0135%
Of Americans report having personally experienced a miracle.
In April 1999, CBS News surveyed a nationwide random sample of 878 adults about miracles. Nearly 8 in 10 Americans (78%) said they believe in miracles, and 35% said they had personally experienced or witnessed one.
Many of those experiences were healings. 14% described a miraculous cure of a serious disease, and 24% said they had been cured of an illness through prayer or spiritual practices. Among Americans who called themselves extremely religious, 59% said they had witnessed or experienced a miracle.
0217%
Of people who nearly die have reported having a near-death experience (NDE).
A near-death experience is what some people describe after coming close to death: leaving the body, moving toward a light, meeting loved ones who have died, or a deep sense of peace. Researchers have studied these accounts in hospitals for decades.
In one of the best-known studies, published in The Lancet in 2001, cardiologist Pim van Lommel and his colleagues followed 344 patients who were resuscitated after cardiac arrest in 10 Dutch hospitals. 18% of them reported a near-death experience. When the researchers interviewed them again two and eight years later, many still remembered it in detail, and many said it had changed their values toward love, compassion and spirituality.
031,200
Miracles investigated by the Vatican are recognized as authentic supernatural events.
Since the 1500s, the Catholic Church has used a commission of medical scientists to investigate healings attributed to the prayers of holy men and women. Around 80 to 90 physicians are affiliated with it, and not all of them are Catholic.
The doctors examine medical records and scans from before and after each healing and look for any natural explanation. Only when they cannot find one does the case go to the Vatican’s theologians. About 1,200 miracles have been approved this way. They include the 2005 cure of a French nun with Parkinson’s disease, attributed to Pope John Paul II. Theology professor Niels Christian Hvidt describes the commission’s work as “very meticulous.”
04Time of Christ
The Shroud of Turin comes from the time of Christ, according to several tests done in 2013.
The Shroud of Turin is a linen cloth that bears the faint image of a crucified man. Many believe it is the burial cloth of Jesus.
In 2013, Giulio Fanti, a professor of mechanical and thermal measurement at the University of Padua, published tests on fibers from the Shroud using infrared light and spectroscopy. They dated the cloth to between 300 BC and 400 AD, the era of Christ. The results were published in the book Il Mistero della Sindone (The Mystery of the Shroud) after 15 years of research. A 1988 radiocarbon test had dated the cloth to 1260 to 1390. Fanti’s team argues that result was skewed by fibers from repairs made after a fire in the Middle Ages.
0570,000
An estimated 70,000 people witnessed the "Miracle of the Sun" in Fatima Portugal in 1917.
On October 13, 1917, a crowd estimated at 40,000 to 100,000 people gathered in the rain at the Cova da Iria near Fatima, where three shepherd children said the Virgin Mary had promised a miracle. At midday the clouds broke. For about 10 minutes the sun appeared to spin, change colors and plunge toward the earth before returning to its place. Afterward, the crowd’s soaked clothes and the muddy ground were dry.
Even skeptics reported it. Avelino de Almeida, a reporter for the anti-clerical Lisbon newspaper O Século who had mocked the children, wrote that “the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws.” A priest watching from the village of Alburitel, about 11 miles away, described the same event.
0672
Scientifically investigated and inexplicable miraculous healings at the Marian Shrine in Lourdes France.
Since the Virgin Mary appeared to Saint Bernadette at Lourdes in 1858, thousands of pilgrims have reported being healed there. Each claimed cure is examined by doctors, and the strongest cases go to the International Medical Committee of Lourdes, which decides whether the healing has any medical explanation. Only then can the local bishop declare it a miracle.
Of the thousands of reported cures, 72 have been officially recognized as miracles. The 72nd was announced on April 16, 2025: Antonietta Raco, an Italian woman who was healed of primary lateral sclerosis, a disease of the motor nerves, after a pilgrimage to Lourdes in 2009.
