During her thirty-five years fast, doctors kept Theresa under strict surveillance and subjected her to long periods of medical scrutiny. They testified that to the best of their knowledge nothing was ingested other than the wafer and wine of the Holy Communion, and that her excreta ceased completely after 1930, her intestinal tract having withered away. By 1951 Theresa's phenomenon had diminished, and in the last five years of her life although she continued to have visions and ecstasies she faded into obscurity, dying of malnutrition in 1962.

There is considerable doubt that all the phenomena reported actually occurred. Theresa's abstinence from food for example was never rigorously controlled to the satisfaction of the Church authorities and the medical men called in to advise on the case. Many of the phenomena resembled closely that which have been observed to occur in other paranormal but non-religious contexts, and the blood observed on the stigmata was never seen to flow from them, but only appeared on the wounds after Theresa had escaped observation beneath the bedclothes. Further, when a sample of the blood was subjected to analysis it proved to be of menstrual origin.

I tried a search on her, just to get a little more info, but the sites I found seem to insinuate that the whole thing was faked. Here is an excerpt from one of them:



Of course, I don't understand how she would have been able to produce menstrual blood every Friday, especially considering that she was malnourished. When women are malnourished, they can sometimes go for years without a menstrual cycle at all. I don't know what the truth is about her, but I find it hard to believe that someone would bleed openly for 32 years, eat only wafers and a tablespoon of water a day, and live for more than a few weeks.