Hiroshima, 1945. A small Jesuit house stood just 8 blocks from where the atomic bomb exploded.
Everything around it was vaporized.
But the house still stood.
The priests inside? Unharmed.
Why? They prayed the Rosary daily.
The miracle of Hiroshima - a 🧵
On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. 140,000 people were killed.
The blast leveled everything within a mile radius.
Concrete turned to dust. Steel bent like paper.
Except for one house.
Just 1 kilometer from Ground Zero stood a modest building: the Jesuit rectory of Our Lady’s Assumption Church.
Inside were eight German priests, including Fr. Hubert Schiffer.
They were completely unharmed.
No burns. No radiation sickness. No explanation.
Fr. Hubert Schiffer, who headed the community, was virtually untouched by the nuclear blast with no radiation found in his body, and he publicly testified to this miracle at the Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia in 1976.
In an interview with Fr. Paul Ruge, he describes the horrific nightmare of August 6, 1945:
“Suddenly, a terrific explosion filled the air with one bursting thunder stroke. An invisible force lifted me from the chair, hurled me through the air, shook me, battered me, whirled me ’round and round’ like a leaf in a gust of autumn wind.”
Everything around them was obliterated.
The house across the street? Gone.
The trees? Gone.
The rectory? Still standing.
People thought they’d die of radiation poisoning within weeks. They lived for decades.
Fr. Schiffer lived 33 more years. So did the others.
They were examined by over 200 scientists. No one could explain it.
Radiation should have killed them.
But it didn’t even touch them.
The Verdict of Science:
According to Dr. Stephen Rinehart, a nuclear physicist with the U.S. Department of Defense who had studied this phenomenon intently, they should have been dead in a flash. In his commentary on the Hiroshima blast, he states:
“Their residence should still have been utterly destroyed (temp; 2000 F and air blast pressures; 100 psi). In contrast, unreinforced masonry or brick walls (representative of commercial construction) are destroyed at 3 psi, which will also cause car damage and burst windows. At 10 psi, a human will experience severe lung and heart damage, burst eardrums; and at 20 psi, your limbs can be blown off. Your head will be blown off by 40 psi and no residential or unreinforced commercial construction would be left standing. At 80 psi even reinforced concrete is heavily damaged and no human would be alive because your skull would be crushed. All the cotton clothes would be on fire at 350 F (probably at 275 F) and your lungs would be inoperative within a minute breathing air (even for a few seconds) at these temperatures.
“There are no physical laws to explain why the Jesuits were untouched in the Hiroshima air blast. There is no other actual or test data where a structure such as this was not totally destroyed at this standoff distance by an atomic weapon. All who were at this range from the epicenter should have received enough radiation to be dead within at most a matter of minutes if nothing else happened to them. There is no known way to design a uranium-235 atomic bomb, which could leave such a large discrete area intact while destroying everything around it immediately outside the fireball…
“From a scientific viewpoint, what happened to those Jesuits at Hiroshima still defies all human logic from the laws of physics as understood today (or at any time in the future). It must be concluded that some other (external) force was present whose power and/or capability to transform energy and matter as it relates to humans is beyond current comprehension.”
Why were they spared?
Fr. Schiffer gave the answer again and again:
“We lived the message of Fatima. We prayed the Rosary every day in that house.”
The world called it chance.
He called it Our Lady’s protection.
The only possible explanation?
The Rosary Miracle that occurred at Hiroshima is well known and well documented and has been published in various journals since the war, and can be read today on several websites. Yet, to date no one has ever been able to offer a scientific explanation for this phenomenon. The best they can do is hold their peace and remain bamboozled.
There is one exception though. There are those of rational thought (e.g., Dr. Rinehart) who recognize the hand of God in this. This miracle was intended as a lesson for the world, especially the people of the last times who would be subject to increasing calamities and the effects of war, nuclear accidents, etc.
It wasn’t just about the Rosary.
The priests were living in a state of grace.
Daily Mass. Devotion to Mary. Consecrated lives.
And when the fire fell they were sheltered by Heaven.
It echoes Scripture: “When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned.” Isaiah 43,2
The miracle of Hiroshima isn’t just a war story.
It’s a warning. And a promise.
The bomb dropped. The world burned.
But eight priests, in one house, kept praying.
And when death came looking, it passed them by.
If this doesn't make you want to pray the Rosary, I don't know what will!
Most Holy Theotokos, Mother of God, pray for us sinners!
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