A team opened her tomb in the Carmelite monastery in Alba de Tormes, in north-eastern Spain, on 28 August.
Fr Marco Chiesa, the postulator-general of the Discalced Carmelites said: “The parts uncovered, which are the face and the foot, are the same as they were in 1914.”
“There is no skin colour, because the skin is mummified, but you can see it, especially the middle of the face,” he observed. “The expert doctors can see Teresa’s face almost clearly.”
Fr Chiesa was one of a group of Carmelite friars and sisters who sang the Te Deum while her reliquaries were transferred from the tomb, where she was buried in 1582, to a study for medical analysis.
The marble slab of St Teresa’s sepulchre was removed and her silver coffin opened in the presence of two goldsmiths, a group of medical experts, and members of a Vatican tribunal.
Ten keys were required to open her tomb, including a set held by the Duke of Alba and another kept in Rome by the Carmelite father general.
Medical experts have now photographed and X-rayed the body of St Teresa, as well as parts removed from her body for devotional purposes, and her heart: her arm, severed in 1585, and her heart, removed by doctors of the University of Salamanca in 1588 after the publication of St Teresa’s account of the “Transverberation” – a mystical experience where she reported that Christ had pierced her heart with a dart.
Fr Miguel Ángel González, the prior of Salamanca and Alba de Tormes, told the Spanish daily El País that the doctors had removed the heart because they “had taken Teresa’s writing literally and were looking for a physical wound in her body”.
He added that early analyses indicated St Teresa – the author of totemic spiritual works including The Interior Castle (1588) – may have been ambidextrous.
The x-rays also revealed that in old age St Teresa “had a very fragile constitution”, said Fr Chiesa.
She suffered Kyphosis, a curvature of the upper spine which caused a hunched back. “The vertebrae of her spinal column were deformed, which obliged her to breathe with difficulty,” he said.
She struggled to walk, Fr Chiesa added, due to plantar fasciitis, an inflammation of tissue in the foot. Initial studies also revealed St Teresa suffered rheumatism and had arthritis in her left knee.
Born in 1515, Teresa established the Discalced Carmelites for women and helped St John of the Cross reform the male Carmelite order. Despite her partly Jewish descent – her grandfather was a “converso” punished by the Inquisition – she established 17 convents in Spain.
The exhumation was at the behest of the Bishop of Salamanca Luis Retana, seeking canonical recognition of St Teresa’s remains.
Her body was returned to the tomb on 31 August and her arm returned to its home in a Carmelite convent in Ronda, Andalusia.
The findings of the medical team were sent to laboratories in Italy for further study until 2025, to make proposals for improved preservation methods for St Teresa’s relics, due to be exposed for veneration at a future date.