An alleged miracle at a Connecticut church is being sent to the Vatican for confirmation. The event occurred at the March 5th mass at St. Thomas Catholic Church in Thomaston, CT, when one of the volunteers involved in Communion claimed to have seen the host (communion bread) multiplying. Rev. Joseph Crowley announced the miracle to his congregation at the end of the mass, saying, “One of our eucharistic ministers was running out of hosts, and suddenly there were more hosts in the ciborium. God just duplicated himself in the ciborium.” The ciborium is the silver bowl designated to hold the host when Communion is given out on Sundays. The event is reminiscent of the miracle of the multiplying loaves and fish, the only miracle besides the Resurrection recorded in all four of the Gospels. “It’s really, really cool when God does these things, and it’s really, really cool when we realize what he’s done,” said Crowley. “Very powerful, very awesome, very real, very shocking. But also, it happens, and today it happened. They were running out of hosts, and all of a sudden more hosts were there. So today, not only did we have the miracle of the Eucharist, but we also had a bigger miracle. It’s pretty cool.” Crowley also stated that at the end of the mass, there were just as many Communion wafers as before mass started, possibly more. 

The Archdiocese of Hartford looked into the miracle and sent its results to the Holy See. St. Thomas Aquinas defined miracles as “those things … which are done by divine power apart from the order generally followed in things.” Most miracles the church investigates deal with spontaneous healings that appear to defy the laws of medicine. In such instances, the church gathers a board of medical professionals to review the healing. To investigate the multiplying hosts, investigators could request access to video footage to see if someone refilled the hosts without the Communion helper’s knowledge. Michael O’Neill, known as the “Miracle Hunter,” doubted there would be enough evidence to prove a miracle. “I’m guessing they have the testimony of numerous people who would have been able to say that they saw something and understood that this had to have been miraculous,” he said. “So, I’m guessing they’re caught in the middle a little bit, not having the hard evidence but having good testimony. So, they’re looking for some guidance from the Vatican,” he said. If the miracle is confirmed, it will be the first of its kind of the hundreds of miracles involving Communion confirmed by the church. It would also be the first Communion miracle to appear in the United States. Rev. Dorian Llywelyn, incoming director of the Center for Ignatian Spirituality at Loyola Marymount University, stated he was interested in how the event would impact the faith of those in the congregation. “I’m not dissing the materiality because the increase in faith has to be based on something. But I’m as interested, if not more interested, in the aftereffects,” he said.