Brain Tumour Caused Murcia Woman to Believe She Was Conversing with the Virgin Mary

A brain tumour caused a 60-year-old Murcia region woman to believe she was speaking with the Virgin Mary. A report from Murcia’s Morales Meseguer hospital said she became “obsessed with religion” during a two-month period before being diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer.

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She began to have regular visions of the Virgin Mary reporting that she was “seeing, feeling, and conversing with the Virgin Mary” with some of the episodes lasting for days. Her friends and family thought she might be suffering from depression because she had been caring for a terminally ill relative at the time, and urged her to seek medical advice.

Doctors performed an MRI, and discovered several lesions in her brain, which a biopsy revealed was glioblastoma multiforme, a particularly aggressive form of brain cancer. The tumors were too large to treat with surgery, so the woman received chemotherapy and radiation for the cancer. Her doctors also prescribed antipsychotic drugs for her, and during a five-week treatment, her religious fervour and the visions gradually disappeared.

She sadly though died within eight months of the tumour being detected.