By Verghese V Joseph –
In an age of stents, ventilators, artificial valves and intensive-care algorithms, the word “miracle” is usually used loosely—as a compliment for a good outcome or a slogan on a greeting card. But for Dr. Gerard Abreo, a cardiologist with more than three decades of clinical experience, the word carries a more precise and unsettling meaning: a recovery so complete, so rapid and so contrary to every medical expectation that the best explanation medicine can offer is “medically unexplained.”
At the Owl Ears Speaker Series hosted by the Rice Catholic Student Association, Houston, Texas on October 30, 2026, Dr. Abreo delivered a talk titled “Medically Unexplained: Miracles Still Happen.” His argument was not that prayer replaces medicine, nor that every recovery deserves the label of miracle. Rather, it was that in the borderland between catastrophe and recovery, doctors sometimes encounter events that resist explanation—and that faith, reason and careful documentation must be allowed to speak to one another.
His lecture moved from a century-old case at Lourdes to patients he had treated in Houston, from a young Polish woman blind since adolescence to a priest paralyzed by a severe neurological illness. It was part medical testimony, part spiritual reflection, and part challenge to a culture that often assumes science and belief must be enemies.
A doctor’s starting point
Dr. Abreo began with the story of Alexis Carrel, the French surgeon and eventual Nobel laureate whose encounter with Lourdes became one of the most debated cases in modern medical-religious history. Carrel, raised Catholic but later agnostic, travelled to the French shrine with sick patients partly out of curiosity and, by his own account, with an intention to expose what he believed was a hoax.
There he examined Marie Bailly, a 23-year-old woman suffering from terminal tuberculous peritonitis, a devastating abdominal infection that left her immobile and near death. According to Dr. Abreo’s account, Bailly could not be placed in the cold waters of the Lourdes baths because of her condition. Instead, water was poured over her abdomen. After repeated applications, he said, her distended abdomen visibly receded, her condition changed dramatically, and she recovered in a way that stunned those present.
Carrel reported what he had seen. The result, Dr. Abreo said, was not admiration but scandal. He lost his surgical position in Lyon and eventually left France for the United States, where he joined the Rockefeller Institute. In 1912, he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on vascular suturing and transplantation.
For Dr. Abreo, the significance of the Carrel case is not merely the dramatic healing. It is the way institutions responded when a distinguished physician reported something that did not fit accepted medical categories. “When you have academia willing to dialogue for the truth, the truth comes up,” he told the audience.
He also pointed to a 2026 reappraisal in The American Journal of Medicine examining why Carrel later left France for the United States. According to Dr. Abreo, the authors reviewed the historical record and found that other physicians had examined Bailly, challenging later attempts to dismiss the episode as a misdiagnosis. He presented this as evidence that the case deserves serious historical attention rather than automatic dismissal.
What “medically unexplained” means
Dr. Abreo was careful about terminology. He did not claim that doctors can prove a miracle in the laboratory. Medicine, he said, can establish facts: what the heart looked like, what the scans showed, what the blood tests revealed, what treatments were given, and what happened next. But when a patient survives an expected death, recovers organ function, walks out of rehabilitation or regains capacities thought permanently lost, physicians may be left with a phrase that sounds scientific but is ultimately descriptive: “spontaneous remission.”
“What do you mean by spontaneous remission?” he asked. “The patient almost died, but something happened. He turned around and lived—medically unexplained.”
That distinction matters. In Catholic tradition, a miracle is not merely an unusual event or a happy ending. It is understood as a sign of God’s action, often requiring both medical scrutiny and theological discernment. Dr. Abreo emphasized that the Church itself does not treat claims casually: medical investigation plays an important role in beatification and canonization processes, and Lourdes has a medical bureau that reviews reported healings.
He cautioned against gullibility. A patient may believe a blocked artery disappeared after prayer, for example, when the more mundane explanation is that an earlier stress test produced a false positive. “If you believe the medical explanation, I’m fine with it,” he said. Faith, in his view, does not require abandoning evidence; it requires refusing to reduce reality to evidence alone.
Blind, but now I see
The first case Dr. Abreo described took him back to Bengaluru, India, where he was born and studied medicine. It involved Wanda Wajda, a young Polish woman who had lost her sight at 16 after a severe infection. By the time she visited a school for blind children in India, one eye had been surgically removed and the other had been severely damaged.
According to Dr. Abreo, Wanda received Holy Communion on the Feast of the Sacred Heart, returned to her pew and began sobbing. A sister accompanying her asked what was wrong. Later, as the nun removed her religious habit, Wanda reportedly told her, “Sister, you have beautiful hair.”
