Bilocation. – From the Latin *bis* and *locatio*, the simultaneous presence of a person in two different places.
Among the wondrous events with which Catholic hagiography abounds, this is one of the rarest. We read of St. Philip Neri, St. Catherine de’ Ricci, St. Peter of Alcantara, St. Alphonsus Liguori—who, though found in S. Agata dei Goti, declared that he had attended the dying Pope Clement XIV (cf. A. Tannonia, *Della vita ed istituto del ven. servo di Dio Alfonso M. Liguori*, II, Naples 1800, p. 283)—St. Francis Jerome (cf. F. S. D’Aria, *S. Francesco di Girolamo*, I, Rome 1944, pp. 320–21), and many other saints.
Catholic theologians attribute this phenomenon to a supernatural cause, but they disagree on the metaphysical explanation of its mode. Some admit the simultaneous “circumscribed” presence of a body with its dimensional quantity in two places, commensurating its parts and acting simultaneously in two spaces, by virtue of the “obediential power” (v.). For St. Thomas (IV Sent., dist. 44, q. 2, a. 2) and the Scholastics in general, this implies a metaphysical absurdity, since while essential presence (in this sense God is everywhere) and sacramental presence (Christ under the Eucharistic species) of a being in multiple places is possible, bodily presence is necessarily bound to quantity, which cannot be placed except in a determined location that circumscribes II. In such a case, the mystical grace would consist in the miraculous formation of a representative subject that stands in place of the real one.
Metapsychics has thus far not confirmed any cases of bilocation.
Ectoplasmic phenomena are highly uncertain. Astral projection (subjective bilocation) produced by autosuggestion leads the patient to mental alienation. Thus, the sciences cannot at present draw any conclusion regarding hagiographic bilocation.