60 Minutes - 08/24/2025: Evidence, The Future of Warfare, Lourdes

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Evidence has emerged that could change our understanding of the 9/11 terrorist attacks more than two decades ago. A 60 Minutes investigation has found that crucial information, initially turned over to the FBI shortly after the attacks, was never shared with the bureau’s own field agents or senior intelligence officials. Correspondent Cecilia Vega reports on this evidence, which has come to light amid a lawsuit against the Saudi government filed by families of the nearly 3,000 victims and includes a video of a Saudi national filming the U.S. Capitol, thought to be al-Qaeda’s fourth target. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi travels to Costa Mesa, Calif., to meet with Palmer Luckey, the 32-year-old tech billionaire who founded Anduril, a defense products company that makes autonomous weapons, some already in use by the U.S. military and in the war in Ukraine. Alfonsi explores the artificial intelligence that powers Anduril’s systems and reports on some of the company’s most advanced weapons, including a submarine that operates without sailors. While several international groups refer to lethal autonomous weapons as “killer robots,” Luckey says that these innovations represent the future of warfare. Correspondent Bill Whitaker reports from the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, a Marian shrine in Southern France and the site of 72 medical miracles recognized by the Catholic Church. 60 Minutes goes inside the Lourdes Office of Medical Observations, where world-renowned doctors and researchers conduct decade-long investigations into the dozens of claims of miraculous cures made every year. They determine which cases can be medically explained and which cannot. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Now streaming. When people go missing, I get hired to help find them. When lives are on the line. Coulter, please find my daughter. He's the man for the job. I'm gonna do everything you can. Don't miss a moment. Coulter's in trouble, I can feel it.

Of TV's number one show. These people are dangerous. I'm doing this alone. Not at all. Every Batman gotta have their robin. Coulter! Justin Hartley stars. I made a promise.

I would never stop looking. In Tracker. All episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus and returning CBS Fall. Now streaming. Everyone who comes into this clinic is a mystery. We don't know what we're looking for. Their bodies are the scene of the crime.

Their symptoms in history are clues. You saved her life. We're doctors and we're detectives. I kind of love it if I'm being honest. Solve the puzzle. Save the patient. Watson. All episodes. Now streaming. On Paramount Plus. This video of a Saudi national filming the U.S. Capitol.

Its security posts and nearby landmarks, was taken in the summer of 1999 and turned over to the FBI after 9-11. But it was never shared with the Bureau's own field agents or top intelligence officials. A lot of people will see this video for the first time. and think, how is it remotely possible that it's just coming to light now? Could it really have been sitting in a evidence locker room all of these years? Palmer Lucky may not look like your typical defense industry executive, but the 32-year-old billionaire is the founder of Andrel,

whose line of autonomous weapons is powered by artificial intelligence. It's a scary idea to some people. It's a scary idea, but, I mean, that's the world. we live in. I'd say it's a lot scarier, for example, to imagine a weapon system that doesn't have any level of intelligence at all. Do you believe in miracles? Well, 60 minutes traveled to the sanctuary of Our Lady of Lords in southern France, where 72 medical miracles have been recognized by the Catholic Church over the last 163 years. And tonight, you'll hear a miracle story. And, for you'll hear a miracle story.

from the renowned doctors and researchers who investigated it. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alphonsey. I'm John Wortham. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Scott Pelly.

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Pick any two breakfast items for $4. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small hot coffee, and more. Limited time only at participating Wendy's Taxes Extra. Evidence has emerged that could change our understanding of the 9-11 terrorist attacks nearly 24 years ago. The evidence was turned over to the FBI in the weeks after 9-11, but as we first reported in April, it was never shared with the Bureau's own field agents or top intelligence officials.

