Hubert Schiffer

Father Hubert Schiffer, born in Germany in 1915, was one of eight Jesuits who survived the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. He was only eight blocks away from ground zero when the explosion occurred. According to the account of Jesuit priest Fr. John Seimes, who had been on the outskirts of the city:

Another account adds that he had just finished saying Mass, and had gone to eat breakfast when the bomb hit:

He looked around, and there were no buildings left except for the church house.

Everyone else within a radius of roughly 1.5 Kilometres was reportedly killed instantly, and those outside the range died of radiation within days. However, the only physical harm to Fr. Shiffer was that he could feel a few pieces of glass in the back of his neck. After the Surrender of Japan, the American army doctors explained to him that his body would begin to deteriorate because of the radiation. To the doctors' amazement, Fr. Schiffer's body appeared to contain no elevated radiation or ill-effects from the bomb. In fact, he lived for another 33 years in good health, and was present at the Eucharistic Congress held in Philadelphia in 1976. At that time, all eight members of the Jesuit community from Hiroshima were still alive.

The miracle is similar to that reported in Nagasaki, where a Franciscan friary built by St. Maximilian Kolbe also went unaffected. Since the bombs were dropped, the priests have been examined over 200 times by scientists. Each time the priests repeated the same explanation for their survival:

External links

* [http://holysouls.com/sar/rosarymiracle.htm The Rosary Miracle]
* [http://www.pdtsigns.com/hirosh.html An Analysis of the Hiroshima Miracle]
* [http://www.sxws.com/charis/mary25.htm How Fables Become 'Facts']