Logical Explanations needed for Loretto Staircarse

[CrusaderFrank]

Am traveling through NM and CO and stopped in Santa Fe. Went to St Francis Chapel to pay my respects to my patron saint, then went to Loretto Chapel to see the Staircase.

The prior architect had died or was killed before completing the church leaving them only able to access the choir loft via ladders. The church had asked several other local architect for their input but they all insisted that due to lack of space and steep angle of access, ladders would be the only way to access the loft.

The Sisters prayed for 9 days to St Joseph, the patron saint of builders.

On the 9th day an old man came into town leading a donkey and presented himself to the Sister. His only tools were a saw, a mallet and a architect square. He offered to complete the church for them.

He worked alone, the Sisters never saw him at work. He never asked for pay. When done he simply vanished and was never seen again.

The staircase he built was a double spiral that looks like a Golden Ratio between the 2 turns.

There are 33 stairs.

There is not a nail or screw or glue, there are only wooden pegs

The wood used to make the stairs was not identified until 1997

There is no central support for the stair, no was there a bannister when it was first built. Engineers tell us that even if the stair were made of steel, they'd need a central support, Loretto Staircase does not have any

 

[strollingbones]

snopes.com: Mysterious Staircase at Loretto Chapel

 

[strollingbones]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvid_KnFq7s]The Loretto Chapel Staircase Miracle - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Mad Scientist]

When my wife and I last went to Okinawa we stayed at her grandparents house. While we were there I noticed that there were no nails used in it's construction, grandpa had used Japanese Joinery Techniques which included wooden pegs and the house was as solid as any other.

 

[amrchaos]

So--what need to be explained again??

 

[Skull Pilot]

I own a 200 year old barn that is held together with nothing but wooden pegs.

Building without nails or glue ain't no big thing.

 

[amrchaos]

By the way--which denomination of christianity?

 

[waltky]

Kateri Tekakwitha makes it to sainthood...

Boy's miracle cure makes first Native American saint
October 20, 2012 – Jake Finkbonner was so close to death after flesh-eating bacteria infected him through a cut on his lip that his parents had last rites performed and were discussing donating the 5-year-old's tiny organs.

Jake's 2006 cure from the infection was deemed medically inexplicable by the Vatican, the "miracle" needed to propel a 17th century Native American, Kateri Tekakwitha, on to sainthood. Kateri will be canonized on Sunday along with six other people, the first Native American to receive the honor. Jake is fully convinced, as is the church, that the prayers his family and community offered to Kateri, including the placement of a relic of the soon-to-be saint on Jake's leg, were responsible for his survival.

Jake, now 12 and an avid basketball player and cross-country runner, will be present at the canonization, along with hundreds of members of his own Lummi tribe from northwest Washington state and reservations across the U.S. and Canada who have converged on Rome to honor one of their own. It's a ceremony the Catholic Church hopes will encourage Native Americans to keep to their Christian faith amid continued resentment among some that Catholicism was imposed on them by colonial-era missionaries centuries ago. "I believe everybody has a purpose on this earth," Jake's mother Elsa Finkbonner said this week soon after the family arrived in Rome for the ceremony. "I think this Sunday Jake will define his purpose, and that's to make Kateri a saint."

Jake, a poised, lanky kid who just got his braces off, seems perfectly at ease with his role in the whole thing, gracious and grateful to the doctors who performed 29 surgeries to save his life and reconstruct his face. "It's a really special thing," Jake told The Associated Press, flanked by his parents on a hotel terrace sofa. "We've never been to Rome, and especially meeting the pope? It'll be an experience of a lifetime." Besides Kateri, Pope Benedict XVI will declare another American a saint Sunday, Mother Marianne Cope, a 19th century Franciscan nun from Utica, New York -- near where Kateri lived two centuries earlier -- who cared for lepers exiled to Hawaii's Kalaupapa Peninsula. Another new saint is Pedro Calungsod, a Filipino teenager who was killed in 1672 along with his Jesuit missionary priest by natives resisting their conversion efforts.

The Catholic Church creates saints to hold up models for the faithful, convinced that their lives -- even lived hundreds of years ago -- are still relevant to today's Catholics. The complicated saint-making procedure requires that the Vatican certify a "miracle" was performed through the intercession of the candidate -- a medically inexplicable cure that can be directly linked to the prayers offered by the faithful. One miracle is needed for beatification, a second for canonization. In Jake's case, Kateri was already an important figure for Catholics in the Lummi tribe, of which his father Donny is a member. A carved wooden statue sits in the church on the Lummi reservation near Bellingham, Washington, 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of the Canadian border, where Jake's grandparents worshipped and where Donny remembers being told of Kateri's story as a child.

Known as the "Lily of the Mohawks," Kateri was born in 1656 to a pagan Iroquois father and an Algonquin Christian mother in what is today upstate New York. Her parents and only brother died when she was 4 during a smallpox epidemic that left her badly scarred and with impaired eyesight. She went to live with her uncle, a Mohawk, and was baptized Catholic by Jesuit missionaries. But she was ostracized and persecuted by other natives for her faith, and she died in Canada when she was 24.

Read more: Boy's miracle cure makes first Native American saint | Fox News