Why, after all these years, did this crucial information just surface? The evidence came to light as part of a long-running lawsuit against the Saudi government by the families of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks. And it includes a chilling video of a Saudi national filming the U.S. Capitol. A voice on the video says in Arabic, I am transmitting these scenes to you from the heart of the American capital, Washington. This video recorded in the summer of 1999 was unscited. sealed in federal court last year as part of the 9-11 family's lawsuit accusing Saudi Arabia

of providing crucial support to the hijackers. Exhibit A in their case, the man who made the video, Omar al-Bayumi, who asked a bystander to film him in front of the capital. The FBI says Bayumi was living in the United States on a student visa and being paid by a Saudi aviation company in California, despite not showing up for classes or. or work. Investigators say, in fact, Bayoumi was an operative of the Saudi intelligence service and had close ties to two of the hijackers. The video was filmed over several days. Bayoumi recorded entrances and exits of the Capitol, security posts, a model of the building, and nearby landmarks.

Bayoumi points out the Washington Monument and says, over there and report to you in detail what is there. He also notes the airport is not far away. What I see Bayoumi doing is going out and making a detailed video record of the Capitol from all its sides and then conducting that 360-degree panoramic view. Richard Lambert is a retired FBI supervisor who led the initial 9-11 investigation in San Diego, where Bayoumi and the two hijackers lived prior to the attacks. He's now a consultant on the case filed by the 9-11 families. If you've ever flown into Washington, D.C., one of the first things you see on the horizon is the Washington Monument.

So if you know where your other targets are, it helps guide you to your intended target. Federal investigators believe the hijackers on Flight 93, which crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, planned to hit the U.S. Capitol as their likely target. In the video, Bayoumi references a, quote, plan. You said that in the plan. What plan? What do you think he's talking about? I think he's talking to the Al-Qaeda planners

who tasked him to take the pre-operational surveillance video of the intended target. So this video is taken in late June and early July of 1999. What does that timing tell you? Well, that means it was taken within 90 days of the time when senior al-Qaeda planners reached the decision that the capital would be a target of the 9-11 attacks. That's when Osama bin Laden decided to approve the so-called planes operation, proposed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9-11. During a raid on Bayumi's UK apartment, about 10 days after the attacks, British police decided, discovered the Capitol video, along with about 80 other tapes, and a trove of documents now

being used as evidence in the family's lawsuit. This internal FBI report dated October 11, 2001, shows that copies of all recovered exhibits were sent to FBI New York via Federal Express, but the Capitol video never made it to the San Diego Field Office. I had not seen that video. Retired FBI special agent Danny Gonzalez, one of the lead 9-11 investigators in San Diego, says he never knew about the video during the 15 years he worked on the case. He is also a consultant for the 9-11 family's lawsuit. Not only did I not know, all of the case agents in San Diego didn't know, and the case agents in New York didn't know.

And we're talking about the joint terrorism task forces that not only have FBI, but we have other state, local, and federal agencies. They didn't know either. How's that possible? I don't have that answer, and that angers me. When I saw that video, I knew exactly what it was. Did you need this information to do your job? Absolutely.

He believes he could have used the Capitol video to build a case against Bayoumi. I would have taken it to the United States Attorney's Office, who was requesting from us, the FBI, anything that we had they wanted to look at. Meaning what? That they would have filed charges, that they would have indicted? What would your hope in that be? It was a terror investigation, but it was also a mass murder.

In your view, this video was so significant that it should have gone all the way to the top to the White House. I think it should have because it's the Capitol building. Gina Bennett was a senior counterterrorism analyst at the CIA for 20 years. In the aftermath of 9-11, we were briefing the president and the National Security Council. I didn't expect that this was a one and done. We expected al-Qaeda to continue to try. So resources were going entirely to trying to undermine any additional plotting. The Saudi government says this is a tourist video that there's nothing to see here.

You don't buy that? No, I don't. Who does a tourist video that is reporting back on this is where that building is, and here's where the security guards are? Now retired, she was the first person in the U.S. government to warn of the dangers of a global jihadist movement led by Osama bin Laden. Bennett has no involvement with the 9-11 family's lawsuit and says she, too, was unaware of the video's existence until we asked her to evaluate it. As we discovered, she was not the only one at the CIA in the dark. George Tenet, the CIA director at the time, says he wasn't aware of the video.

