Missouri nun’s body found ‘incorrupt’ four years after death; Medical experts unsure why

GOWER, Mo. – A Missouri nun’s body was surprisingly found intact and “incorrupt” last year when she was exhumed, nearly four years after her death. An investigation recently completed into this discovery has left experts puzzled.

The Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph released the results of a medical examination and evaluation into the remains of Sister Welhelmia Lancaster on Thursday.

Sister Lancaster died in May 2019. She was buried within days in a grave on the rural Catholic monastery in Gower, Missouri, a small town nearly an hour north of Kansas City.

The Diocese says she was buried without any embalming or other treatment of her body in an unsealed wooden casket. When a group unearthed her corpse on April 2023, intending to move Sister Lancaster to a church for interment, her remains were found intact, rather than decomposed.

A team of local medical experts, including pathologists and a former county coroner, examined the remains and found the condition of her body to be “highly atypical.”

“Within the limits of what has been observed during this time, the body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster does not appear to have experienced the decomposition that would have normally been expected under such previous burial conditions,” said the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph via a news release.

Additionally, tests on the soil where she was buried did not detect any “unusual elements” that may have impacted the condition of the remains.

Meanwhile, despite the new investigation results, the Diocese does not plan to start a cause of sainthood for Sister Lancaster, citing that the Catholic Church does not have an official protocol for determining incorruptibility.

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