Flora Cantábrica

The Miracle of Calanda

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The Miracle of Calanda

«We decide, pronounce and declare that Miguel Pellicer, a native of Calanda, who is the subject of this process, has had his right leg miraculously restored, which had previously been cut off, and that such restitution
It has not been done naturally, but prodigiously and miraculously,
It must be judged to be considered a miracle, for having attended it
all the circumstances that the law requires
to constitute a true miracle,
as we hereby attribute to miracle,
and by such a miracle we approve, declare and authorize it.»

Sentence of April 27, 1641, signed by D. Pedro de Apaolaza Ramírez,
archbishop of Zaragoza, conclusion of the corresponding canonical process
which was opened on June 5, 1640.

The miracle happened between 10 and 11 at night on Thursday, March 29, 1640, in the Aragonese town of Calanda and in the person of the young Miguel Juan Pellicer, 23 years old.

The young Miguel Juan Pellicer was 19 years old when, working in Castellón de la Plana, he fell from a cart, loaded with wheat, that he was driving, and a wheel crushed his right leg. He spent 5 days in the Valencia Hospital and asked to be taken to the Nuestra Señora de Gracia Hospital in Zaragoza.

Due to this incident, it was necessary to amputate said leg, two fingers below the knee, which was done at the Hospital de Nuestra Señora de Gracia, in Zaragoza, by the surgeon D. Juan Estanga, and it was buried by the practitioner Juan Lorenzo. Garcia.

After his convalescence for two years in the aforementioned Hospital, he was a beggar at the door of the temple of Nuestra Señora del Pilar, of which he was very devoted since his childhood, since there was a hermitage dedicated to him in Calanda, and to which he had entrusted before and after his operation, confessing and communing in his sanctuary. Every day, Pellicer anointed the stump of his leg with the oil from the lamps that burned before the Virgen del Pilar while he asked for alms at the door of the temple.

Returning to his parents’ house, in Calanda, at the beginning of March 1640, on the 29th of that month, having gone to bed in the same room as his parents, because there was a soldier staying at home, they found him asleep half an hour later. , with two legs, the same signs of a pimple and scars that he had before his amputation were noted on the restored one.

After his cure, Miguel Juan returned to Zaragoza to give thanks to the Virgin of Pilar, and, at the request of the city council, a process was initiated in the archbishopric on June 5, 1640, pronouncing an affirmative sentence of miraculous healing. , Archbishop D. Pedro Apaolaza, advised by nine theologians and canonists, on April 27, 1641. The entire text of this process is preserved with the statements of the 25 witnesses who appeared.

The miracle was quickly spread by the Court, and Pellicer was received in Madrid by King Philip IV. A report in Spanish about the Miracle, made in 1641 by the Carmelite Fr. Jerónimo de San José and later translated into Italian, spread the news throughout Spain, Italy and the South of France. Above all, a Relation in Latin, written by the German doctor Pedro Neurath in 1642, later translated into French, German and Dutch, spread it throughout Europe. Pope Urban VIII himself was personally informed by the Aragonese Jesuit Father F. Franco in 1642.

Among miracles, which, by definition, are all exceptions to the laws of nature, that of Calanda is, in turn, exceptional; That is why contemporary relations described it as a «miracle unheard of in all times.»

The Zaragoza Canon and Historian D. Tomás Domingo has a recently published work titled «The Miracle of Calanda» in which he details the entire process, testimonies, etc. and that involves a lifetime of collecting data, documents and investigating the miracle wrought by the Virgin of Pilar in the person of Miguel Pellicer. The book can be purchased in religious bookstores and in the Basilica del Pilar store itself.
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