Same for Michael Morel, the president's daily intelligence briefer at the time. Does it surprise you that they didn't know about this? It does surprise me, again, because we're talking about the U.S. Capitol, and in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, Bayoumi was a suspect. A lot of people will see this video for the first time and think, how is it remotely possible that it's just coming to light now? Could it really have been sitting in a evidence locker room all of these years? It seems like a pretty epic failure. I think it's a matter of, did they lose the evidence? had they filed it away in a way that it would not have seemed relevant.

That I can see. As it turns out, there was more evidence. Specifically, this airplane sketch and math formula that was also seized from Bayumi's UK apartment and turned over to the FBI in 2001. It was stashed away for more than a decade until Danny Gonzalez in 2012 got a phone call out of the blue from an FBI evidence technician in Washington.

What did they tell you? They told me that they had these boxes with the name of Omar Albayumi written on it, and they were sitting in a warehouse in Washington, D.C., and they were going to relocate these boxes or destroy these boxes, and they wanted to know if I wanted them, and I said absolutely. But as one of the lead investigators into these attacks, did you have any idea that this sketch had even existed

before you got that phone call? No, I didn't. He had aviation and aerospace experts analyzed the equation for the FBI. Their conclusion, a pilot could use it to calculate the rate of dissent to hit a target on the horizon. In 2004, the 9-11 commission produced what was at the time considered the definitive account of the attacks. Its executive director, Philip Zellico, told us he was also unaware of it during his investigation. So were former senior U.S. intelligence officials we spoke to. As for Bayumi, who

who was never charged with the crime and move back to Saudi Arabia after 9-11, he was asked about the sketch as part of the lawsuit in a 2021 deposition. He confirmed the sketch was his, but said he remembered little else about it, including his handwritten notes that say, height of the plane from the earth in mile and distance from the plane to horizon. When pressed about it, he came up with a far-fetched explanation. Perhaps this was an equation that we studied before in high school and I was trying to remember whether I'm going to be able to figure out and solve it or not.

And what is an equation for? I didn't know. It just matter, just equation. There's no proof that Bayeumi shared the equation with any of the hijackers. What we do know is that he met the first two to arrive in the U.S. nearly two years before 9-11. Bayoumi claims he. met them in a chance encounter at a restaurant here on Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles.

He then helped them move to San Diego, finding them a place to live in his own apartment complex, co-signing the lease and helping them open a bank account. He even threw a party, which he also videotaped, capturing one of the hijackers on camera. He then introduced them to others who helped them obtain government IDs and enroll in English classes and flight schools. Bayoumi and the Saudi government say his actions were innocent, the result of a remarkable

series of coincidences. Isn't it all possible in your mind that Bayoumi wasn't actually involved in all of this is pure coincidence as the Saudis claim? No, I don't believe that for a second. Why not? Could have been a guy who just wanted to help his brothers

adjust to a life in a new country? Who else did he help besides those two hijackers? I don't know of any, and I couldn't find any. Omar al-Bayumi is living as a free man in Saudi Arabia. What do you think about that? Awful. Awful. He should be here under the court system.

The 9-11 Commission concluded that Bayoumi was, quote, an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement with Islamist extremists. Does that still hold? I think the 9-11 Commission is just not fully informed. It's not their fault, but it's not fully informed. So all the evidence you've seen, the material support, the capital video, the sketch, your conclusion is what? My conclusion is that Bayoumi was an al-Qaeda facilitator. He had sympathies with al-Qaeda, I mean ideologically, and that he provided substantial support to these two individuals, these two hijackers, without which they may very well have been caught.

Menet says Bayoumi was indispensable to the success of the hijackers' plot because they spoke no English, had little formal education, and no prior exposure to life in the West. I don't see Al-Qaeda as meticulous as it was with its planning, just throwing two operatives that are so instrumental to the success of this operation into a massive city without a soft landing, without a network there to catch them. She says the new evidence raises a lot of important questions.

