her condition remained entirely disabled and reliant on a wheelchair, mechanical braces, a neurostimulator, and maximum-dose morphine.
July 11, 2008: The reported physical release occurred privately in her room at her convent in Bresles, France.
July 12, 2008: She woke up free of pain and went for a 5-kilometer walk with her sister-in-law.
July 15, 2008 (First Official Medical Visit): Exactly four days after the event, she was examined by her general practitioner, Dr. Christophe Fumery. Operating out of his local clinic, he logged the sudden, full normalization of her deep tendon reflexes and verified her unassisted gait.
September 10, 2008 (First Specialist Visit): Two months later, her long-time consulting rheumatologist, Dr. Christophe Alliaume, evaluated her state. He clinically confirmed her freedom from pain and overall mobility, but recorded a vital nuance in his chart: a “slight muscular deficiency requiring continued, regular physiotherapy.”
And from there, as far as I can tell, there wasn’t further testing or evaluation until 2009. Keep that in mind.
One other datapoint that is recited is that the other Moriau’s sisters marveled at her miraculous healing the evening of the 11th.
Putting On Our Skeptic Hat:
Documentation We Don’t Have
At this point, I have laid out the facts as best I know them, and contributed some additional context, as well as speculating possible explanations for the data we see. But there are some irregularities.
For instance, when it comes to the specifics of what exactly happened to Moriau in July, the only evidence we have is her testimony long after the fact. We don’t have any contemporaneous evidence that was written, say the week of the 11th. As far as I know, there’s no picture of her leg at that time, nor any record of other nuns in the convent corroborating the story at that time. We have people attesting to such things long after the fact, but not contemporary to the events. This will be important.
The other thing we do not possess is pretty much any visual of what Moriau’s legs looked like upon visiting Dr. Fumery on July 15th. We just have his documentation. It’s not nothing, but it’s not on the level of the testing that was done on and after 2009.
The other thing we do not have is any sort of reporting that confirms with high confidence that Moriau went cold turkey off of the morphine. The doctor that helped her manage her pain, Dr. Frank Becigneul, did say that she stopped coming to the treatment facility after her Lourdes trip, but this is kind of vague.
For example, if I say “I stopped doing drugs after college,” sure that may mean I stopped doing drugs after graduation; but it could also mean I stopped doing drugs soon after college, but that was the time I anchor my memory around stopping drugs. It could be that I graduated in May and stopped in mid-June.
I bring all this up to bring to attention that I haven’t seen documentation that demonstrates Moriau quit morphine cold turkey other than her testimony. There’s no blood work or toxicology report that says she didn’t have morphine in her system on, say, July 21st and Dr. Fumery would not have run such a test.
Some Overlooked Facts
This sounds like pedantic hair-splitting. So what if there’s no blood work showing Sister Moriau went cold turkey? Isn’t it sufficient that Dr. Becigneul said she was off of morphine after her visit to Lourdes? Why isn’t Dr. Fumery’s assessment rock solid evidence 4 days after the fact?
Here are some important facts that complicate this story.
Dr. Fumery was a true believer in the miracles of Lourdes. Per AI, he personally participated in the Lourdes pilgrimages for 40 years. He first began traveling to the shrine as a young boy with his parents, volunteering as a traditional stretcher-bearer (brancardier) before continuing his involvement as an adult physician. He served as the medical director for the Hospitalité de l’Oise, the formal Catholic diocesan volunteer association responsible for organizing, transporting, and medically managing trips for the sick and disabled to Lourdes. He was the one to suggest to Moriau to go to Lourdes and seek healing. He also took the leading role in compiling and packaging the initial 10-pound clinical dossier that was submitted to the Lourdes Medical Bureau to trigger her formal 10-year miracle evaluation.
Moriau was a nurse before her ailments.
Dr. Alliaume recorded that her ailment was not fully healed, instead requiring more therapy.
Isn’t it odd that a true-believing Dr. Fumery records Moriau basically fully healed, and then two months later, it doesn’t appear to be the case to a relatively more skeptical specialist in Dr. Alliaume? (Keep in mind Fumery is a general practitioner and Alliaume is the specialist). What’s more, according to Gemini (so again, I would love to hear a specialist in this field weigh in), a noticeably strong recovery like one of Moriau could be expected within a few weeks or months of therapy. It’s about 9 weeks between the day of her purported miracle and her appointment with Alliaume. It’s possible that the recovery Alliaume observed (clear signs of great improvement, with some additional therapy needed) would also be seen in a mundane naturalistic condition, where there was spontaneous remission + nerve decompression + muscle reset.
