60 Minutes - 12/18/2022: Convoy of Life, Litigation Funding, Lourdes

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

Scott Pelley reports from Ukraine, where more than 1,000 children are fighting cancer amid Russian attacks on hospitals and the power grid, putting their lives in immediate danger. A renowned American hospital and 21 countries have stepped in to help. Lesley Stahl reports on litigation funding, a relatively new, multi-billion-dollar industry where investors fund lawsuits in exchange for a slice of the award. It can be lucrative and can help level the playing field against big corporations with deep pockets. But it’s growing rapidly with little rules or oversight. Bill Whitaker reports from the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, a Marian shrine in southern France and the site of 70 medical miracles recognized by the Catholic Church. 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

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World Elite MasterCard, the card for living unlimited. Conditions apply to all benefits. Visit pcfinancial.ca for details. The joy in two-year-old Melania defied both cancer and war. But if she was to live, her family had to escape Ukraine. As missiles flew and doctors rushed the sickest children underground, a renowned American hospital and 21 countries improvised a flight to safety called the Convoy of Life. Litigation funding is a new type of investment that's become a multi-billion dollar industry. So these are all lawyers?

Indeed they are. In essence, investors bet on the outcome of large lawsuits the way traders bet on stocks. How often are you right? We're right about 90% of the time, and we're wrong about 10% of the time. The problem is this market is exploding with nearly no rules or oversight.

Do you believe in miracles? Well, 60 Minutes traveled to the sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in southern France, where 70 medical miracles have been recognized by the Catholic Church over 160 years. And tonight, you'll hear a miracle story and from the renowned doctors and researchers who investigated it. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper.

I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer.

So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Half the people of Ukraine are without power as low temperatures drop into the 20s. Russia is attacking civilian utilities with new waves of missiles in relentless assaults that the United Nations calls war crimes. Even before Russia's invasion last February,

more than a thousand Ukrainian children were already at war. They were fighting cancer. Russian attacks on hospitals put these fragile children in immediate danger. The First Lady of Ukraine asked the world for help, and a renowned American hospital and 21 countries answered the call. What followed was an improvised flight to safety that Ukraine called the Convoy of Life. The joy in two-year-old Melania defied both cancer and war.

But if she was to live, her family had to escape Ukraine. In February, her mother, Raksalana Semiraz, joined the jam of thousands of refugees struggling to cross into Poland. People were walking for miles, she told us, leaving their cars and belongings behind. They would only take with them their most precious ones, their children and pets. My heart was tearing apart. At the border, Roxolana's desperation rose with the temperature of Melania's cancer drug she was carrying.

It had to be refrigerated, but now they were trapped. After waiting in line at the border for over 24 hours, and it would get warmer during the day, I had no storage for the medication, and that's when I would become desperate. I didn't know what to do, how to have hope for the treatment of my child. Mothers across Ukraine were losing hope for their sick children. This was the scene in the capital Kyiv, outside the window of Okhmedet Children's Hospital. Dr. Lesya Lesitsiya told us, as the missiles flew, she rushed patients to the basement, many on chemotherapy. All of the patients were very sick, she told us.

Being moved to the basement definitely didn't do any good to their health. Dr. Lasitsia specializes in eye cancer, and in the treatment room, they displayed their rage. We are continuing to work despite the war, and we are going to win this war with Russian soldiers and kill cancer. Maybe they didn't need the sign.

Dr. Lasitsiya's look said it all. She told us, their lives depend on the hospital's supplies, such basic supplies as blood, for example. You can't delay an operation for an oncology patient for a week or two. You can't stop their treatment because timing is crucial. If you delay chemotherapy for two weeks, then you've lost some percentage of their chance to survive. The plight of desperate children touched the First Lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska.

