"Nun's Body Exhumed In Missouri Reveals No Decay After Years Of Burial, Reports US News"

Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster’s exhumed body displayed no signs of decomposition (Picture: Catholic News Agency)

Nuns who dug up a sister’s remains nearly four years after she was buried found what they believe is a miracle – and hundreds are part of a pilgrimage to see it with their own eyes.

Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster’s exhumed body showed no signs of decay when Benedictine nuns in the rural Missouri town of Gower worked to move her body to a final resting place.

‘A miracle in Missouri?’ states a story by Catholic News Agency on Monday.

Lancaster’s sisters were expected to find bones in her wooden coffin. But her body appeared to be intact – despite not being embalmed and that the coffin had a crack that enabled moisture and dirt to enter.

Hundreds of pilgrims have descended on a Benedictine monastery for religious sisters in rural Missouri in recent days after news began to spread on social media last week that the recently exhumed remains of the foundress appear to be incorrupt (Picture: KCTV)

‘I thought I saw a completely full, intact foot and I said, “I didn’t just see that,” so I looked again more carefully,’ Mother Cecilia, the current abbess off the community, told Eternal World Television Network’s ACI Group on Saturday.

The abbess said she screamed, ‘I see her foot!’ and that her sisters 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.’

Lancaster founded the Benedictine Sisters of Mary, Queen of the Apostles, when she was 70 years old in 1995. She died on May 29, 2019, aged 95.

Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster’s former grave at the monastery for the Benedictine Sisters of Mary, Queen of the Apostles, in Gower, Missouri (Picture: Catholic News Agency)

It has long been customary to move the remains of founders to the inside of their monastery chapel, and that is what her sisters were doing.

‘We think she is the first African American woman to be found incorrupt,’ said Mother Cecilia.

Bishop James Johnston, of the Diocese of Kansas City-St Joseph, had addressed the unusual occurrence in Gower

‘The condition of the remains of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster has understandably generated widespread interest and raised important questions,’ stated the bishop.