Mystery of US nun’s body still intact after years of death

Jakarta –

Hundreds of Americans came to a small town in Missouri to see the body of a nun whose body was barely decomposed even though she had been dead for years.

Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, the founder of the convent in Missouri, died at the age of 95 in 2019. His body was buried as in an ordinary cemetery. In April 2023, Wilhelmina’s grave was exhumed to move her body to another location.

Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph said recently that medical experts had not found the reason why Sister Wilhelmina’s body did not experience decomposition as usual.

“Based on observations to date, the remains of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster do not appear to have experienced the decomposition that would normally occur under previous burial conditions,” said Bishop James V. Johnston of Kansas City- St. Joseph in a statement quoted from NYPost.

In the statement, Johnston said he had assigned a team of local medical experts to examine and evaluate Sister Wilhelmina’s body less than a month after it was discovered that her body had not decomposed substantially in the four a year since her death.

The team, Johnston said, was led by a pathologist, who was assisted by two other medical doctors and a former Missouri county coroner.

Some experts say that it is not unusual for a body to remain well preserved in the first few years after death, even if the body has not been embalmed.

“In general, when we bury bodies in human decomposition facilities, we think it takes about five years for the bodies to become skeletons,” Nicholas Passalacqua told Newsweek. Passalacqua is an associate professor and director of forensic anthropology at Western Carolina University.

However, news of the disappearance spread through social media, with hundreds of people traveling to Missouri to view Sister Wilhelmina’s body.

(kna/kna)