The Fake Lanciano WHO Report

Catholics, we don't talk about this enough.

This is the third in the series in the “Eucharistic Miracle Data Problems” project that began with this article, “Exaggeration and Eucharistic Miracles” at Crisis Magazine. This post is about the WHO report of 1976 that turns out to be fake.

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The WHO/UN Corroboration

In case you haven’t heard of it, here’s the story. Tradition holds that the Eucharistic miracle of Lanciano occurred in Italy around 750 A.D. This is the oldest known account of the bread and wine turning into human flesh and blood when a doubting priest pronounced the words of consecration. Over twelve centuries later, in 1970-71, both species were analyzed by Dr. Edoardo Linoli. He concluded in his famous report that the Host became cardiac tissue, and the Blood became human blood type AB. Sometime later, another fantastical story circulated that the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations (UN) were so intrigued that they conducted their own 500 tests over 15 months and confirmed Linoli’s findings. The Catalogue of the Vatican International Exhibition's book The Eucharistic Miracles of the World published by the Real Presence Association, Inc. tells this amazing account on p. 133:

This [Linoli] report was published in The Sclavo Notebooks in Diagnostics (Collection #3, 1971) and aroused great interest in the scientific world. Also, in 1973, the chief advisory board of the World Health Organization appointed a scientific commission to corroborate Linoli’s findings. Their work lasted 15 months and included 500 tests. It was verified that the fragments taken from Lanciano could in no way be likened to mummified tissue. As to the nature of the fragment of flesh, the commission declared it to be living tissue because it responded rapidly to all the clinical reactions distinctive of living beings. The Flesh and the Blood of Lanciano are just that, flesh and blood, in the same condition one would expect to find flesh and blood taken the same day from a living human. Their reply fully corroborated Professor Linoli’s conclusions. The extract summarizing the scientific work of the Medical Commission of the WHO and the UN, published in Dec. 1976 in New York and Geneva, declared that science, aware of its limits, has come to a halt, face to face with the impossibility of giving an explanation.

That’s quite a story! Secular international organizations threw their hands up regarding the science and affirmed a Catholic miracle on the global stage.

WHO Report is a Fraud

The problem is: it turned out to be a fraud. I first read about the WHO report when my bishop asked me to prepare a talk on Eucharistic miracles for the diocese. I began to research the accounts and found the above-mentioned Vatican International Exhibition's book that describes ~160 Eucharistic miracles. That certainly seemed like the most reliable source—a catalogue from the Vatican itself! I did what so many Catholics do. I memorized the stories and gave 25 talks around the diocese that next year, which led to a book co-authored with Fr. George Elliott, Behold It Is I: Scripture, Tradition, and Science in the Real Presence. Fr. Elliott is a priest in our diocese. My role was to elaborate on Eucharistic miracles, and I was happy to have the opportunity to dig deeper into the investigations. I ceased at this point to repeat narratives due to lack of data.

The first artifact I wanted to research was this amazing WHO report. Surely, I thought, something of this magnitude is publicly available. I searched in vain. What I found are repetitions of the narrative, most referencing the Vatican International Exhibition, but no original source at all, anywhere. The story is told without citation or reference to any primary publication or document, except this mysterious and elusive report presented in New York and Geneva.

Then I found Ray Grijalba’s podcast “The Joy of Faith” in which he interviewed Dr. Franco Serafini in September 2020 about his 2018 book, Un cardiologo visita Gesù. I miracoli eucaristici alla prova della scienza. Serafini describes how four years prior (presumably in 2016), he and his wife traveled to the Church of St. Francis in Lanciano, Italy where the relics of the miracle are kept. The church is part of the Franciscan Friars Conventual Monastery and is a significant pilgrimage site.

Serafini says he asked for permission to see the WHO report. He said the friars were kind and accommodated his request. They led him to a safe and unlocked it. He had scheduled a whole afternoon to study the 500 tests but said that after a couple of minutes, it was clear that the WHO declaration was a “terrible fraud, a terrible hoax, very sad.” There were hundreds of pages of tests on Egyptian mummies, and the first and last pages were replaced with pages about the Lanciano account. Here is the interview. It goes for about two minutes.

Serafini also mentions his discovery of the hoax in his book, which was translated into English in 2021. Here’s the part about the WHO report. (I call it the WHO report. He calls it the UN report since both organizations were involved).

