ABSTRACT
A belief often voiced to us from those involved in the activities in Lourdes is that touch both physical and metaphorical is central to what is going on and that this is as important and beneficial to people as most medical technology. But the authors teamed up with two of our other "healing research" colleagues, Prof Sara Warber and Dr Emmylou Rahtz, and applied to the BIAL foundation in Portugal for money to fund a more substantive visit to investigate transcendent moments in Lourdes. And as they analyzed the data, many other insights into the healing powers of Lourdes emerged, leading us to tentative conclusions about the pilgrimage site and healing there. Within that broad definition, what they were witnessing in Lourdes certainly was healing, even if the "miraculous cures" for which it is renown were only apparent historically. The authors concluded that there are multiple facilitators of healing at Lourdes.