Like what? Who else? Were there other networks? Are any of those individuals still active here or elsewhere in the world? Is there any other evidence that's sitting in a box somewhere or locked up and work from that new information to learn, to learn what you got, wrong to learn how to not get it wrong again? Following our report, Senators Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut and John Cornyn, Republican

of Texas, sent a letter to the director of the FBI, wanting to know why the Bureau failed to turn over what they call critical evidence to the 9-11 Commission and the CIA in the wake of the 9-11 attacks. The FBI has yet to respond. It replied to our request for comment on our report by saying only that it would not discuss ongoing litigation. As for the Saudi government, it has filed a motion in federal court to dismiss the 9-11 family's lawsuit, saying neither the kingdom nor Omar al-Bayumi had anything to do with the attacks. The judge overseeing the case is expected to rule on the motion soon.

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Save the patient. Watson. All episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus. Over the last decade, a new breed of tech billionaires has positioned them not merely as entrepreneurs, but as visionary saviors who believe technology can transform the world. Tonight, we will introduce you to one of them. His name is Palmer Lucky, and he's the founder of Andrel, a California Defense Products

Company. Lucky says, for too long, the U.S. military has relied on overpriced and outdated technology. He argues a Tesla has better AI than any U.S. aircraft, and a R.S. And a Rumba vacuum has better autonomy than most of the Pentagon's weapons systems. So, Andrel is making a line of autonomous weapons that operate using artificial intelligence, no human required. Some international groups have called those types of weapons killer robots. But as Sharon Alphonsey first reported earlier this year, Palmer Lucky says it is the future of warfare. I've always said that we need to transition from being the world police to being the world gun store.

Do we want to be the world's gun store? I think so. I think we have to. Says the guy who sells weapons. See, I agree. It sounds self-fulfilling. But yet, remember, I also got into this industry because I believe that. Palmer Lucky isn't your typical defense industry executive. His daily uniform, flip-flops in a Hawaiian shirt, is more suited for Margaritaville than the military. The 32-year-old billionaire is the founder of Andrel, whose line of American-made autonomous weapons

looks like it came straight out of a sci-fi movie, and whose slick marketing videos wouldn't be out of place in one. There's the Roadrunner, a twin turbo-jet-powered drone interceptor that can take off, identify, and strike. If it doesn't find a target, it can land and try again. Andrel also makes headsets, which allow soldiers to see 360 degrees in combat. And there's this. It's an electromagnetic warfare system that can be programmed to jam enemy systems, knocking

out drone swarms. It's not some futuristic fantasy. Andral systems are already being used by the U.S. military and in the war in Ukraine. We shouldn't be sending our people to stand in other countries, putting our men and and women, our sons and daughters, at risk for the sovereignty of other nations. So you'd rather have an American-made product in their hands than our soldiers over there? Absolutely, every time. And I think that that's one of the reasons that autonomy is so powerful.

Right now, there's so many weapon systems that require Manning. You know, if I can have one guy commanding controlling 100 aircraft, that's a lot easier than having to have a pilot in every single one, and it puts a lot fewer American lives at risk. To be clear, autonomy does not mean remote controlled. Once an autonomous weapon is programmed and given a task, it can use artificial intelligence for surveillance or to identify, select, and engage targets.

No operator needed. It's a scary idea to some people. It's a scary idea, but that's the world we live in. I'd say it's a lot scarier, for example, to imagine a weapon system that doesn't have any level of intelligence at all. There's no moral high ground to making a landmine that can't tell the difference between a school bus full of children in Russian armor. It's not a question between smart weapons and no weapons. It's a question being smart weapons and dumb weapons.

Lucky showed us how those so-called smart weapons can be synchronized on Andrew's AI platform. It's called lattice. Latus collects data from various sensors and sources, including satellites, drones, radar, and cameras. radar and cameras, allowing, he says, the AI to analyze move assets and execute missions faster than a human. If you're having to require the human operator to actually map every single action and say, hey, do this, if that, then this, it would take so long to manage it that you would be better off just remotely piloting it.