It is a slapdash document clumsily mixing rigorous and well-written scientific data — mostly obtained from Egyptian mummies and not from the tissue specimens of Lanciano — with ramblings supporting the miracle written in a hazy and bombastic Italian. The damage is enormous: this “UN report” pretends in its excerpt to be an original study of the sacred relics, claiming the undertaking of a whopping five hundred analyses on the relics themselves. That way, it presents itself to the naïve faithful as an even more superior investigation than the one performed by Linoli. However, its far-fetched conclusions are easily unmasked by the experts. Unfortunately, this foreign material has crept into the “official” scientific documentation on the miracle of Lanciano: even today—forty years later—both devotional and more “formal” publications continue to reference this cheap ideological fake, presenting it as if it were of comparable quality to Linoli’s work. —A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles, p. 15

Ouch! “…both devotional and ‘formal’ publications continue to reference this cheap ideological fake.” Strong words. To recap, Italian cardiologist Serafini says he saw and held the proof that the WHO (UN) report is fake. He published this information in 2018 in Italian. Ray Grijalba interviewed Serafini in 2020. Serafini’s book was published in English in 2021. I wrote about it in my 2021 book. You’d think the fraud would have been decried and corrected by now in 2025, but it hasn’t. The Vatican International Exhibition still sells books and promotes the hoax. What’s worse, in my opinion, is that they do this in the name of the about-to-be-canonized teenager, Bl. Carlo Acutis.

The Origin of the Hoax?

A website dedicated to Bl. Carlo Acutis, Miracoli Eucaristici lists the Vatican Interntional Exhibition and names Carlo as the “Creator of the Exhibition.” The website provides downloadable high-quality posters for printing and display, including the Lanciano poster. If you don’t know who Carlo Acutis is, he was an Italian teenager known for his deep faith, love for the Eucharist, and his work documenting Eucharistic miracles. He traveled the world but died at the age of 15 from leukemia. He is scheduled to be canonized a Catholic saint on September 7, 2025. I want to be clear that the hoax did not originate with this young saint.

I tried to find the earliest mention of the WHO report on the internet or literature, and it seems (just speculation) to have started in the 2000s by Dr. Linoli himself. A ZENIT daily dispatch from Rome on May 5, 2005 titled “Physician Tells of Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano: Edoardo Linoli Verified Authenticity of the Phenomenon” reports about a congress on Eucharistic miracles organized by the Science and Faith program of Rome's Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University to celebrate the Year of the Eucharist. The news outlet interviewed Linoli and quotes him extensively in the article and then says the following:

In 1973, the Higher Council of the World Health Organization (WHO) appointed a scientific commission to verify the Italian doctor's conclusions. The work was carried out over 15 months with a total of 500 examinations. The conclusions of all the researches confirmed what had been stated and published in Italy.

The extract of the scientific research of WHO's medical commission was published in New York and Geneva in 1976, confirming science's inability to explain the phenomenon.

The way the article is written, it sounds as if Linoli told the reporter about the WHO studies that verified his work on the Lanciano samples.

Clarification 01/17/2026: my comments are speculative, as indicated, and based on the earliest public mention I could find. I am not accusing Dr. Linoli of fabricating or endorsing the hoax; I note only that no public clarification about the hoax’s origin was issued after this article was published twenty years ago and still has not been explained.

Update 01/18/2026: A copy of a private 1977 letter published on Serafini’s Substack indicates that Linoli was aware of exaggerations; however, he did not make this known publicly. This update rests on that single publicly posted document, which I have not independently authenticated beyond the published image.

Fraud Undermines Our Credibility

To my knowledge, no Catholic other than Serafini or Grijalba has spoken up about the fact that we were deceived, but I am quite angry and disappointed. I put my credibility on the line when I repeated the narrative to the audiences in my diocese because I thought I was citing a reliable source when I quoted the Vatican International Exhibition. I saw people moved to tears by this story, and I shudder to think that I was part of the deception because I repeated what the book said. I’m sorry for that, but at least I did my homework before writing about it.

Serafini is absolutely to be commended for requesting access to the document in the safe under the protection of the friars when he was working on his book, and Grijalba deserves enormous credit for publishing his podcast interview with Serafini in English so that more people would know about the hoax. Both of these men acknowledge that Catholics are after the truth and have no problem dismissing false claims when it comes to Eucharistic miracles. Of course! But I find that I am perplexed at the response of fellow Catholics.

I know everyone loves Matt Fradd, the host of the popular podcast “Pints with Aquinas,” and I am a fan as well. However, I do have a bit of disagreement with him on this issue too. He interviewed Fr. Terry Donahue about the scientific evidence for Eucharistic miracles, and they both seem to let this incident slide without much concern. Fr. Donahue says the hoaxer was probably just “trying to help the miracle along.” He notes that Serafini told the friars not to use this false document or spread the hoax ever again, to which they apparently agreed. Okay, that is good. Fr. Donahue takes away from this situation that we should always seek primary sources. “This just shows the importance of tracking down primary sources. If you don’t have the document in your hands, I would hesitate to use it in apologetics.” He says a tale from a friend of a friend of a friend is not good enough for scientific work. True enough. Here’s the clip.

But, it seems wrong to just drop it at that. I find that I am not so ready to let it go.

Why This is Serious

First of all, I teach at the university level, and anyone knows that plagiarism is a serious issue. We do not dismiss it with “just don’t do it again” or “well, the student was just trying to help the narrative along” excuses. Students and professors are expected to know better, and the same should go for Franciscan Friars at a monastery entrusted with guarding the Lanciano samples. They should have verified the document before storing it and perpetuating a fraud.