The remark stunned the community. Wanda said she could see. She could read. She could watch television. She was taken to Dr. Abreo’s medical school, where a professor of ophthalmology examined her with the available technology.
Dr. Abreo recalled the professor’s conclusion: there was no functioning optic nerve in either eye, and the retina appeared bleached and destroyed. Medically and legally, he said, Wanda remained blind. Yet she could see.
“I wanted to know what happened before and after,” Dr. Abreo said. “Did someone put drops, holy water, oil or whatever? No, nothing.” It took him time, he admitted, to connect the event with the Eucharist. The sisters and Wanda herself had understood it immediately; the trained cardiologist took longer.
The story did not end with the healing. Wanda returned to Poland, brought her father to India, and adopted one of the sickest children at the blind school—a blind child suffering from severe protein-energy malnutrition. Dr. Abreo showed a later photograph of Wanda and the child, Scholastica. Wanda, he said, had a prosthetic right eye and 20/20 vision in the left.
“When you have a miracle, something good comes out of it,” he said.
The patient who was expected to die
The second case brought the lecture into the modern cardiac intensive-care unit. Michael Terraso, a parishioner present at the talk, had undergone six-vessel coronary artery bypass surgery. Initially, his recovery appeared routine: he was extubated, sitting up in a chair, off intravenous drips, walking around the cardiovascular ICU, and expected to go home within three or four days.
Then came sudden shortness of breath and low blood pressure. A large bleed developed outside his left lung. He required repeated chest tubes. He was reintubated three times. A clot in his leg travelled to his lungs. Infection followed, then septic shock, kidney failure, liver failure and respiratory failure.
Dr. Abreo described the medical trajectory in blunt terms: specialists predicted a tracheostomy, dialysis, an inferior vena cava filter, lung decortication, prolonged rehabilitation and possibly another operation involving the sternal wires. The family was told he was fighting for his life.
But around Michael, a network of prayer formed. His pastor, Father Vincent, offered daily Mass. Parishioners prayed the Rosary and the Divine Mercy Chaplet. His wife, Lucille, prayed the St. Michael prayer and anointed him with oil associated with St. Raphael.
Then, according to Dr. Abreo, the unexpected occurred. After doctors had finished rounds and prepared to speak with the family about end-of-life decisions, a nurse called them back: Michael was waking up and following commands. His urine output increased. He was extubated. He did not need the procedures that had been predicted. His organs returned to normal. He had no neurological deficit.
Michael himself later told Dr. Abreo that, during the illness, he had a vision of being at his own funeral and seeing three archangels—St. Michael, St. Gabriel and another. After that, he said, he began to recover rapidly.
Dr. Abreo did not present this as proof in a scientific sense. He presented it as a documented clinical course that did not follow the expected path, surrounded by sustained prayer and ending in a recovery that surprised the medical team.
“Lazarus of Clear Lake”
The next case was Jim Hackney, who suffered a heart attack while playing tennis in April 2019. CPR was performed on the court. By the time he reached hospital, he was in cardiogenic shock, with an electrocardiogram showing ongoing injury to the front of the heart.
Doctors placed a stent in the left anterior descending artery, one of the heart’s major vessels. But the damage had already taken a severe toll. His heart muscle was pumping at only 20% of normal capacity, compared with a typical ejection fraction of around 55%. He developed kidney and liver failure. A balloon pump and multiple intravenous medications were needed to support his blood pressure.
Then came the neurological assessment. A neurologist concluded there was no brain-stem function: no response to pain, no corneal reflex, no gag reflex. For eight days, Dr. Abreo said, Hackney showed none of these signs. Specialists gave up hope.
Prayer continued anyway. Family and friends gathered in waiting areas with Rosaries and Divine Mercy Chaplets. His pastor initially prayed in a way that accepted the likelihood of death, but Hackney’s wife asked him to change the prayer and ask instead for recovery.
On day nine, Hackney woke up. Three days later, Dr. Abreo said, he walked out of the hospital. He underwent outpatient rehabilitation and returned to tennis. What had been planned as a “Celebration of Life” after his expected death became a celebration attended by roughly 300 people.
Houston Catholic Radio later interviewed Dr. Abreo and Hackney for a programme called “Lazarus of Clear Lake Regional Hospital.” Dr. Abreo recalled that even a Muslim colleague from Jordan, after seeing Hackney walk into the office, invoked the Gospel figure of Lazarus.