Remember: The validity of this miracle relies on the pace of Moriau’s recovery, which itself relies on three key points of information being reliable:
The reliability of Moriau’s memory of the whole affair
Corroborating testimony proximate to the event by her sisters at the convent
The reliability of Lourdes-believing Dr. Fumery’s assessment
You can probably see where this is going, but before I get there, let’s try to model the situation with a few hypothetical situations.
Making the Scenarios Explicit To Demonstrate Weird Behavior
Let’s say you’ve experienced a miraculous healing of some sort. You regularly see a specialist, on top of your general practitioner. Isn’t it odd to wait more than two months to confirm the nature of your miraculous healing with the specialist? I’ll admit, I don’t know how French healthcare works (long queues or lack thereof and all that), but I feel like one would be chomping at the bit to show a specialist “Holy cow, get a load of this!” I know I would, especially, if I was pretty sure I had experienced a miracle as Sister Moriau did. I would want them to see it not because I didn’t believe in the miracle, but to assure myself I wasn’t crazy or to proclaim the good news.
Another scenario: If one of your closest friends thought she was miraculously healed of a deformity in her leg and that it spontaneously healed, and it was obviously the case, wouldn’t you think to take a picture? Again, not for the skeptics, but in celebration. This was 2008. People had cell phones, to say nothing of digital cameras. The lack of contemporaneous documentation here suggests a lack of confidence.
Another: your elderly sister in-law who has been chronically ill and unable to walk for years just returned from a trip. You are in town to visit her. She says she was miraculously healed yesterday and she wants to go for a 5 kilometer walk. Do you, in your right mind, let her? I probably wouldn’t! I wouldn’t be planning on going on a walk at all with her, and if we did, it would be very much minimized to prevent her from hurting herself. I don’t see someone enabling an elderly family member to do that after they’re rehabilitating on a lower body injury, let alone what Moriau went through.
Another: After 40 years of having a crippling illness, you have heard a voice and you are now miraculously healed. You are also a trained nurse. Your malady led you to take morphine for the last few years, and you’ve been taking the highest dose. The problem is that the voice didn’t say anything about your morphine dependence. Would it be wise to go cold turkey, even though you know you’re fine? I’m skeptical a trained nurse would even consider not taking the morphine. I’m not saying it’s impossible that she would, just that would be very foolish, even if it was a miracle. God healed your back and leg, but he didn’t say anything about the taper.
Another: You’re a deeply religious man and medical professional. For decades you’ve been participating in religious ceremonies at a local site that purportedly has healing properties. You believe in those healing properties. One of your patients has been suffering from a painful condition for decades. She’s at the end of her rope. You recommend she goes to that site to find healing. It’s a last gasp effort. You see her weeks later for a regular checkup. She tells you it’s a miracle! She went and was healed! Praise the Lord you knew your faith would pay off. Surely you’re not primed to overstate the extent of the recovery you observe. Right?
Finally: Let’s say humans are a species that has the capacity to fly. You, poor unfortunate soul, have lost that ability due to a crippling and painful condition. But one day, you are miraculously healed and you can fly again. How much do you fly? I would fly quite a bit, even if it hurt a little bit, the fact that I can fly and it doesn’t hurt as much motivates me to fly more. And then suddenly, it stops hurting as much or at all. The reason why is because the nerves that helped my flying condition function were never dead, just compressed. Now that they are free, and fly regularly (which I’m enthusiastic to do, I’m rehabilitating myself) In a few months, I can fly normally and without pain. I’ve made a full recovery.
An Alternative Hypothesis
Okay, so here’s my alternative hypothesis for what happened:
I believe the SIA + Nerve Decompression + Muscle Reset hypothesis is correct
I believe that Dr. Fumery is an unreliable account not because he’s a bad medical professional but because he very likely wanted to see and believe that Moriau was healed, and it was likely that she was at least on the road to recovery because of point 1.
Dr. Fumery is the only medical professional to look at Moriau in the 2 months between her alleged miracle and seeing Dr. Alliaume. The validity of the pace of the recovery hangs on that. That’s it!
Evidence to suggest this is the case is that Dr. Alliaume observed that she was not fully healed, which is unexpected if this was a miracle, but definitely expected if Moriau was rehabilitating her leg after 2 months of enthusiastic physical activity.
Pretty much every test past 2008 is irrelevant. These tests wouldn’t be like trying to prove “Leg, No Leg, Leg” but “hair, no hair, hair.” What made the recovery miraculous was not the recovery, but the pace of the recovery. Running tests to see that she was healed and that she in fact had CE does not tell us anything about that, and the fact that that was where most of the scrutiny was put on tells you a big methodological flaw in the investigation. Given the background information about CE I’ve shared, Moriau recovering her ability to walk properly is more akin to regrowing hair than a limb.3 It’s less unbelievable to say someone grew a mullet in 2 years than 2 days; the research seemed to be more concerned if she had a mullet at all.
