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Miracles & Canonisation

G.K. Chesterton: Bishop of Northampton probes sainthood claims
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-no ... e-23769750

G.K. Chesterton lived in Beaconsfied, Buckinghamshire, which is part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Northampton

The Bishop of Northampton is to appoint a priest to look at whether author G.K. Chesterton should be made a saint after a campaign was launched by the American Chesterton Society (ACS).

Mr Chesterton, who found fame through his Father Brown novels, converted to Roman Catholicism in the 1920s.

Dale Ahlquist, president of the ACS, said Mr Chesterton's writings had brought people to the Catholic faith.

He said Mr Chesterton, who died in 1936, is a "saint for our time".

Mr Chesterton lived in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, which is part of the Northampton diocese.

'Pope's support'
Bishop Peter Doyle said he had spoken to the ACS and would appoint a priest to make "tentative inquiries".

This is the first official step towards the possible canonization of Mr Chesterton.

"I'm grateful for all of the work done by Chesterton devotees around the world that has prompted the bishop to make this very important decision," said Mr Ahlquist.

"One of the reasons that especially motivated him is the fact that His Holiness, Pope Francis, expressed support for Chesterton's Cause when he was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires.

"I think he is very much a saint for our time and could draw many people into the Catholic Church."

Mr Chesterton's novels include The Napoleon of Notting Hill and The Man Who Would Be Thursday.

He also wrote the religious works Orthodoxy, The Everlasting Man and books on St Francis of Assisi and St Thomas Aquinas.

The Orthodoxy looked at the meaning of life and Chesterton's spiritual journey to Christianity

The Everlasting Man is a spiritual history of western civilization which has been credited with helping to convert the author CS Lewis from atheism to Christianity.
 
I'll be following this story with some interest. Recently, I visited some Catholic churches here in the Netherlands (both Roman and 'Old'). More than once, I saw small posters promoting a talk, or discussion, on the faith and works of Chesterton.

I wonder if there will be evidence of miracles connected with Chesterton put forward?

I only really know of his work from the Father Brown stories and the v.Fortean, The Man Who Was Thursday. The Father Brown stories are excellent detective fiction and do give an interesting insight into Catholic morality. It's about time I read The Man Who Was Thursday, again.

Just as long as they don't try to canonize Evelyn Waugh.
 
Why not have a bacon curing plant at Lourdes?

Diagnosing miracles

7,000 people claim to have been cured at Lourdes, but the Catholic Church says only 1 per cent of those cases are miracles. Dr Michael Moran sits on the committee that decides which cures are medically unexplainable

Dr Michael Moran is a Belfast hospital registrar who is prepared to take a bit of surgical ribbing. He is studying to be an ear, nose and throat surgeon specialising in neck and head cancers. But occasionally during operations some of his colleagues query why he even bothers to scrub up.

“ ‘Sure you don’t need to operate on that patient,’ some of them have said to me. ‘Just stand beside them and they will be miraculously cured.’ ”
Moran doesn’t mind these rather lame gags; it’s part of operating-theatre banter. But, equally, he’d prefer not to be known as a miracle doctor. He is the first Irishman to be appointed to an international committee that evaluates cures at Lourdes. “It is not a miracle-determining committee. It is a cure-determining committee,” he stresses.

Moran says his function is not to determine whether a particular cure is down to a miracle at the grotto where 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous said the Virgin Mary appeared to her in 1858. That’s for the Catholic Church to adjudicate on.

“All we comment on is the fact that the person has had an inexplicable cure,” says the 34-year-old, who is from Finaghy, in south Belfast, and qualified in 2004 as a doctor from Queen’s University Belfast.

Moran has been going to Lourdes each year since he was 16, travelling on the annual July Down and Connor diocesan pilgrimage. He is a founder member of Seirbhís, an all-Ireland group of health professionals who volunteer to help at Lourdes.

Two years ago he was “surprised and honoured” to be appointed to the International Medical Committee of Lourdes (Le Comité Médical International de Lourdes). He is one of 34 international members who have expertise in different medical areas and who help decide if cures are truly inexplicable.

Since 1858 about 200 million people have visited Lourdes, at the foot of the Pyrenees in France, and the town attracts about six million pilgrims a year. About 7,000 have claimed to have been cured at Lourdes, but only 69 have been recognised by the Catholic Church as miracles, the most recent last year. ...

http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-styl ... -1.1912024
 
I'm a bit unsure where to post this but hes a Saint and maybe its a Miracle.