It's the AI on board all these weapons that makes it possible to make it so easy. There are lots of people who go, oh, AI, I don't know. I don't trust it. It's going to go rogue. I would say that it is something to be aware of, but in the grand scheme of things, things to be afraid of, there's things that I'm much more terrified of. And I'm a lot more worried about evil people with mediocre advances in technology than AI deciding that it's going to wipe us all out. Lucky says all Angel's weapons have a kill switch that allow a human operator to intervene if needed.

But the Secretary General of the United Nations has called lethal autonomous weapons, quote, politically unacceptable and morally repugnant. When people say to you, look, it's evil. How do you respond to that? I usually don't bother because, if I am going to argue with them, I usually poke it, I'm like, okay, so do you think that NATO should be armed with squirt guns or slingshots? How about sternly worded letters? Would you like that? Would you like it if NATO just, they just have a bunch of guys sitting. at typewriters, a thousand monkeys, writing letters to Vladimir Putin, begging him to not invade Ukraine. Our entire society exists because of a credible backstop of violence threatened by the United States and our allies all over the world. And thank goodness for it. It might sound flip, but part of Palmer Lucky's philosophy is that autonomous weapons ultimately

promote peace by scaring adversaries away. My position has been that the United States needs to arm our allies and partners around the world so that they can be prickly porcupines that nobody wants to step on. Nobody wants to bite them. In your mind, is it enough just to have all these things as deterrence? Or do they have to be deployed and used? They have to believe that you can use them. By the end of this year, Andrews says it will have secured more than $6 billion in government contracts worldwide. When you first came into this space and you're a tech guy in a Hawaiian shirt and you're walking into the Pentagon, maybe in flip-flops. I don't know. Were you welcomed with open arms? There were a very small number of people who welcomed me with open arms, and everyone

else thought that I was nuts. Nuts, because there hasn't been a new company in the defense industry in a significant way since the end of the Cold War. For decades, five defense contractors called the Primes have dominated the industry. Typically, the Primes present an idea to the Pentagon. If the Pentagon buys it, the government pays for the company to develop it, even if it's late or goes over budget. Lucky started Andrel to flip that procurement structure on its head. The idea behind Anneral was to build not a defense contractor, but a defense product company. What's the difference? Contractors in general are paid to do work, whether or not it succeeds. A product company has a very different mentality. You're putting in your own money, you're putting in your

own time. My vision was to build a company that would show up not with a PowerPoint describing how taxpayers are going to pay all my bills, but with a working product where all the risk has been baked out. It will work for enough things that you can save our country hundreds of billions of dollars a year. It may not surprise you that Palmer Lucky's father was a car salesman. His mother took on the role of homeschooling him and his three sisters. Lucky says he was fascinated by electronics and spent a lot of time tinkering in his parents' garage in Long Beach, California. By age 19, his tinkering turned into Oculus, the virtual reality company. And at 21, Palmer Lucky fulfilled every young founder's dream when he sold Oculus to Facebook

for $2 billion. The Wonder Kid graced the covers of magazines, but two years later, he was fired from Facebook. Why did you get fired? Well, you know, everyone's got a different story. But it boils down to I gave $9,000 to a political group that was for Donald Trump and against Hillary Clinton to be a Trump supporter in 2016. This was at the height of the election insanity and derangement in Silicon Valley. And so I think that a lot of people thought back then that you could just fire a Trump supporter.

Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has denied that Lucky was fired for his political views. What do you think now when you see those tech leaders, Mark Zuckerberg, lined up behind President Trump now at his inauguration? I am inclined to let every single one of them get away with it. Look. What do you mean get away with it? Coming around to a point of view that is more aligned with the American people broadly, I think is good for the country.

