It was only after posting this subject I found it had already been put up. that said, this is so special it deserves a second read.

Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,

Glory to Jesus Christ!

In our last newsletter, we recalled that the Catholics of the age of the Apostles and Church Fathers transformed a pagan world into a vibrant Catholic civilization primarily in three ways: Through their supernatural Faith, through their Supernatural Charity, and through the miracles God worked through them. It is no coincidence, then, that at almost the same time that our last newsletter appeared, we received word that Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, OSB, the foundress of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, who died four years ago, was recently found to be incorrupt. According to a recent report by the Catholic News Agency:
Known for her devotion to the Traditional Latin Mass and her faithfulness to Benedictine contemplation and the Liturgy of the Hours, she died at age 95 on May 29, 2019, on the vigil of the solemnity of the Ascension.
Roughly four years later, on the solemnity of the Ascension in the Latin rite, the abbess and sisters decided to move her body to a final resting place inside their monastery chapel, a long-standing custom for founders and foundresses.

Expecting to find bones, the Benedictine Sisters instead unearthed a coffin with an apparently intact body, even though the body was not embalmed and the wooden coffin had a crack down the middle that let in moisture and dirt for an unknown length of time during those four years.

“We think she is the first African American woman to be found incorrupt,” the current abbess of the community, Mother Cecilia, OSB, told EWTN’s ACI Group on Saturday. As the head of the monastery, it was her role to examine what was in the coffin first.



Incorrupt Body of Sister Wilhelmina, the Foundress of the Benedictines of Mary
The body was covered in a layer of mold that had grown due to the high levels of condensation within the cracked coffin. Despite the dampness, little of her body and nothing of her habit disintegrated during the four years.
The shock was instant for the community who had gathered to exhume her.

“I thought I saw a completely full, intact foot and I said, ‘I didn’t just see that,’” the abbess said. “So I looked again more carefully.”

After she looked again, she screamed aloud, “I see her foot!” and the community, she said, “just cheered.”
“I mean there was just this sense that the Lord was doing this,” she said. “Right now we need hope. We need it. Our Lord knows that. And she was such a testament to hope. And faith. And trust.”

The Catholic Church has a long-standing tradition of so-called “incorruptible saints,” more than a hundred of whom have been beatified or canonized. The saints are called incorruptible because years after their death parts of or even the entirety of their bodies are immune to the natural process of decay. Even with modern embalming techniques, bodies are subject to natural processes of decomposition.

According to Catholic tradition, incorruptible saints give witness to the truth of the resurrection of the body and the life that is to come. The lack of decay is also seen as a sign of holiness: a life of grace lived so closely to Christ that sin with its corruption does not proceed in typical fashion but is miraculously held at bay.

The body was covered in a layer of mold that had grown due to the high levels of condensation within the cracked coffin. Despite the dampness, little of her body and nothing of her habit disintegrated during the four years.
The shock was instant for the community who had gathered to exhume her.

The local ordinary, Bishop Vann Johnston of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, visited the monastery Monday to see Sister Wilhelmina’s remains. Johnston, who has communicated with Church authorities in Rome about the situation, issued a statement the same day, saying that a “thorough investigation” was needed to answer “important questions” raised by the state of her body.

CNA asked Hess and another expert about the possibility that the body might have been preserved through a chemical process called “grave wax.”

“Grave wax” is an uncommonly seen but natural phenomenon that encases a corpse or parts of a body in a shell of soap-like fatty tissue, called adipocere, which slows or stops the normal decomposition process, which can preserve the human remains for many years — even centuries.

Two so-called “soap mummies” — dubbed “Soap Lady” and “Soap Man” — were exhumed in 1875 during digging for the foundation of a train depot in downtown Philadelphia decades after they died.

“This unusual preservation occurred because water seeped into the casket and brought alkaline soil with it, turning the fats in his body to soap through a type of hydrolysis known as saponification,” according to the Smithsonian Institution, which has kept the man’s remains in climate-controlled storage in the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The woman’s remains are on exhibit in Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum.

Hess said that grave wax typically only materializes in different parts of the body, but he said it could cover the entire body.

I already went through this on the other thread.  There could be myriad causes ...

1) Was she embalmed (even if not completely, perhaps partially) whether with or without the knowledge of the other sisters there?
2) Was she on antibiotics or other medications before she passed away?
3) Was the soil of lower acidity?
4) Was the coffin made of cedar wood, which repels insects?
5) We don't know how long the coffin had been broken open.
6) Did the inner fabric lining of the coffin wisk moisture away from the body, allowing it to dry out and mummify?

Only 4 years had passed, and rate of decay can vary due to many different factors, normally requiring up to 10 years, but embalmed bodies or those subject to various other conditions (such as listed above) can last many decades.

This is why a full investigation of all such claims is required by the Church before people claim miracles.  Many miracles have been later debunked as due to natural causes or, in some cases, diabolical intervention.

Unearthed in 1895, because the corner had injected him with arsenic ... still perfectly preserved.  Antibiotics could also have the same effect.  In fact, a layer of mold on the body is a common finding when the body had been embalmed.