A heart that returned to normal
Anna Rogers’s case was different: not a long ICU battle, but a sudden reversal after a catastrophic heart attack. In June 2004, Rogers had been cleared for surgery to remove an ovarian tumour described by Dr. Abreo as “football-sized.” Three hours after the operation, she developed severe chest pressure.
Her ECG showed an ongoing anterior heart attack. An echocardiogram revealed severe new weakness of the heart muscle, with an ejection fraction of 20%. Because she had recently undergone surgery and there was evidence of blood in her abdomen, doctors could not safely perform an angiogram or administer clot-busting drugs. The only treatment available, Dr. Abreo said, was aspirin.
He told her family that she would most likely die. The family asked for hope. He had a prayer card of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus in his pocket and gave it to Rogers, though he did not initially know she was Baptist.
The next morning, her chest pain had gone. Her blood pressure and oxygenation were normal. A week later, an angiogram showed no blockages and no remnants of blood clot. Her heart muscle returned to normal.
Dr. Abreo said the case was reviewed with other cardiologists, who could offer no medical explanation. The phrase used was “spontaneous remission.” Rogers, however, had a different interpretation: “Of course it was St. Therese prayer that saved my life.”
She later distributed the prayer card through her Baptist church. Dr. Abreo noted that Rogers died about two years before his talk, but the case remained one of the clearest examples he had encountered of a sudden, complete cardiovascular reversal.
Grandma Sally and the chapel Rosary
Another story centred on an elderly woman Dr. Abreo called “Grandma Sally,” who underwent emergency surgery for an incarcerated inguinal hernia and removal of gangrenous bowel. She required two further emergency bowel resections. After the third operation, the wound was left open, she remained on a ventilator, and hospice care was recommended.
Her son placed a prayer card of Blessed Don Alvaro beneath her bed. Family members and the Abreo family prayed the Rosary in the hospital chapel. The next day, she was still alive but critical.
Dr. Abreo contacted another surgeon, Dr. Craig Fisher, and asked for a third opinion. Sally was transferred to another hospital, where further surgery was performed and the abdominal wound was closed. She was later moved to a rehabilitation facility.
A physician who had seen her earlier reportedly looked at her and said, “You’re alive?” She asked for her tracheostomy and feeding tube to be removed. Both were removed. She recovered, and Dr. Abreo said she recently turned 90 and is now a great-grandmother three times over.
The newest case
Dr. Abreo also described a more recent patient, Vicki Drixen, whose case he said had occurred only about a month before the lecture. She suffered a heart attack and cardiac arrest, with severely weakened heart muscle and an ejection fraction of 20%. She required CPR, intubation and high-risk treatment.
Surgeons initially concluded that she was too frail for bypass surgery and valve replacement. Her family, however, insisted on pursuing every possible option. Dr. Abreo asked her what she wanted. She gave a thumbs-up: “I want everything.”
The medical team first attempted a balloon procedure. She suffered another cardiac arrest. Doctors then placed six coronary stents. She arrested again. The situation, by Dr. Abreo’s description, had become extraordinarily dangerous.
Instead of open-heart valve surgery, the team attempted a transcatheter valve procedure, inserting a replacement valve through the groin. Before the procedure, the family was warned that she might die. Afterward, she survived. Her blood pressure improved, supportive medications were stopped, and she was eventually discharged without rehabilitation.
Dr. Abreo said she had three cardiac arrests but no brain damage, no broken ribs and no other major injury. Her heart function improved to 45%. She wanted to attend the lecture but had lost her voice; her family hoped she could join a future event by video.
A priest walks again
The final individual case involved Father Edward Wade, a priest well known through EWTN and Radio Maria, whom Dr. Abreo had treated for more than 15 years. In October 2012, Father Wade developed a low-grade fever followed by rapid, ascending sensory and motor loss in his legs and lower abdomen.
The diagnosis was described as severe sensory and motor axonal polyneuropathy involving the spinal cord. MRI showed complete spinal-cord oedema. A rehabilitation physician told Dr. Abreo that Father Wade would not walk again.
That same evening, two women whom Father Wade did not know visited and asked whether they could pray for him. Soon afterward, he reported a burning and tingling sensation beginning in his toes and moving upward. By the next morning, he could move his legs and feel touch again.
The rehabilitation doctor, Dr. Abreo said, confirmed a “medically unexplained resolution of the paralysis.” Father Wade needed three weeks of rehabilitation, then walked into Dr. Abreo’s office with a cane. He died two years before the lecture.
