Italy: Such is the supply of miracles in Italy that if a month goes by without one, it's, well, a miracle.
Weeping Madonnas, sacred blood that goes from solid to liquid and back again, lottery numbers divined by gazing on a photo of a deceased pope, sudden cures after contact with a holy relic: miracles are old, old phenomena in Italy, the land where St Francis tamed a wolf and wild doves and a veil taken from St Agatha's tomb stopped lava in its tracks.
But this is also the land of science par excellence, the home ground of Galileo, da Vinci, Fermi and Marconi. So there are also voices that say, "Hold on a minute."
Luigi Garlaschelli is a chemist who, from his perch at Pavia University, sceptically eyes Italy's parade of miracles. He belongs to a group called the Italian Committee to Investigate Claims of the Paranormal, made up of Italian scientists, including two Nobel Prize winners, who use science to try to explain the inexplicable.
"Miracles are just paranormal events in religious clothing," he says. "I'm a chemist. I look for the substance behind things." He's not trying to undermine people's religious beliefs, he says, explaining: "We're just trying to study phenomena. If there's a non-miraculous answer, we say so."
These days, he contends, it is more important to champion scientific methods in the face of assaults from religious authorities and fundamentalist believers. The attack on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in the United States by promoters of a rival explanation known as intelligent design is a symptom of the danger, he said. "Science should not be lethargic."
In his work he does not often tangle with the Vatican. Officials there generally take a benign, arms-length stance toward the many events traditionally celebrated as miracles in its churches, neither questioning nor embracing them. "Some of these things are medieval in origin. I stay away from them," said the Rev Peter Gumpel, an official at the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, which investigates reports of miracles by candidates for sainthood. "Our belief, however, is that there is a personal God who intervenes in history," he said.
Garlaschelli is a bearded man in a white lab coat who smokes a pipe. He studies not only religious phenomena, but also plain trickery. It's a far cry from his usual research, which produces academic papers with titles such as Recent Progress in the Field of N-acylalanines as Systemic Fungicides.
He recently completed a periodic imitation of the miracle of San Gennaro, an event that has been celebrated in Naples since the 14th century. The city's archbishop pulls out a vial containing a maroon-coloured solid substance from a case, then shakes the container until the contents liquefy. The liquid is said to be the blood of San Gennaro, a pious bishop who was beheaded in AD 305 by Diocletian, a Roman emperor. Liquefaction promises a peaceful future for Naples - a pledge popular with residents of a city that sits in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius.
The shaking of San Gennaro's vial draws crowds of frenzied spectators. Scientific studies of the composition of the substance have not conclusively identified it as blood, though one purported to find traces of haemoglobin. Keepers of the relic have not provided a sample of the material for thorough testing. Garlaschelli put together a cocktail of material available near Naples - which would have been obtainable in the Middle Ages - to try to replicate the miracle. His mixture of limestone powder, iron and pigments was solid when left still, but turned fluid when stirred or shaken. The process is called thixotropy. Ketchup is a thixotropic substance, he explained.
In the 1990s, he took on one of the most revered relics in Christendom, the Shroud of Turin. It bears an image of Jesus that believers say was miraculously acquired when the cloth covered his body after the crucifixion. Carbon dating found the fabric dates from around the 14th century, but defenders say the tests were inaccurate because the cloth could have picked up pollutants in its travels through various European cathedrals. Garlaschelli runs experiments of his own that he thinks provide plenty of reasons for scepticism. If the shroud were wrapped around a face, the features should have been distorted. On the shroud, the face is in perfect proportion.
To prove his point, Garlaschelli put a student in a bathing suit, had him lie on a slab, cover himself with paint and then pull on a shroud. The image on the cloth looks similar to the Turin shroud's, except it has a distorted face. Garlaschelli is philosophical about the popular reaction to his investigations. "You see these television shows. Even when they investigate the paranormal, they leave a little room for mystery. Drama requires a question mark," he said. "Still, I think that science wins out in the end."
(LA Times-Washington Post)