He Died in 1898. His Body Kept Bleeding Until 1965

For 67 years, monks [music] in a Lebanese monastery had to change a dead man's clothes twice a [music] week. He kept sweating. Blood mixed with something else seeping out through the skin. Through his habit. Through the wood of the coffin. Through the zinc lining underneath it. His name was Charbel. >> [music] >> Born in a mountain village in 1828,

orphaned young, and by 23 he'd walked away from [music] his family without telling them to enter a monastery. He spent the [music] last 23 years of his life alone in a hermitage. No conversation, bread and vegetables. [music] He slept on a mat with a wooden log for a pillow. On the 16th of December, 1898, he had a

stroke while saying mass. He died eight days later on Christmas Eve. Buried [music] the next day, no embalming, no coffin of his own, straight into a communal grave in wet ground. Then villagers started reporting [music] a light over the grave. Not once, nightly. For about 45 nights. In April 1899, they dug him up.

The grave [music] had flooded repeatedly. The body was floating in mud. It was [music] intact, skin soft, joints still flexible, and fluid coming out of the side. They washed him, dressed him [music] again, and put him in a proper coffin. The seeping never stopped. Twice a week [music] for decades, someone had to

change his clothes. This was [music] not accepted quietly. In 1927, two doctors from Beirut examined the body before it was sealed into a tomb in the monastery wall. In 1950, they opened it again. This time in front of religious authorities, civil officials, and a committee of physicians. The fluid was still coming. The chasuble had partly rotted. The zinc