The process has three stages, as the Sanctuary describes it. First, a person who believes they have been cured goes to the Medical Bureau, ideally before leaving Lourdes, and makes a spontaneous declaration; the Bureau's doctor gathers the medical file, and any doctor present in Lourdes, believer or not, may attend the examination. Second, if the Bureau judges the cure unexplained, the file goes to the International Medical Committee of Lourdes, about thirty specialists created in 1947 and made international in 1954, who compare the records before and after and vote on whether the recovery is unexpected, complete, lasting, and unexplained according to current medical knowledge. Third, the Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes sends the file to the bishop of the cured person's diocese, who alone can declare it a miracle.
The criteria go back to Cardinal Lambertini, later Benedict XIV: a serious illness with a known diagnosis and poor prognosis, a sudden and complete cure, no relapse over years, and no medical explanation. That is why so few of the 7,000 declared cures become one of the 72; the Bureau's own count is of files, not of miracles.
The Raco case shows the timescale. She was cured of primary lateral sclerosis at the baths during an Italian pilgrimage in August 2009; the Committee voted in November 2024, the Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes wrote to her diocese on November 15, 2024, and the Bishop of Tursi-Lagonegro proclaimed the miracle on April 16, 2025. The Bureau's exhibition near the Grotto explains the process and is worth half an hour.