I don’t really trust accounts of what her sisters say happened because quite frankly we don’t have written accounts of what they thought was happening at the time. People subconsciously revise and retell their memories based on suggestion, culture, and other things. It could be the case that her sisters at the time thought she was miraculously healed because she was walking at all, but noticed her leg was still somewhat messed up, limping, etc. Then, slowly over time, her limp and leg heal and the miracle they remember changes from giving her the ability to walk again free of pain to being completely healed. It’s possible this account is wrong, and that she truly was fully healed by July 12th. The problem is we don’t know because we don’t have accounts contemporary to July 11th/12th
I think the same thing of Moriau’s testimony as I do the sisters. She, like anyone else, will revise memories (subconsciously and unintentionally) to fit grander narratives. Everyone does it, this doesn’t make her a liar, dishonest, delusional, or a bad person.4 With that in mind, this makes better sense of her behavior:
It doesn’t make sense that she would intentionally go cold turkey on the morphine, even if she wasn’t feeling pain. As a trained medical professional herself, she probably knew better
I’m not sure what chain of custody the sister has for her claim of walking with her on July 12th, I just think it is a little unbelievable that they would plan a walk the morning after a healing miracle and go 5 kilometers. It just doesn’t match the behavior you’d expect from someone looking after a family member with a health condition, even if they’re recovering from it.
It’s just so odd to me that these faithful Catholic Lourdes believers took two months to find additional verification for the healing. I don’t think it’s suspicious that believers don’t feel the need to prove their religious experiences/miracles, but I think if the healing was so clear and instantaneous you would be pretty damn excited and wanting to show everyone! Why wait 2 months?
My theory is that Moriau had this religious experience and kick started the process we see in point one above. She experienced a clear and marked reduction in pain in her leg which caused her to want to walk and exert herself physically. This initiated a virtuous cycle where she basically self-rehabilitated her leg over the course of two months. All that time, she’s telling everyone she’s experienced a miracle, and for all they know it is one. It’s a miracle that she’s walking at all by their standards, the fact that it’s not fully healed is inconsequential, and over time her recovery becomes more obvious and complete, collapsing the memory of her less obvious early recovery. Dr. Fumery does indeed look at her leg on the 15th, but overlooks imperfections in her recovery because he’s already primed to believe it was a miracle (as Moriau says it is and as he is a Lourdes believer).
How her leg actually looks in mid-July is lost to history because no one (in 2008!) thought to take a picture, and the only medical professional had a bias. (Insert Hume’s maxim)
The other thing that a naturalistic explanation has to account for is how Moriau went cold turkey on morphine. A morphine taper can take up to 10 or 20 weeks, but in some cases as short as two weeks. There are at least two possible explanations:
She never went cold turkey, and she’s revising her memories here. Her pain went down significantly after the spontaneous remission and so, unlike every day for the previous few years or decades, she didn’t *want* morphine. And so, by her standards, she wasn’t addicted and didn’t want it, and she only took as much to taper. Indeed, this argument is “her definition of cold turkey is different from ours.” This doesn’t imply deception, delusion, etc. Again, if you presume how she and others conceptualized the miracle changed over time, this fits in perfectly.
Keep in mind, she was a trained nurse and there are some indications that she had a lot of control over her treatment (in her memoir she mentions how she allows herself to increase the dose for the travel). Due to France’s narcotics laws, it’s very likely she had a full month’s dose early in the month as she was traveling to Lourdes, because that medication needed to be unopened while traveling. At the same time, we don’t know how much morphine she had and when, so all of this is speculative.
The other explanation is that she didn’t, but that the endorphins produced by her religious experience (and perhaps even the joy of being able to walk again enhancing that experience) compensated for the withdrawal. Per AI:
The overwhelming emotional and psychological threshold of her pilgrimage experience could have triggered a maximum-intensity Stress-Induced Analgesia (SIA) response. That is: Her brain stem and hypothalamus immediately flooded her nervous system with an unprecedented wave of endogenous opioids (specifically beta-endorphins and enkephalins). Because these natural, internal molecules are structurally designed to bind to the exact same μ-opioid receptors in the brain and spinal cord as synthetic morphine, they acted as a powerful biochemical buffer. By keeping those receptors fully saturated with her body’s own natural chemistry, her brain never experienced the “chemical vacuum” that causes withdrawal. This internal overcompensation artificially shielded her from the classic autonomic crash—preventing the vomiting, intense tremors, tachycardia, and severe rebound pain normally guaranteed by an abrupt narcotic cessation.
