The Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph has released a statement regarding an investigation into the supposedly indecomposed remains of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster of Gower Abbey, Missouri. The report concluded that her body showed “no discernible signs of decomposition” following her death in 2019.
In a statement from the diocese, Bishop James V. Johnston said he had commissioned a specialized team of medical experts led by a pathologist to examine Sister Wilhelmina’s body in May 2023.
“In the final report, the investigation team noted that the condition of Sister Wilhelmina’s body during the examination was striking in that no signs of decomposition were found,” the bishop said in a statement released on August 22.
“The condition of her body is highly atypical for the period of almost four years since her death, especially given the environmental conditions and the findings in the associated objects,” the team concluded.
In addition to examining the sister’s exhumed remains, which became a place of pilgrimage for Catholics from the region and across the country last year, the medical team also conducted a series of interviews with witnesses and examined the coffin in which she was buried and the soil conditions at the original burial site.
While the experts found that the coffin’s interior lining had completely deteriorated after nearly four years in the ground, the sister’s robe and clothing “showed no signs of deterioration,” the experts said, and reported an absence of any environmental or other external factors that might otherwise explain the highly unusual findings.
Sr. Wilhelmina died in 2019 and was buried in the cemetery of the Benedictine Community of Mary, Queen of Apostles, Gower Abbey, the community she founded in the 1990s and led for many years.
In April 2023, her body was exhumed for interment in a planned shrine to Saint Joseph in the monastery chapel, but it was found to be remarkably intact considering how many years had passed since her death and that she had been buried in a simple pine coffin without any embalming.
At first, the nuns told only a few people. They informed diocesan officials and passed the information on to a few local families and supporters. Then they waited to see what would happen next.
But by May, hundreds of Catholics had come to see Sister Wilhelmina’s remains, and tens of thousands came in the months that followed.
Many visitors to the monastery said they believed Sister Wilhelmina’s body was miraculously incorruptible.
The abbey’s superior, Mother Abbess Cecilia Snell, said The pillar last year: “The fact that a body resists decomposition is not a common phenomenon, especially since there are no natural components that could explain it.”
“Sister Wilhelmina’s body was not embalmed, and there was nothing to preserve her in the condition in which we buried her,” she explained. “There were beetles eating away at the foam beneath her, but none had touched her body or her clothing – the fact that the latter did not decay is as miraculous as her intact body!”
“Seeing her again gave us all a deep sense of hope, a sign that death is truly not the end of our story,” said Mother Cecilia. “Her body points to the resurrection on the last day, but also to life after death, when the soul goes out to meet our Lord.”
“She was ready to meet him, and so it is logical that this would be reflected in her body, even if it is a rare grace granted to those of us who remain on earth.”
Many visitors to the abbey since the discovery of the saint’s intact remains have expressed their belief that their preservation was a “miracle”, stressing that incorruptibility after death is a sign often associated with saints.
However, in his statement Thursday, Bishop Johnston noted that “the Catholic Church has no official protocol for determining whether the body of a deceased person is incorruptible, and incorruptibility is not considered a sign of holiness.”
“There are currently no plans to initiate a process for the canonization of Sister Wilhelmina,” the bishop said, noting that the lack of a medical explanation for the lack of decomposition of her body “has understandably aroused great interest and raised important questions.”
The bishop’s warning echoes a statement from the abbey last year that said: “Although we can attest to the sister’s personal holiness, we know that incorruptibility is not among the official signs that the Church considers as miracles of holiness and that all things must be subjected to further scrutiny, particularly by the competent authorities in the medical field. Life itself and the graces received must be considered as proof of holiness.”
The term “incorruptible” is used to describe a body that has partially or completely resisted the natural process of decomposition after death.
The phenomenon is not common, but there are more than 300 saints whose bodies were exhumed decades or even centuries after their death and showed no signs of physical decomposition.
The Church does not maintain an official list of incorruptible saints, nor is there an official proclamation declaring the body of a saint to be incorruptible.
In By Cadaverum IncorruptioneIn a letter written in the mid-19th century, Pope Benedict XIV stated that an incorruptible body should only be considered a miracle if its lifelike state is maintained over a long period of time.