Santarém, 1247
Popes Pius IV, Saint Pius V, Pius VI, and Gregory XIV granted plenary indulgences to this famous Eucharistic miracle. Today, in the Church of Saint Stephen in Santarém, Portugal, pilgrims can still venerate this precious relic. According to ancient documentation commissioned by King Afonso IV in 1346, on February 16, 1266 (traditionally dated to 1247), a young woman of Santarém, tormented by jealousy regarding her husband's infidelity, consulted a sorceress who instructed her to steal a consecrated Host from the church to concoct a love potion.
The woman went to Mass, received Holy Communion, took the consecrated Host from her mouth, and wrapped it in her headscarf. Immediately, the linen veil became soaked with living Blood. Terrified, she ran home and opened the cloth, discovering to her horror that real Blood was actively gushing from the Sacred Host. In extreme panic, she locked the bleeding Host inside a wooden chest in her bedroom. That night, brilliant beams of celestial light burst through the seams of the chest, illuminating the bedroom as brightly as midday.
Awakened by the radiant light, her husband questioned her until she tearfully confessed the sacrilege. Early the next morning, the couple informed their parish priest, who went straight to the house accompanied by clergy and faithful, recovering the miraculous Host and carrying it in solemn procession back to the Church of Saint Stephen. The Host continued to bleed for three consecutive days. It was initially placed in a sealed beeswax reliquary. In 1340, a second prodigy took place:
When the priest opened the tabernacle, he found the beeswax vessel shattered into fragments, replaced miraculously by an exquisite crystal ampoule enclosing the Host and the Blood mingled with wax. Today the Sacred Host is exposed in an 18th-century Eucharistic throne above the high altar. The church is now celebrated as the Sanctuary of the Holy Miracle (*Santuário do Santíssimo Milagre*). The Host effused blood on multiple occasions over the centuries, during which mystical images of our Lord Jesus Christ appeared.
Among the prominent witnesses who prayed before the Relic was Saint Francis Xavier, the Apostle of the Indies, who made a pilgrimage to the sanctuary before embarking on his mission to the Far East. Every year on the second Sunday of April, a solemn procession carrying the miraculous relic travels from the couple's former home—converted into a chapel in 1684—to the Church of Saint Stephen.
The woman consults a sorceress who advises stealing a consecrated Host. The woman receives Communion and steals the Host unnoticed. The husband discovers the theft when brilliant rays emanate from the chest, seeing the Host bleeding and transformed into Flesh. Ecclesiastical authorities return the miraculous Host to the church. Commemorative medal of the Miracle of Santarém. The couple's home, transformed into a chapel in 1684, Santarém.
Source
Text and photographs: international exhibition «The Eucharistic Miracles of the World», by Saint Carlo Acutis. Original panel at miracolieucaristici.org.