A video circulating on social media shows what appears to be a eucharistic miracle — a consecrated Host exposed for adoration by the faithful seems to “beat” like a heart.
The video was recorded July 22 at Our Lady of the Rosary parish in the town of Zapotlanejo, near Guadalajara, in the Mexican state of Jalisco.
Argentine priest Father Carlos Spahn, founder and superior of the Religious Family of the Immaculate Heart and Divine Mercy, who is currently ministering in Mexico, led the eucharistic adoration service.
In a statement to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language sister news agency, Spahn said that the phenomenon occurred after Mass was over: “We exposed the Blessed Sacrament; I said the prayers for the exposition, and when I got up to go to the sacristy, this began to happen.”
“Some people saw it,” he said, and “couldn’t believe what they were seeing, and we have at least two pieces of footage.”
These recordings, he explained, were made by “people who quickly took out their cell phones, filmed it,” and passed it on to him almost immediately, since the priest asked them for that material “so they won’t alter it or anything.”
“So I attest that this is authentic, from the exact moment,” he said.
The priest said that “it’s not that they said aloud ‘look,’” but that the people who were adoring the Blessed Sacrament began to see what was happening, something that lasted “20 seconds, 30 at most.”
The Archdiocese of Guadalajara hasn’t issued a statement on the phenomenon.
‘The heart of Christ, which beats with love for men’
Father Spahn said that, as “a personal interpretation,” he sees in what happened “the heart of Christ, which beats with love for men.”
This heart, he lamented, “is so outraged, so abandoned, so despised … that sometimes we don’t treat it as we should, with greater care, with more faith, with more dedication.”
For Father Spahn, “perhaps the Church will never make an official judgment, because it doesn’t need one either.”
“I’m not saying it’s a miracle officially, because I don’t have the authorization to do it,” he said.
“The archdiocese hasn’t been consulted about it because we were just passing through; now I’m in another diocese preaching,” he said, and explained that the local priest will be able to look for “people to sign and give testimony of what they saw, and this documentation can be sent to the appropriate person.”
Father Spahn also told ACI Prensa that hours before what happened in the Mexican parish he had blessed a picture frame with a photo of Blessed Carlo Acutis, who had a deep devotion to eucharistic miracles and used the Internet to make them better known.
The photo, he said, “was sealed with glass,” but that night “the photo began to ooze oil.”
“I’m simply saying that without making any judgments about it,” he said.
After the videos went viral on social media, the priest was contacted by telephone by Carlo Acutis’ mother, Antonia, with whom “we talked about this event, that we cannot officially call it a miracle, because the Church has to confirm that.”
“We are only saying that it’s an extraordinary occurrence that has no explanation to our limited natural science. We didn’t find any explanation,” he said.
This story was updated after posting to correct the date. It was July 22 not July 23.