We met in Kyiv in September. Elegant but weary, she seemed to bear the burden of 44 million Ukrainians. Kids with cancer were among the first to find her empathy. How did you work with other countries to evacuate these cancer patients? On my level, I can speak with the first ladies. For this convoy to work, they needed to set up the system in their countries, making sure that physicians and hospitals in their country would accept the children for treatment. Jill Biden responded for the United States, Brigitte Macron for France, Agata Kornhauser-Duda for Poland, and many others. They helped activate charities and medical societies. We had a big

team, everyone helping each other, and I am very grateful for that. That team likely saved the life of 17-year-old Yasmin Al-Khadi, a woman who impressed us with the creativity, personality, and love of life that are rich in those who know they can lose them. In February, doctors ordered her into chemotherapy to save her leg from bone cancer. But before that happened, Russia invaded. In March, Yasmin joined the Convoy of Life. Patients throughout Ukraine took buses and trains to a children's hospital in Lviv near Poland. After treatment there, the children and their families crossed the border where they boarded a medical train. The entire route could take days or weeks, but throughout the exhausting journey, at least Yasmin had her mother to lean on.

When we see you on the train, you are moving into the unknown in that moment. Yes, Yasmin told us. On that journey, we didn't know what country on the destination list we would end up in. You're on the train, hoping for the best, trusting doctors, hoping it will all be fine. But as you said, you're moving into the unknown. Where will I be tomorrow? The answer turned out to be this improvised triage center in Poland set up by an American hospital, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital of Memphis, Tennessee, named for the patron saint of hopeless causes.

There are patients who are more likely to get sick than others, and so we want to identify those patients so we can pay attention to them when they get here. That's Dr. Marta Salik of St. Jude, who helped organize the triage center in an empty hotel in the Polish countryside. The children would get escorted from Lviv to the border so that they didn't have to wait in line, and then they would cross the border into Poland.

The children who were sick would go straight to the hospital with an ambulance, sometimes a helicopter. The ones that were stable would take this really impressive medical train that had medical staff. They had an ICU and a surgical theater. And they would take this train to a city called Kielce that was close to where Unicorn Clinic was. The Unicorn Clinic was the name they gave to the hotel that could hold 300 refugees, patients, and their families. Medical records were translated and hospitals found for treatment at no charge

in 21 welcoming countries. I suspect you'd never heard of Memphis, Tennessee. I just knew there was such a place, but not much else. In March, Yasmin Al-Khadi arrived in Memphis for treatment at St. Jude. What are the doctors telling you now? I have a few rounds of chemotherapy left. Everything is going well. I already had my leg amputated, unfortunately.

The doctor said it was too late to save the leg, and it was impossible. I just need to finish my chemotherapy, and I can then continue living my life as before. Also living a rambunctious life at St. Jude is two-year-old Melania Simorowicz, the girl who had been stuck at the Polish border with her refrigerated medication. Her mother, Raksalana, told us there's hope that Melania can be cured of her fibrosarcoma,

a cancer of the connective tissue in her leg. We fled the war from people who just wanted to kill, Roxolana told us in November. And here, people are greeting you and want to give you the best help. They did so much for us and are still doing. This is something incredible. What does the world need to know about this war? It is scary that in our century, people still believe that war is worth something. There are so many real problems in the world, such as cancer. Why doesn't Russia fight cancer?

But rather than fight disease, Russia is attacking medicine. The UN says Russia has assaulted hospitals and clinics 630 times. This is a hospital in Nikolaev, a hospital in Mariupol, the Lugansk Children's Hospital, and a maternity hospital in Kiev. What are the Russians trying to do? They are waging war against civilians, First Lady Zelenska told us. They're trying to scare people away, make them flee, leaving empty cities and villages behind. And then they would come and seize these lands using scorched earth tactics.

Since our visit with Mrs. Zelenska, Russia has devastated Ukraine's power grid. The Kiev Children's Hospital we visited sent us images of surgeries illuminated by generators and the neonatal intensive care unit swaddled in sandbags. Dr. Lesya Lesitsia remains at work. What has the war taken from Ukrainian children? Childhood. The most valuable thing that children have. They stole childhood from our children.

And we now have a lot of kids who are mentally broken, no matter how hard we try to rebuild their lives. The mass evacuation of children with cancer ran last spring from March through May. Dr. Marta Salik of St. Jude told us a few children did not survive the journey. And so there were some instances where children would die on the journey, but I think those children would have died if they had stayed in Ukraine. It was the gift that we could give to the families to give them that hope that the child could die peacefully in a safe environment and not have to worry about the effects of war.