Who held them accountable? Serafini did I suppose, but there was never a statement released to explain what happened. This is the pilgrimage site for the Lanciano Eucharistic miracle, so it seems the Order should have said something to assure the public that the Host and Blood samples themselves were not tampered with. After all, the historical account does not begin until about 800 years after the miracle is said to have happened. A bull by Pius IV in 1536 is the first written record request. There is no chain of custody for these samples. In my opinion, this fraudulent WHO report undermines the claim of a miracle.

Second, the fraud is not some nameless, faceless accident of nature. It originated with someone somewhere. Someone intentionally placed the pages of scientific data about Egyptian mummies between pages about the Lanciano samples. Someone meant to use false data to convince others that the World Health Organization (WHO) in conjunction with the United Nations (UN) had legitimately conducted 500 tests over 15 months on the samples and confirmed what Professor Linoli concluded—that the samples were miraculous—and not just any miracle, but a miracle involving the very source and summit of the Catholic Faith, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Who did this? Who knew about it and said nothing? Will we ever know?

Third, why do Catholics not question everything else related to these Eucharistic miracles? I am not just referring to the Lanciano sample but all of them. This is a trust issue. If there was a coordinated effort to cover this up for so many years, then what else is a hoax? Fr. Donahue rightly says that we should only trust primary sources regarding scientific data. I agree. But as someone with scientific training, I will add that it goes even further with scientific credibility. We not only need primary sources, such as reports from the scientists themselves, but we also need raw data from those scientists if they are to be believed.

This is standard procedure in scientific publishing. Scientists cannot submit their conclusions without supporting data. Raw data refers to the data from experiments that is unmanipulated, and it must be accompanied by explanations of methodology, instrument settings, lists of reagents and staining techniques for microscopy, control experiments, and any detail that another scientist would need to reproduce the same results. That is the function of peer review; peers review raw data and make judgements on the soundness of the conclusions.

Undermining trust in science is one thing, but when Catholics rely on unsupported data to shore up what they say the believe in faith, such as the Real Presence, then they send a message—listen carefully here—that they don’t really believe what they say they believe. Nothing could be worse in apologetics or evangelization. Atheists and agnostics are not that gullible, nor should they be.

Who is Responsible Though?

Well, let’s take inventory. Because Bl. Carlo Acutis compiled the information that is used in the Vatican International Exhibition, it doesn’t follow that he was dishonest. Most likely he repeated the story because he, as did I, trusted a source that should have done better homework. Carlo Acutis was a kid and is not at fault.

What about the Franciscan Friars at the Conventual Monastery where the Lanciano samples are stored and displayed? I think they own some of the responsibility for setting this straight, at least to the extent that they perpetuated the story without taking time to look beyond the first page and notice that the scientific data was about Egyptian mummies. That’s an egregious oversight. The report was allegedly published in 1976 on an international stage. Serafini says it took him all of two minutes to notice the fraud. That’s almost half a century in which the friars apparently didn’t read the report even as they safeguarded it, welcomed pilgrims, and knew the narrative was being promoted worldwide.

What about the Vatican International Exhibition and the Real Presence Association? Yes, they are also responsible for perpetuating this fraud. Serafini published his book in Italy in 2018. As of today in 2025, the fraud is still repeated in their book and on their exhibition downloadable posters. The exhibit has been shown in thousands of parishes and at more than 100 universities globally. A retraction is long overdue. (And while they are at it, they should also fix the false claim about the weight of the blood clots. See pp. 213-214 of Behold.)

What about the hoaxer? We may never know who started the deception, but I expect more of an outcry from Catholics. All I can think about, and it makes me fire mad when I do, is all the people searching for truth—atheists, agnostics, skeptics, doubters—who were fed this fantastical narrative about how a secular group of scientists from the World Health Organization and the United Nations were forced by science to confirm the truth of a Eucharistic miracle, only to learn the whole thing was a fraud to trick them into believing. Why would those people ever believe anything we say again? Guys, that is a BIG DEAL.

So, Speak Up

I’ll end with a call to action for fellow Catholics. Speak up about this terrible deception! And please, for the love of God, stop repeating this narrative. For that matter, stop repeating any narrative about something so vitally central to our Faith as the Eucharist unless the investigators making claims commit to complete transparency, objectivity, and accountability. Unless we see the raw data and methodology typical of any credible peer-reviewed scientific investigation, we cannot be sure about data manipulation, selective reporting, inadequate documentation, or publication bias. Just stop repeating the stories about Eucharistic miracles. That’s right: I just called them all into question because none of them after the Linoli report share the raw data.

If I can get all judgy, it is most impious and disrespectful of the Eucharist to promote stories of miracles that rely on half-baked science. Yes, the stories sound awesome. Yes, they make people cry. Yes, they sell books, but good stories do not make good science, and even good science is no substitute for authentic faith.

I have a lot more to say. Until next time…