Editorial standards
A Catholic purpose. A careful account.
Corpus Files invites wonder and deeper understanding from within the Catholic faith. Our editorial commitments make clear what we believe, what the sources support, and what remains an open question.
Definitions we hold to
Church teaching
Catholic doctrine explained with reference to the relevant authoritative Church text. We identify what that source teaches and distinguish it from an individual author's explanation or opinion.
Theological interpretation
An argument or explanation about the meaning of faith. We identify its author or tradition where relevant and do not present every theological opinion as binding Church teaching.
Personal reflection
A named author's consideration of spiritual meaning. It is identified as reflection and cannot establish an empirical finding or change an official Church judgment.
Reported claim
Something asserted by a witness, a tradition, or a publication. A reported claim is evidence that something was said, not that it happened.
Documented fact
A narrowly worded statement supported by reliable evidence we can identify and inspect. A primary record may establish that a claim was made without establishing that the claim itself is true.
Church recognition
A judgement by ecclesiastical authority — approval of devotion, a declared cultus, a decree on a cause. It is a canonical act, not a laboratory result.
Scientific finding
The published result of a described procedure, attributed to identifiable analysts, with its limits and its dissenters stated.
Incorrupt
Used descriptively for a body reported to have resisted normal decay. It does not by itself imply that embalming, wax masking, or favourable burial conditions have been excluded.
Sources for historical and scientific claims
We choose sources appropriate to the question. Catholic teaching is checked against authoritative Church texts; an interpretation is attributed as an interpretation. For historical and scientific claims, the order below is a starting point. We weigh relevance, method, access to the underlying material, corroboration, and limitations; material disagreements remain visible.
- 01Primary documents: exhumation records, diocesan decrees, laboratory reports, contemporaneous correspondence.
- 02Peer-reviewed scholarship and published scientific analyses, including those that argue against a supernatural reading.
- 03Official institutional records: shrine, diocese, museum, conservation body.
- 04Named expert analysis, with the expert's field and relationship to the case stated.
- 05Reputable secondary histories, used for context rather than as proof.
- 06Devotional literature and popular accounts, cited only as evidence of what has been believed and told.
Church status is not scientific verification
A bishop permitting devotion at a shrine, a cause advancing in Rome, or a feast being granted tells you what an institution has decided. It does not tell you what a microscope found. Our records state the two separately, and we never let one stand in for the other.
How we handle uncertainty
Most of these cases are unresolved, and we say so. We do not write that a miracle, relic, apparition, or body has been proved or verified unless the cited evidence says exactly that. Where a natural explanation is available, it is presented on its strongest terms alongside the claim. Where the record is thin, we describe the gap instead of filling it.
A verdict answers a question about the thing under review (the body, the object, the event, the cure), never about whether a document says something. What a source states is recorded as a claim or under Church status. "Verified" is reserved for propositions about the thing itself that the cited sources make explicit.
Four kinds of explanation, clearly identified
A story can include Church teaching, theological interpretation, historical or scientific evidence, and personal reflection. We distinguish these through clear headings, attribution, sources, and the wording of each conclusion.
Catholic meaning belongs in the main reading experience. A reflection cannot strengthen a laboratory result, establish a relic's provenance, or change what the Church has decided. A disputed empirical claim also does not determine whether Catholic teaching is true.
Signed reflections identify their author and any use of a pen name. We claim outside expert review only when it has actually taken place; a citation or an AI-assisted check is not an endorsement from the source's author or institution.
Questions about suffering, prayer, and belief need substantial explanations and honest treatment of objections. We do not present these as an authenticity test or imply that continued uncertainty is a failure of faith.
Corrections
Errors are corrected on the record rather than quietly overwritten. Substantive corrections are noted on the affected record. If you can show us a source we have misread or missed, write to us — that is the fastest way to improve the archive.
Read dated corrections and follow updates →Email a correction →Commercial disclosure
Corpus Files is an independent, for-profit Catholic publication operated by W Consulting, LLC. No subject of an investigation pays for coverage, and any commercial relationship affecting a file is disclosed on that file.
Hold us to this
Read a story and check it against these commitments. If we misstate a teaching, overlook an important objection, or claim more than a source supports, tell us.