A gift? Yeah. What do you mean? I can't imagine being a parent who has a child that, with a chronic condition that is approaching end of life and the family member has to worry, will the hospital be struck by a missile? At the time, the decision was to evacuate those children with the risk that they might die en route. But if that would bring peace to the family as they were going through this terrible circumstance that

was also now affected by war, then it felt like the right thing to do at the time. Providing these children with a safe place to die. Yeah. It's really important. And so we honored that request. By recent count, the Convoy of Life evacuated 1,119 children into a welcoming world, allowing their families to fight one war at a time. I wonder what you'd like to say to the Americans who have welcomed your family. Wherever I go, I want to say thank you to every person that I meet. I feel like I want to scream out loud to everyone,

thank you, America gave this to us. And I would like to have a chance to help others too, so that people believe that kindness wins. We need to do more good things. 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. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling.

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Here's the idea. Say someone was wronged by a big corporation but has no money to sue it. A litigation funder will pay for their court battle. In essence, they're betting on the lawsuit the way traders bet on stocks. If it's successful, they make money, sometimes a lot of money. If it fails, the funders get nothing. Their investment is lost. Litigation funding can help in cases where otherwise the little guy who's suing would just get crushed or lowballed by defendants with deep pockets. Problem is, this market is exploding with nearly no rules or oversight.

This is quite an honor to be able to drive you around in my truck. We start our story in the rolling hills of Ventura County, California. This is one of our fields. This one too? Where Craig Underwood's family farm had been growing jalapenos for three decades. So you used to have peppers as far as the eye could see. As you were driving through the valley, peppers were every place. But I heard that you had one customer. One customer, Hui Fong Foods. Hui Fong makes the world-famous sriracha hot sauce. In 2016, they abruptly severed ties with Underwood.

His business dried up overnight. Is there anything growing here at all? Can you tell? There's nothing planted here and up here. It's just weeds. Facing ruin, he sued Hui Fang for breach of contract and won $23 million. But they appealed. They appealed.

You couldn't collect any of the money. No. We were looking at whether we could survive or not. You know, every week we were trying to find enough cash to pay the bills, make sure we could make payroll. He couldn't afford to keep fighting until he heard of an investment firm that backs people in his situation. We make the playing field level, and that's what people should be wanting in litigation.

Christopher Bogart is the CEO of Burford Capital. He funds litigants and takes a chunk of their reward if they win. in litigation. Christopher Bogard is the CEO of Burford Capital. He funds litigants and takes a chunk of their award if they win. We are a multi-billion dollar company because litigation is expensive and there's an awful lot of demand from businesses for this kind of solution. So is it a loan? It's a non-recourse financing. What does non-recourse...

What does that mean? What it means is that if the case that we're financing doesn't succeed, then we don't get our money back. And so it's different from a loan in the sense that a loan, obviously, you're always having to pay back the principal. If your side loses, you get nothing. That's correct. Still, Craig Underwood was torn because if he won the appeal, Burford would get a big chunk. But seeing no other choice, he took $4 million from them. Soon after, he won the appeal and the $23 million. But then he had to pay his lawyers

and square away with Burford. We had to give them $8 million to pay for the four that we got and the four that, you know, was there. Did you think when you realized they were going to charge you 100% that that was predatory? Some people might think that. I didn't feel that way. You didn't? Because they stepped in and helped us out when we couldn't have gotten money from anybody else.

They basically rescued us. Founded in 2009, Burford is the world's largest litigation funder with $5 billion invested in multiple lawsuits. Is it actually safer in today's environment to invest in litigation than in the stock market? Well, the benefit that you get from litigation is that litigation doesn't fluctuate the same way that the markets do. What's your average investment? When we're financing a single piece of litigation, it would be very rare for us to be below $5 million, and it goes up from there.

Let's say you have a huge case with tens of millions of dollars. What kind of percentage do you expect to win at the end? On an average basis, we'll largely double our money. Are there cases where you actually walked away with more money than the plaintiff, the person who was wronged. So that doesn't happen very often. But occasionally. It certainly can happen. There's no legal limit on how big a chunk litigation funders can take,

and the deals are confidential. Bogart argues that the reason they demand so much is because of the big risks they take. But actually, they pick their cases very carefully. that the reason they demand so much is because of the big risks they take. But actually, they pick their cases very carefully. So these are all lawyers? Indeed they are. And what are they doing?

