The Miracle Detective

The Rolling Stone reporter's "fascinating . . . globe-trotting, first-person spiritual odyssey" into the Catholic Church's investigations of reported miracles ( Seattle Post-Intelligencer).   In a tiny, dilapidated trailer in northeastern Oregon, a young woman saw a vision of the Virgin Mary in an ordinary landscape painting hanging on her bedroom wall. After some skepticism from the local parish, the matter was placed "under investigation" by the Catholic diocese. Investigative journalist and Rolling Stone contributor Randall Sullivan wanted to know how, exactly, one might conduct an official inquiry into such an incident. So began his eight year immersion into the world of "Miracle Detectives."   Sullivan set off to interview theologians, historians, and postulators from the Sacred Congregation of the Causes for Saints, men charged by the Vatican with testing the miraculous and judging the holy. Sullivan traveled from the Vatican to the village of Medjugorje, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where six visionaries had seen apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Then, on a more personal turn, he traveled to Scottsdale, Arizona, to visit the site of America's most controversial Virgin Mary sighting.   In prose that "often reads like a spiritual whodunit," The Miracle Detective takes you along Sullivan's eight-year investigation into apocalyptic prophesies, claims of revelation, and the search for a genuine, direct encounter between man and god ( Publishers Weekly, starred review).