The pandemic and the Eucharist
Dr. Abreo then turned to COVID-19, not to claim a miracle cure for the virus, but to describe what he saw as a spiritual crisis inside hospitals. Patients were terrified by diagnoses they experienced as death sentences. Staff were exhausted and constantly adapting. The emergency department was reorganised almost daily.
He noted a striking fall in emergent heart-attack admissions during March and April 2020: where the hospital might normally see 15 to 20 cases requiring stents, only three came during that period. The others, he suggested, may have died at home, afraid to seek care.
Because priests and deacons were restricted from entering many areas, Dr. Abreo became an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist at the hospital. He described bringing Communion to patients in isolation and witnessing what he called a change in the room—what he likened to the difference between night and day.
He recounted several cases: an 83-year-old Baptist man who wept and said, “Dr. Abreo, I see Jesus in you,” and later entered the Catholic Church; a 60-year-old man in septic shock after bypass surgery who recovered dramatically after receiving the Eucharist; an 80-year-old woman whose heart rate rose from 35 to 76 beats per minute during prayer before Communion, allowing her to avoid a pacemaker; a 76-year-old man with recurrent cardiac arrest who improved enough to receive a defibrillator; and an 89-year-old man with an infected pacemaker whose blood cultures turned negative days after receiving the Eucharist.
Dr. Abreo was careful to frame these as observations, not controlled proof. Yet he insisted that the pattern was consistent: patients often wept, focused on the raised host, sought reconciliation with family members, and experienced what he called an “internal power” to endure suffering even when physical healing did not follow.
“Healing is not always external removal of disease,” he said. “Sometimes it is the infusion of an internal power to sustain it.”
Faith and reason
The intellectual heart of the lecture came near the end. Dr. Abreo argued that faith and reason are not rivals but complementary paths to truth. He cited St. Augustine’s view that Christians believe in order to understand, and St. John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio, which describes faith and reason as “two wings” on which the human spirit rises toward truth.
He offered three propositions: faith and reason are complementary; true faith and true reason cannot ultimately contradict because God is the author of both; and faith without reason risks superstition, while reason without faith risks relativism.
That framework shaped his approach to miracles. He did not ask listeners to suspend judgment. He asked them to take seriously the possibility that some events may exceed current medical explanation without thereby becoming irrational.
He pointed to the Church’s own procedures: medical documentation, expert review, long investigation and theological discernment. He mentioned the case associated with Bishop Fulton Sheen’s beatification, involving a baby delivered with the umbilical cord around the neck and reportedly without a heartbeat for 61 minutes, followed by recovery. He also noted that Lourdes-related medical reviews can take years.
“The Church only proposes, never imposes,” Dr. Abreo said, quoting St. John Paul II.
The harder question
Near the end, an audience member asked the question that hangs over every talk about healing: what does one say to families who prayed fervently and still lost someone?
Dr. Abreo’s answer was measured. His first duty, he said, is to be a cardiologist—to do everything medicine can do. Prayer does not replace treatment. But when medicine reaches its limits, faith can change the atmosphere of a room, offer peace, and help families face death without despair.
Another speaker added a crucial correction: a miracle granted to one person does not mean another person lacked faith. She described a friend whose husband suffered a similar heart attack and died, yet whose faith deepened through grief. The real miracle, she suggested, is salvation—whether God returns a person to health or receives them into eternal life.
Father Tucker, concluding the evening, reinforced that point. Jesus did not heal everyone in the Gospels, he noted. Physical healing is a sign of God’s kingdom, but it is not the final promise. The deeper message is God’s presence, power and love—and the hope of reunion beyond death.
A sign, not a guarantee
Dr. Abreo ended with St. Augustine’s conviction that miracles were not confined to the apostolic age. “I realized how many miracles were occurring in our own day,” he quoted, warning against allowing memories of divine power to perish among the people.
His conclusion was direct: “God is still in the miracle business today.” But he did not present miracles as rewards for spiritual performance or guarantees for those who pray hard enough. They are, in his understanding, signs of God’s goodness, compassion and pity—moments meant to awaken faith in the person healed and in those around them.
For the patients who survived, the stories are deeply personal: a woman who regained sight, a man who walked out of an ICU after eight unresponsive days, a priest who rose from paralysis, a grandmother who lived to 90. For Dr. Abreo, they are clinical memories that refuse to be neatly filed away.
And for the audience, the lecture left a quieter challenge: not to believe every extraordinary claim, but neither to assume that the limits of medicine are necessarily the limits of reality. In the space between a fatal prognosis and an unexplained recovery, Dr. Abreo finds room for both rigorous science and living faith.