I think it is not good for you to have techno-corpo elites that are radically out of step with where the American people are. In 2017, Lucky says he left Silicon Valley with hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank and a chip on his shoulder. I was fired at the height of my career. My gears were ground, and I really wanted to prove that I was somebody, that I was not a one-hit wonder, and that I still had it in me to do big things. He says he thought about starting companies to combat obesity or fix the prison system,

but ultimately decided to break in to the defense industry. Have you run into any people who don't take you seriously because you were never in the military? I don't think so. I think I owe that to the James Bond franchise. Everyone in the military has seen James Bond movies and they all like you, right? I'm the wacky gadget man. I'm the guy who types on the computer and pushes up my glasses and then gives them a strange thing to help them accomplish their mission. And this is his laboratory, Andrew's 640,000 square foot head headquarters in Costa Mesa, California.

It's a mix of high-tech carpentry and robotic engineering. A sign on the floor pokes fun at the boss's shoe choice. But Lucky wanted to show us something off campus. We hopped in his 1985 Humvee. The billionaire told us he also owns a decommissioned Black Hawk helicopter, a 48 crew submarine, and a Navy speedboat. In Dana Point, we took a ride 15 minutes off the coast to see the largest weapon in Andrews Arsenal, this submarine. It's called the DiveXL.

It's about the size of a school bus and works autonomously. It's not remote controlled by this computer. It's doing it on the brain, on the submarine itself. So if I told you to go off and perform some mission, it's months long, like go to this target, listen for this particular signature. And if you see this signature run, if you see this one, that was a hide. If you see this one, follow it, it can do that all on its own without being detected, without communicating with it. Andrews says the dive XL can travel a thousand miles fully submerged. Australia has already invested $58 million in the subs to help defend its seas from China.

But Andrews' most anticipated weapon was closely guarded until May. Hidden inside this hangar. Andrew's unmanned fighter jet called Fury. There is no cockpit or stick or rudder because there's no pilot. The idea is that you're building a robotic fighter jet that is flying with manned fighters and is doing what you ask it to do, recommending things that be done, taking risks that you don't want human pilots to take. Fury represents a big turning point for the company.

Andrew was viewed by some inside the defense industry as a tech bro startup until it beat out several of the prime defense contractors to make an unmanned fighter jet for the Air Force. Fury is scheduled to take its first test flight this summer. If selected by the Pentagon, it, like all Andrel products, will be produced in the U.S. The war games say we're going to run out of munitions in eight days in a fight with China.

If we have to fight Iran and China and Russia all at the same time, We are screwed. If we go to war, right? Your version of what Anderil's place is in a conflict. Yep. How do you view it? I think what we're going to be doing is, first, connecting a lot of these systems that otherwise would not have been talking to one another. We're going to be making large numbers of cruise missiles, large numbers of fighter jets,

large numbers of surface and subsurface systems. I guess I would hope that Anderil is making most of the stuff that's being used on day 9, day 10, day 11, day 100. I think a lot of that is going to be coming out of our factories after everything else is run dry. Hungry now. Now. What about now? Whenever it hits you, wherever you are, grab an O. Henry bar to satisfy your hunger. With its delicious combination of big, crunchy.

salty peanuts covered in creamy caramel and chewy fudge with a chocolatey coating. Swing by a gas station and get an O'Henry today. Oh, hungry, oh Henry. After a gruesome pandemic and decades of increasing political partisanship, you'd be forgiven for giving up on the idea of miracles. But tonight, we'll take you to a place that's known for them. The sanctuary of Our Lady of Lords in southern France is the site of 72 medical miracles recognized by the Catholic Church.

The Marian shrine is famous to the faithful, but less well known is the Lord's Office of Medical Observations. As we first reported in 2022, that's where world-renowned doctors and researchers conduct decade-long investigations into the countless claims of cures reported over the years. They determine which cases can be medically explained and which cannot. It's those church officials might call a miracle. For the doctors, it's a lesson in the limits of medicine. For the devout, its divine intervention.

