Too Great an Honor

The Roman Catholic Church, traditionally circumspect in the matter of miracles, had for weeks remained aloof while the legend of Pierrette Regimbal grew & grew (TIME, Oct. 1). The legend said that 13-year-old Pierrette had been visited by St. Francis of Assisi, could work miraculous cures.* The Church noted that thousands of ailing pilgrims were visiting Pierrette's homemade grotto in predominantly Catholic Quebec, and that hundreds of others were writing to beg shipments of water from Pierrette's well.

Last week the Church decided that things had gone far enough. The Most Reverend Joseph Aldee Desmarais, Bishop of Amos (Quebec) diocese, issued a bluntly worded circular. Appropriately, it was distributed on the Day of the Feast of St. Francis, Oct. 4:

"Beloved brethren: A little girl of our diocese, Pierrette Regimbal of Val D'Or, has for a few weeks past drawn upon her and retained the attention of the public. Thousands of persons . . . have lent a credulous ear to . . . strange reports on the child's pretensions. . . . People have cried 'miracle'. . . . Comparisons have gone so far as to compare the girl to Bernadette of Lourdes. . . . We esteem that [this] was, in truth, according her too great an honor. . . .

"To avoid expense and useless trips for persons [who are] ready to come great distances to the grotto . . . [and] desirous to enlighten public opinion on this matter, we have decided to appoint a board of inquiry, whose conclusion permits us [now] to declare the following:

". . . There is no proof in the case of Pierrette Regimbal. . . ."

*There are two types of miracles: "first class," involving growth of new bone tissue; "second class," such as restoration of sight or speech, healing of tuberculosis, paralysis, cancer. No miracle credited to Pierrette has been "first class."

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