They are fundamentally vetting potential cases that we might finance for corporate clients. We certainly do diligence on those matters to try to choose ones that are meritorious and that will be successful. How often are you right? We're right about 90% of the time, and we're wrong about 10% of the time. What if the client that you've given all this money to, invested in, wants to settle, and you think that's a mistake? Clients are free to run their litigations as they see fit.

They're free to work with their lawyers as they see fit, and we don't interfere with that relationship. It's not uncommon for them to come and ask for our advice, but it's advice, and the client is free to disregard that advice and take its own path. But Maya Steinitz, a law professor at the University of Iowa, says there are ethics rules for lawyers, but not for these investors. The funders are not regulated. There's nothing precluding them legally from pressuring a client to settle.

The rules of ethics are very clear that the lawyer has to abide by the wishes of the client. But human nature is human nature. There may be an inclination to be pulled towards the person who is paying. Why is this important? Why should someone out there who's not involved in a lawsuit care? For multiple reasons. First of all, there's this new industry and a new type of player, litigation funders, who are reshaping every aspect of the litigation process. Which cases get brought? How long are they pursued, when are they settled.

But all of this is happening without transparency. So we have one of the three branches of government, the judiciary, that's really being quietly transformed, and there's... Very little oversight. Very little oversight. Who is working to impose regulations, insist on transparency in this industry? One entity that's been very vocal is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that represents big businesses because the sector that's most concerned about this is big corporations.

Now there's money to sue them, and there's money to persevere and not to settle early at a discount. Big business would like to have regulation. How interesting, because they don't like regulation. Generally. Except when it helps them. Generally. Burford usually funds huge cases involving big, sophisticated corporations. There are only a handful of investment firms like it whose business is solely investing

in litigation. But hedge funds, foreign government funds, and wealthy individuals are also getting into this market. But because there are no regulations, in most cases litigation funders remain anonymous in court. In 2012, a billionaire, Peter Thiel, secretly funded wrestler Hulk Hogan's invasion of privacy lawsuit against the website Gawker that drove it out of business. Thiel had his own longstanding score to settle with the site. But litigation funding isn't just for giant cases worth gazillions. You can get cash as soon as the same day. These ads are for a whole other category of litigation funding companies that offer quick cash. You can get cash in as little as 24 hours.

Directly to individuals who are suing in smaller cases, usually over personal injury accidents. From 500 to... They need the money to pay their household bills so they can hold out for larger settlements. The beauty of pre-settlement funding is that if you lose, you don't have to pay back anything. Call now. But in the ads, it's easy to miss that if you win,

you might have to pay a hefty sum. This group of litigation funders charges so much because, again, they say the risk is so high, especially given that the applicants for these advances are often broke, injured, out of work, and with no assets. But we found rates running high even when they're seemingly minimal or no risk. Take the case of former NYPD officer Donald Sefcik, who was entitled to money from the 9-11 Victims' Compensation Fund. He became ill after he raced to ground zero. And how long did you stay?

I stayed there approximately nine days. Inhaling all that dust? It was so much dust down there that you could not see your hands in front of your face. So obviously you had medical issues. Yeah. I couldn't run. I couldn't breathe. So you were entitled from that victim's compensation fund to get $90,000. Yes. You were told you would get $90,000. Yes. And you got $10,000

up front. Yes. He knew he would eventually get more. But in the meantime, he needed money for his medical care. So an ad in the paper caught his eye. And it said, R&D legal funding can get your money faster. We can cut through the red tape. Oh. So I called R&D legal funding can get your money faster. We can cut through the red tape. Oh. So I called R&D legal funding. But then after I signed all the documents and sent over to them, they came back at an interest rate that I couldn't even figure out. The document was very confusing. I couldn't even understand it.

I'm a lawyer, 40 years. I couldn't understand it. Michael Barish is Sefcik's lawyer. They lent him $25,000. He had to repay $64,800. That's 150%. And you paid it? I had no choice. I had no choice. I paid it. Out of the $90,000, I ended up with about $30,000 of it. I feel totally just taken advantage of. The argument from this industry is that they take a big risk when they invest this money. This is not a car accident case against a small insurance company. This was the 9-11 victim compensation fund created by Congress and backed by the U.S. Treasury.