A small French town of lords tucked in the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains draws more than three million pilgrims every year, more than travel to Mecca or Jerusalem. And almost everyone you meet will tell you they've heard stories of miracles here. But we heard none more inspiring than that of Sister Bernadette Morio. I really tried everything I could.

But this is something that cannot be healed. What was your prognosis? Full total paralysis. The prognosis was really dark. Strolling with 83-year-old Sister Morillo through the chapel grounds in Brel France, we found it hard to believe that for half her life, she suffered from cauda equina,

a disorder of the nerves and lower spine. You wore this all the time. Her left foot, she said, was twisted and limp. To walk at all, she needed this back and leg brace, an implant to dull nerve pain and massive doses of morphine. She told us she had exhausted all treatment options, so in 2008, her doctor convinced her to make a pilgrimage to Lourdes.

Did you believe in miracles at the time? I always believed in miracles, but not for me. So why did you decide to go? Well, I didn't go there for a miracle. I just went there to pray with others. Lourd is a place where the smallest people, all the sickest, all the poorest, they come first. The sickest, the poorest, the diseased and debilitated, bearing wounds visible and hidden come from all over the world, seeking to be healed by the shrine's natural spring waters

and the power of prayer. And so I've asked for complete healing or a super long remission. This was Kim Halpin's first pilgrimage. She was diagnosed with incurable blood cancer in 2021 and came all the way from Kansas to cleanse herself in the waters of lords. Are you expecting to be healed? Not necessarily. Ask for as much as I want, and maybe I will be blessed with part of it, which will be okay.

Halpin was aided by her son, Sean. We couldn't help but notice there are as many volunteers as sick here. The Our Lady of Lord's hospitality, North American volunteers, helped Jamie Jensen travel from Minnesota for his 18th visit. Even though the camera sees that I have a condition and a chair, when I'm here, I don't have a condition. Jensen's condition is cerebral palsy. All those trips to Lourdes haven't given him the physical miracle he wants.

but maybe, he says, he got the miracle he needed. I was very bitter, very angry with myself. Did coming to Lord's change your heart? Very much. Do you consider that a miracle? I do because there's a peace within myself. Holy Mary, Mother of God, prayers. Stories of inner peace and acceptance don't

meet the bar for the Office of Medical Observations, and with just 72 medical miracles recognized over the last 163 years, you'd have better odds playing the lotto. Yet thousands of faithful line up at the baths and at this grotto where the first miracle is said to have occurred. The sanctuary, with its three basilicas and 25 chapels, is laid out like a grand theater complex, its many stages offering dozens of highest performances throughout the day. The finale? A candle-lit procession every night. There would be none of this were it not for Saint Bernadette. According to Catholic lore, in 1858, a mysterious woman appeared in this grotto.

to Bernadette Subruh, a 14-year-old peasant girl. Jean-Marc Bica, the Bishop of Lords, says the woman spoke with Subaru several times over five months. And once the 25th of March, day of the Annunciation, she said, I am the Immaculate Conception. When word got out the Immaculate Conception, the Virgin Mary, had appeared in Lords, people flocked to this grotto, and within days started making claims of miracle cures,

the ability to walk, restored sight. Worried about fueling mass hysteria, the church set up the Office of Medical Observations in 1883 to investigate the claims. Which brings us back to the other Bernadette in our story. In 2008, Sister Morillo found herself in a wheelchair, in a procession at Lord's, seeking the intervention of St. Bernadette. And I really had that feeling that the Lord was walking with us. And I heard him giving me these words.

I see your suffering and that of your sick brothers and sisters. Just give me everything. You heard the voice of Jesus. Yes, I heard this in a voice. I can't really tell you whose voice it was. It was like a spiritual experience. She said she returned home rejuvenated spiritually, but physically she felt worse.

After three days in excruciating pain, she told us she suddenly found the strength to walk to the chapel and pray. Then I felt some kind of heat coming into my body. I felt relaxed, but I didn't really know what that was meaning. And in my room, I heard this in a voice again telling me, take all your braces off.

