WAS THERE DECAY? NUN!
4 yrs. & no rot on body is a Mo. ‘miracle’
The small, rural Missouri town of Gower has become an unexpected pilgrimage destination after a nun’s exhumed body showed no visible signs of decomposition — four years after her burial.
Hundreds of people have been flocking to the town 40 miles north of Kansas City to marvel at the well-preserved body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, with many calling it a “miracle in Missouri.”
Lancaster founded the Benedictine Sisters of Mary, Queen of the Apostles, when she was 70. She died in May 2019 at 95.
Last Thursday, Benedictine nuns dug up her coffin to move it to beneath the altar in the convent’s chapel, which is customary.
“We were told by cemetery personnel to expect just bones in the conditions, as Sister Wilhelmina was buried without embalming and in a simple wood coffin,” one nun told Newsweek.
But when Mother Abbess Cecilia Snell looked through a crack in the coffin, she said she saw “a totally intact foot with the sock on, looking just like it did when we buried her.”
The abbess told the Eternal World Television Network, a Catholic news outlet, her first reaction was to utter, “I didn’t just see that.”
When the sisters fully opened the coffin, they discovered Lancaster’s body with almost no signs of decay.
The nun who spoke to Newsweek on condition of anonymity said the sisters took turns touching Wilhelmina’s socked feet, which she described as “very damp, but all there.”
“The dirt that fell in early on had pushed down on her facial features, especially the right eye, so we did place a wax mask over it,” she said. “But her eyelashes, hair, eyebrows, nose and lips were all present, her mouth just about to smile.”
After the nuns washed a layer of mold and mildew off Lancaster’s body, her habit and the crown and bouquet flowers she was buried with appeared pristine.
“I mean, there was just this sense that the Lord was doing this,” Snell said. “Right now we need hope. We need it. Our Lord knows that. And she was such a testament to hope. And faith. And trust.”
The Roman Catholic Church says a preserved body unaffected by decomposition is a mark of holiness, but it does not necessarily make a person a candidate for sainthood.
That hasn’t stopped throngs of devout Catholics from traveling to Gower to view the body.
“At first, it was just a little unreal. But then as I just gazed at her, tears started coming and I just knew it was for real and very, very meaningful,” said Mary Lou Enna, a pilgrim from Kansas City.
Lancaster’s body will remain on display at the chapel in Gower until Monday, after which it will be placed in a glass case for protection.