I will admit that the morphine datapoint is the most puzzling. But at the same time, I don’t think it’s an insoluble puzzle. At the very least, we can’t conclusively rule out naturalistic explanations because we don’t know how much morphine she had, we don’t know when she stopped collecting her supply, and none of the doctors she saw in 2008 conducted any testing to suggest she wasn’t tapering in some way. The only real evidence we have that she tapered is her own testimony saying she went cold turkey. If you’re inclined to believe that, fine, but I’m a fan of Hume’s maxim, that she’s somehow mistaken being more likely than a miracle.
Admittedly, there may be errors in the above. I’m not 100% confident in things I’ve written above. Go research them yourself! My point here is that there’s plenty of space for a naturalistic explanation. Even if some of those explanations are improbable, we must ask ourselves: Is it more improbable than a miracle? Does it lack explanatory power relative to invoking a mysterious miracle? I would say no to both questions!
Bonus: But What About The CMIL?
But wait! You may say, what about the International Medical Committee of Lourdes (CMIL)? They’re a board full of doctors and professionals who know more than you. They voted 26-1 to certify Moriau’s healing as spontaneous, surely that means something?
It does! As I said, you shouldn’t treat my argument as a conclusive debunking of this miracle, but a starting point to believe there’s grounds for reasonable doubt. Trust an expert over me. Having said that, I would trust a skeptical expert over CMIL. As far as I can tell, the CMIL’s investigations do not account for psychological vulnerabilities like hindsight bias and what Gemini calls “collective memory smoothing” (a great way to describe what I’m referring to). They interviewed those closest to Moriau between 2009 and 2010, plenty of time for her to make a full recovery from her injuries. They also compiled hundreds of pages of her medical records before and after her healing, to say nothing of countless tests in the 2010s, but they did very little to compile evidence or counter-evidence of the key window of healing in mid-July 2008, to say nothing of what Sister Moriau was up to in the 9 weeks prior to her appointment with Alliaume.
The entire argument for the spontaneous healing quite literally rests on this short window, and we have very little attesting to anything outside of Moriau’s memory and Dr. Fumery’s evaluation. This is not great evidence!
And this is not the first time that Lourdes-adjacent medical bodies have participated in questionable methodologies to affirm a miracle. For that, I refer you to Kevin Nontradicath’s great video below or the writings of James Randi on Serge Perrin and Vittorio Micheli (I think Nontradicath mentions Micheli in the video)
Key Questions To Answer To Solve The Mystery
Okay, so I’ve thrown a lot at you in this post (that I spontaneously decided to investigate and write over this past weekend because nerd sniping is great). I’ll admit, I’m not completely certain on a lot of these points because I’m not a doctor.
To close, I’m just going to list a bunch of questions that are important to establishing Moriau’s healing as spontaneous and therefore miraculous. Though I may not know the answer to these questions, the internet can figure them out.
Was there any evidence Moriau had fibrosis or that the nerves in her back/connecting to her foot were dead? This is important to determine if a recovery was possible or not. If her nerves were dead, she couldn’t recover
Is it impossible or common for CE to spontaneously go into remission? If so, and Moriau’s nerves weren’t dead, she could conceivably make a full recovery.
Assuming her nerves weren’t dead and the possibility of CE remission, how long would it take for her to recover the ability to walk normally? If it could be done in a few weeks or months, the lack of medical documentation between July and September is suspect, and all testing post-2008 is irrelevant.
Are there any contemporaneous accounts of her healing by her sisters that isn’t her or their recall months or years later? I haven’t seen anything like this.
Do we have anything medical attesting to her “spontaneous recovery” beyond Dr. Fumery’s written account?
Do we have any photos of her recovered leg from July 2008, specifically mid-July?
Assuming Moriau had a full refill of morphine at the beginning of July 2008 in order to travel and be in compliance with the law, and she allegedly went cold turkey, where did the rest of the morphine go?
What precise documentation do we have about her last refill of morphine, her last visit to pain clinics, etc?
There are probably more questions you can ask, but unless we find more documentable evidence backing up the witness testimony, especially those contemporaneous to July 2008, I’m inclined to think there’s a natural explanation.
Theists complain about how naturalists/skeptics propose conspiracy theories to debunk miracle claims. I don’t think that’s true, but even if it were, a conspiracy theory is more likely than a miracle.
This raises an interesting question: If her CE was caused by a herniated disc, and the rate of recovery is so high, it was really bad luck that she had this malady for this long. But I can’t be certain.
But if her nerves died - which we don’t have evidence of - that’s a different story.
I really want to reiterate that! She experienced her own little miracle that’s explainable (in my opinion) by natural causes, and I don’t think it makes it less special or that God (conditional on his existence) loves her any less. One way or another, her prayer was answered!