I didn't think twice, and I started taking my foot brace off. And my foot, that used to be crooked, was straight. And I could actually put it on the ground without feeling any pain. All of a sudden, your foot was straight. Yes, like that, like the way it is just now. And so I kept going. She says she took off the braces and stopped the morphine all at once. Did this make sense to you?

No, I knew it was impossible. She came to my door with her doctor and she said, last year I came to Lourdes and pilgrimage, and three days after I got back home, I was cured. Dr. Alessandro de Franchici's hears stories like that all the time. As the president and residing physician at the Lord's Office of Medical Observations, the former pediatrician's job is to determine whether there is more to those stories by applying seven strict criteria established by the church. And we're looking for a diagnosis, and if that diagnosis is a diagnosis, is a diagnosis.

of a severe disease with a severe prognosis. And then we want to make sure that that person is a person that was cured in a way that, one would say, suddenly, in an instantaneous way, in a complete way, and in a way lasting in time. And my seventh criteria that has to match is there must be no possible explanation to that cure. Sister Benedict Morio. Here on the end.

He showed us the archives, which hold thousands of recordings. of recorded claims of cures. This feels like it's almost 10 pounds. Dr. D. Franchiches, a practicing Catholic, told us what separates the more than 7,000 claims of cures from the 72, the church calls miracles, is an ungodly amount of medical documentation, and patients, like Sister Murillo,

willing to put their lives under a microscope. We center to different neurologists, we center to different rheumatologists, because of the different specific case of her disease. We asked to repeat twice all sorts of imagery, electrophysiology. We did all day we were doing medicine to be absolutely sure of her diagnosis, and it was.

But he wanted to confirm something else. I was asked to meet with two psychiatrists in Paris. They wanted to know if I was lying. If I had already had any hallucinations. If I had levitated, I remember answering, No, doctor, I never left the ground floor. Satisfied, Dr. D. Franchises, sent Sister Morio's case to a group of 33 doctors and professors

called the International Medical Committee of Lords. Its job is to determine whether a cure is what they consider medically unexplained. We're not trying to reel something in or real something out. We're just trying to be objective. You could call them the devil's advocates. Dr. Michael Moran, a surgical oncologist, Dr. Yasek Mastwin, a professor of urology at Johns Hopkins,

and Dr. Kieran Moriarty, a renowned addiction specialist, scrutinized Sister Moriou's case. Is there anything that could have caused her response? No treatment would be that effective. that quickly. Does religion enter into your medical conversation? We cannot separate ourselves as people who have been deeply immersed in the culture and the traditions of lords and the church, but make no mistake, we're just as technical as a forensic pathologist when it comes to looking at the technical details of the case. After eight years of investigation, the committee

determined that Sister Morillo's case was medically unexplained. So when you do a survey, investigation of Sister Bernadette's or any of the other cures, this is done on a purely medical basis, something that could be peer-reviewed by other physicians outside of... Not could, that is. They are peer-reviewed. I have estimated... I can affirm with absolute certainty that the case of Sister Benedict had been reviewed, read, expertise by at least 300 physicians. 300 physicians. And there, if tomorrow morning any of our viewers is a doctor,

and one day he stops in southern France and comes to see me, and he wants to look into the file of Sister Benedet, I'll be delighted to show him, because we have everything is open and collegial and no secrets. The secret is the mystery of it all, and on that, the church gets the last word. In 2018, a decade after her cure, Sister Morio's case was declared the 70th miracle of lords. Declaring a miracle is saying God did something.

This is the miracle. And the doctors cannot go on that land, on that field. When I told people I was coming here, I got a lot of people who told me, oh, come on, there's got to be some explanation that we just don't know. don't know. What do you say to the skeptics? Come and see, be open, don't be narrow-minded. Be open to believe that the real world is wider than the visible one. It's been said about lords for those who believe no explanation is necessary.

For those who do not, no explanation is possible. is possible. I'm Cecilia Vega. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. Now streaming. When people go missing, I get hired to help find them.

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