July 24, 2023 - Reported [here]. Video [here]. Bishop Walter Guillén Soto has recognized a new Eucharistic miracle that took place a year ago in a rural community where there is no priest who exercises his ministry on a daily basis.

Unusual event in an unknown place in Honduras

El Espinal is a small rural parish of about 60 families living in the scattered hills near the city of San Juan. There is no priest who exercises his ministry there on a daily basis. The Extraordinary Minister of Communion, José Elmer Benítez Machado, directs the regular services there.

On June 9, 2022, the feast of Jesus Christ, High and Eternal Priest, he observed something unusual in the tabernacle.

Some 15 families attended the prayer on Thursday. At five in the afternoon, the Liturgy of the Word and the rite of Holy Communion began. When José Machado opened the tabernacle, he saw what looked like blood stains on the corporal on which was the wooden ciborium containing the Blessed Sacrament.

"I was blown away," he said in an interview with EWTN News. My first hope was: This is the Blood of Christ. He mastered the emotion from him and completed the rite. When he finished, he asked those gathered if anyone had seen that the roof of the chapel was leaking. When they all denied it, he told them what he had seen. Those gathered were convinced that it was a miracle.

Very cautious

Father Marvin Sotelo and Father Oscar Rodríguez, missionaries of the Sacred Heart, who had recently been ministering in the town, arrived at the chapel from San Juan. They saw what happened, spoke to the witnesses and took the body, locking it in a sealed container.

They took him to mons. Walter Guillén Soto, ordinary of the diocese of Gracias in Honduras. He acted very cautiously.

I am not so prone to naively believe in things. Logic makes us prudent when it comes to believing things and submitting to analysis," he told EWTN News.

After three months, the bishop transferred the body to the Santa Rosa de Copán Medical Center. There were no suitable agents in the place to carry out the analysis, so the body was transferred to the DISA Test toxicology center in Tegucigalpa, where Héctor Díaz del Valle, a doctor in chemistry and pharmacy, directed the investigation.

At the end of October 2022, the material was examined by a forensic expert and a toxicology expert.

Amazing results

Tests have ruled out that the stains are from tree resin and animal blood. They also proved that the stain was not artificial blood. The material was found to be free of fungus, mold and contamination.

Instead, the tests showed that the body stains are indeed blood from a human with the AB+ group. Blood of the same type was found, among others, during the examination of the miracle of Lanciano and of the Shroud of Turin.

God chooses what is humble

Bishop Walter Guillén Soto announced the results of the study and recognized the Eucharistic miracle. He said:

"I think that this extraordinary, visible, tangible, observable, verifiable sign of the manifestation of the Blood of the Lord in a little-known community, in the middle of the most remote rural areas of our agricultural environment, tells us a lot at this time."

He stressed that it was unique that Jesus showed this miracle, not to a clergyman or religious, but to a layman. He called it "the miracle of synodality."

"This is the time of the laity," said the bishop. “It is the faith of the laity that has sustained the vitality of the Church in these corners of the world. For me and for the clergy of the diocese, it is a call to conversion, to recognize the call of God in the voice of the laity.

All the material was delivered to the Vatican, for the final verification of the Eucharistic miracle.