The company told us Sefcik's contract was clear, but his case was part of a lawsuit against RD Legal brought by the New York Attorney General. It settled last month. denied wrongdoing, but had to provide over $600,000 in debt relief to harmed consumers, stop doing business with recipients of 9-11 victim compensation funds, and pay a $1 penalty. So how do litigation funders like this get away with charging such exorbitant rates? If you take out, say, a car loan, usury laws that prevent predatory lending cap the interest rate in New York at 16 percent. But remember, these aren't loans per se, they're investments. Litigation funders for giant and personal cases argue that this market is offering a lifeline to those who have nowhere

else to turn. And legal scholars like Maya Steinitz agree. Accessing the courts in a civil process is a luxury good in today's America. Lawyers charge hundreds of dollars by the hour. So if you've been injured, if you've been discriminated against, if a contract that you have entered into has been breached, it's simply too expensive to bring your case in court. So I think litigation funding is essential. However, personally, I think that litigation funding should be regulated, but I certainly don't think it should be prohibited. Hi there, I'm Ryan Reynolds, and I have a list of things I'd like to have on set. It's just little things like two freshly cracked eggs scrambled with crispy hash brown, sausage crumble, and creamy chipotle sauce from Tim Hortons. From my rider to Tim's menu, try my new scrambled eggs loaded breakfast box.

With a grueling pandemic and gruesome political season, you'd be forgiven for giving up on the idea of miracles. But tonight, we will take you to a place that's known for them. The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in southern France is the site of 70 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. 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, it's divine intervention. The small French town of Lourdes, 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 Moriot. 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 Moriot 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. Lourdes 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 found out last year she has incurable blood cancer and came all the way from Kansas to cleanse herself in the waters of Lourdes. 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. 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 Lourdes Hospitality North American Volunteers helped Jamie Jensen travel from Minnesota for his 18th visit. Even though the camera sees that I have a condition in 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 wanted, 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. Stories of inner peace and acceptance don't meet the bar for the Office of Medical Observations. And with just 70 medical miracles recognized in 160 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 pious performances throughout the day. The finale, a candlelit 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 Soubirous, a 14-year-old peasant girl. Jean-Marc Bica, the Bishop of Lourdes, says the woman spoke with Soubirous 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 Lourdes, 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. Fourteen years ago, Sister Moriot found herself in a wheelchair in a procession at Lourdes, seeking the intervention of Saint 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. 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 inner 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 DeFrancicis 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 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 Bernadette Morio. Here on the end. He showed us the archives, which hold thousands of recorded claims of cures. This feels like it's almost 10 pounds. Dr. DeFrancicis, a practicing Catholic, told us what separates the more than 7,000 claims of cures from the 70 the church calls miracles is an ungodly amount of medical documentation and patients like Sister Moriot willing to put their lives under a microscope. We sent her to different neurologists, we sent her 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 that we would do in 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. De Frranchisi 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 reel something out. We're just trying to be objective. You could call them the devil's advocates.

Dr. Michael Moran, a surgical oncologist, Dr. Jacek Mostwin, a professor of urology at Johns Hopkins, and Dr. Kieran Moriarty, a renowned addiction specialist, scrutinized Sister Moriot'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 Lourdes 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 Moriot's case was medically unexplained. So when you do a survey, the 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 Bernadette had been reviewed, read, expertised by at least 300 physicians. 300 physicians. And if tomorrow morning any of our viewers is a doctor, and one day he stops in southern France and comes to see me, and wants to look into the file of Sister Bernadette, 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. Amen. In 2018, a decade after her cure, Sister Moriot'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. 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. In this season, when the days grow short and light is at a premium, the Department of Energy brought good news from the laboratory often associated with atomic Armageddon. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, after decades of disappointing experiments, has achieved a nuclear fusion reaction that produces more power than it consumes. Fusion energy, the same process the sun uses to create heat and light, promises to be clean, cheap, and nearly unexpendable. It produces neither greenhouse gases nor nuclear waste. The breakthrough's practical applications are years, even decades away. But in this season of hope, it sheds a little light in the darkness. I'm Bill Whitaker. Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas.

We'll be back Christmas night with another edition of 60 Minutes.