Sokółka

Sokółka is a small town about 40 kilometres north-east of Białystok, near the border with Belarus. It is a meeting place of peoples: Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims live there, with Belarusian and Tatar minorities.

The church of St Anthony of Padua was built between 1840 and 1848 and consecrated on 9 June 1850. It was enlarged from 1901 to 1904 and has an unusual plan of five naves.

Blessed Michał Sopoćko, the confessor of St Faustina, had been beatified in Białystok on 28 September 2008, two weeks before these events.

Everything here rests on the witnesses in the parish and on the curia's statement. The earliest public text is that statement, a year after the event. It is not a late legend. It is a recent event with named people, and we can read how it was reported from the start.

For about a year nothing was made public. The curia's statement of 14 October 2009 made it known. Then the Polish and world press took it up, under the word "miracle", a word the statement itself did not use as a verdict.

On 30 March 2009 Archbishop Ozorowski named a Church commission. It questioned the witnesses and studied the doctors' findings. The statement, signed by the chancellor, gave these conclusions:

• The Host from which the sample was taken was the same Host moved to the rectory chapel.
• Third party intervention was not found.
• The two pathologists jointly reported that the sample looks like heart muscle tissue, the living tissue it most resembles.
• The files were sent to the Apostolic Nunciature in Warsaw.
• The event does not oppose the faith of the Church but confirms it. The Church believes that the words of consecration, by the power of the Holy Spirit, change the bread into the Body of Christ.
• It is a call to ministers to give Communion with faith and attention, and to the faithful to receive with reverence.

Read this carefully. The statement does not use the formula "this is a miracle". Some later articles say that the commission confirmed a supernatural character. The English text of the statement does not say this in those words. A 2026 article in the Polish weekly Niedziela says the event was approved at diocesan level. The church speaks of a "Eucharistic event".

Who: Prof. Maria Elżbieta Sobaniec-Łotowska and Prof. Stanisław Sulkowski, pathologists at the Medical University of Białystok. Who asked: the Archbishop. When: the sample was taken on 7 January 2009, and the work ended later that month.

How: according to later accounts, by light microscope and transmission electron microscope. An exhibition panel on Eucharistic miracles says that Prof. Sulkowski did not know the sample came from a Host. It also says that the two worked independently and agreed.

What: the curia's words are that the sample looks like heart muscle tissue. Later accounts by the doctors and their supporters go further. They speak of human heart tissue from a living person near death, with fibres of the tissue woven into the bread. A 2018 article in the Polish journal Teologia i Człowiek, with both pathologists among the authors, repeats this. It should be said plainly that the curia's statement is more careful than these later words.

Published? The original report was not published in an international scientific journal, as far as could be found. No DNA test has been reported.

• The university. On 30 October 2009 the Polish science news service reported that the Medical University of Białystok distanced itself from the results. Its spokesman, Prof. Lech Chyczewski, head of the department, said the work was done "quietly", outside official channels, and was never ordered or registered by the university. He did not reject the diagnosis outright, but he said the doctors had an emotional approach to faith, and that pathology cannot say whose tissue it is.
• Skeletal or heart muscle. The daily Rzeczpospolita (27 October 2009) reported Prof. Chyczewski's view that, after talking with Prof. Sulkowski, the tissue seemed more like skeletal than heart muscle. Prof. Sulkowski answered that no one should give such an opinion without examining it. Prof. Sobaniec-Łotowska said no one had told her of any doubts. The pathologists protested publicly against what they called false claims by people who had never seen the material.
• No DNA test. Prof. Chyczewski proposed molecular tests, and Prof. Karol Śliwka's forensic department in Bydgoszcz offered to do them. The Archbishop declined. By one report he said that such matter, if held to be the Body of Christ, cannot be cut and tested. A priest and theologian, Fr Prof. Marian Rusecki, said the tests should have gone on, to answer charges of manipulation.
• A natural cause. Dr Paweł Grzesiowski proposed the bacterium Serratia marcescens, which makes a red pigment and grows on bread. No test for it on this Host has been reported. Against this, the pathologists said the material they saw was not a bacterium.
• A 2024 experiment. Kelly Kearse and Frank Ligaj of Knoxville Catholic High School in the United States published a paper in the Journal of Forensic Science and Research. They put unconsecrated wafers in water, and about 15 per cent grew red areas, caused by a fungus, Epicoccum. They point out that the water at Sokółka stayed clear, which they find odd if blood were involved. They did not test the Sokółka Host. They say plainly that they are not calling Eucharistic miracles false, and that faith and science need not conflict.
• A 2025 study. Tomasz Grzybowski and colleagues (Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology) tested 25 cases of changed Hosts from Poland, Germany, the United States and South Africa, all at the request of Church officials. They do not name the cases, so we cannot say whether Sokółka is among them. They found no proof of human blood in any case, and no human material beyond single skin cells and blood cells, likely stray contamination. They found pigment-making microbes in several. In two cases they could not explain structures resembling heart muscle, and left them open. They also criticise the easy line "There are no miracles, there are Serratia marcescens" as an unproven belief, and say the decision about any sign belongs to the Church's authorities and not to them.
• The authorities. A rationalist association asked for a criminal inquiry, including whether human remains were involved. The prosecutor in Sokółka closed the matter, as no evidence of a crime was found.