The announcement was made by Bishop Zbigniew Kiernikowski of Legnica on April 17.

On Christmas Day 2013, a consecrated host fell to the floor, the bishop said.

It was picked up and placed in a container with water.

Soon after, red stains appeared on the host.

Then-bishop of Legnica, Bishop Stefan Cichy, created a commission to monitor the host.

In February 2014, a small fragment was placed on a corporal and underwent testing by various research institutes.

Tests were performed at the Department of Forensic Medicine in Wroclaw.

Another study was subsequently performed by the Department of Forensic Medicine of the Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, which concluded that "in the histopathological image, the fragments (of the host) were found containing the fragmented parts of the cross striated muscle".

"It is most similar to the heart muscle. Tests also determined the tissue to be of human origin, and found that it bore signs of distress."

Bishop Kiernikowski said that the host "has the hallmarks of a eucharistic miracle".

He explained that in January 2016 he presented the matter to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

In April, in accordance with the Holy See's recommendations, he asked parish priest Fr Andrzej Ziombrze "to prepare a suitable place for the relics so that the faithful could venerate it".

"I hope that this will serve to deepen the cult of the Eucharist and will have deep impact on the lives of people facing the host," the bishop added.

Sources

• Catholic News Agency
• Catholic Herald
• Image: Catholic News Agency

The article says a priest in the commercial centre of Buenos Aires was finishing distributing Communion at Mass in 1996 when a woman told him she had found a discarded host on a candleholder at the back of the church.

The priest placed the host in a container of water and put it in the tabernacle. A week later he discovered that the host had turned into a bloody substance.

According to the 2010 article by Father M. Piotrowski in Love One Another magazine, the priest informed Cardinal Bergoglio, who had the host professionally photographed.

For several years the host remained in secret in the tabernacle, then the cardinal decided to have it scientifically analysed in New York by a team of scientists who did not know its origin.

One of the scientists, Dr Frederic Zugiba, a cardiologist and forensic pathologist, determined that the substance was a fragment of heart muscle containing human DNA.

He said the presence of a large number of white blood cells indicated that the heart was alive when the sample was taken.

"What is more," he said, "these white blood cells had penetrated the tissue, which further indicates that the heart had been under severe stress, as if the owner had been beaten severely about the chest."

The tests were witnessed by two Australians, journalist Mike Willesee and lawyer Ron Tesoriero.

Willesee, formerly a leading television journalist, had been brought back to his Catholic faith through filming a woman with stigmata and documenting Eucharistic miracles.

When Willesee told Dr Zugiba that the analysed sample came from a consecrated host, the doctor said: "How and why a consecrated host would change its character and become living human flesh and blood will remain an inexplicable mystery to science — a mystery totally beyond her competence."

Sources:

Love One Another

Milagro Eucaristico Buenos Aires Argentina (YouTube video)

The Conversion of Mike Willesee (ABC Compass)

Image: The Absolute Primacy of Christ