'Ghost' of Irish martyr Saint Oliver Plunkett captured on video?

Saint Oliver Plunkett, the Archbishop of Armagh and Catholic Primate of All Ireland, was the last Catholic to be martyred in England. He was executed in 1681 as part of the Popish Plot, beatified in 1920 and canonised in 1975.

He became the patron saint of Peace and Reconciliation in 1997.

Four years ago a British author captured a ghostly apparition of Saint Oliver Plunkett on video while visiting Ireland.

Vikki Bramshaw said she only discovered the image of "the ghost" of St. Oliver Plunkett peering out of the prison door in Saint Peter’s Church in Drogheda, County Louth when she viewed the video taken with her cell phone camera later on.

Catch a glimpse of the face, which appears briefly a few times at the hatch of the 15th century cell door.

"I don't really believe in ghosts or anything like that, so I was a bit spooked out to see it when I was checking my video when I got home," Bramshaw told a local Irish newspaper.

"I visited Drogheda between March 10-17, and was taken around Newgrange and other tourist sites, and Saint Peter’s was just one of our stops," she said.

"I was just filming the cell door with my camera phone, and didn't notice anything unusual at the time, but when I checked it that night, I was definitely a bit spooked by what I saw."

The video shows what appears to be a face that appears at the small hatch in the door a number of times.

"I watched it again and again to see if it was a reflection, but there are other things reflected in the glass, and they're not moving, and this does," said Bramshaw, who lives in Southampton. ...
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/ghost- ... 2191.html#
 
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Pope Francis will bestow sainthood on two Palestinian nuns on Sunday (May 17), a move that’s being seen as giving hope to the conflict-wracked Middle East and shining the spotlight on the plight of Christians in the region.

Sisters Maria Baouardy and Mary Alphonsine Danil Ghattas are due to be canonized by the pontiff along with two other 19th-century nuns, Sister Jeanne Emilie de Villeneuve, from France, and Italian Sister Maria Cristina dell’Immacolata.

The coming canonizations have been described by the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, as a “sign of hope” for the region.

“The canonization of these two Palestinian saints is a spiritual highpoint for the inhabitants of the Holy Land,” he told Vatican Insider.

“The fact that Mariam (Maria) and Marie (Mary) Alphonsine, the first modern Palestinian saints, are both Arabs is a sign of hope for Palestine, for the entire Holy Land and the Middle East: holiness is always possible, even in a war-torn region. May a generation of saints follow them!” ...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/...ns_n_7260252.html?ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000067
 
Next week in Washington, Pope Francis will preside over one of the most controversial acts of his papacy. He will confer sainthood on the 18th century Spanish missionary Friar Junipero Serra, and in doing so, dive into a cultural battle in the United States.

Serra founded nine of the 21 missions in California that later were the basis of what is now the modern state. He is a household name in California, where streets and buildings bear his name and children study his legacy in schools.

Critics say that legacy has more darkness than light, that his halo is stained with blood.

Many Native Americans were appalled when the pope announced the canonisation in January, calling Serra a great evangelizer. The late Pope John Paul beatified Serra in 1988 and Francis waived Church rules that normally require a second miracle between beatification and sainthood.

Detractors say Serra, who arrived from Mexico in what is now San Diego in 1769, beat and imprisoned Native Americans in the closed communities known as missions. They say he suppressed their cultures and facilitated the spread of diseases that heavily reduced the population.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/when-pope-canonizes-serra-a-halo-stained-with-blood/ar-AAeshXg
 
Vatican City, Jun 21, 2016 / 03:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis has announced the canonization date of Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity, a Carmelite nun of the 20th century who will be formally recognzied as a saint October 16.

In March, the Pope had acknowledged a miracle worked through the intercession of Blessed Elizabeth, paving the way for her canonization. ...

She entered the Carmel in Dijon in 1901, and died there in 1906 – at the age of 26 – from Addison's disease.

Elizabeth wrote several works while there, the best-known of which is her prayer “O My God, Trinity Whom I Adore.” Also particularly notable are her “Heaven in Faith,” a retreat she wrote three months before her death for her sister Guite; and the “Last Retreat,” her spiritual insights from the last annual retreat she was able to make.

Cardinal Albert Decourtray, who was Bishop of Dijon from 1974 to 1981, was cured of cancer through Bl. Elizabeth's intercession – a miracle that allowed her beatification in 1984.

The healing acknowledged by Pope Francis March 4 was that of Marie-Paul Stevens, a Belgian woman who had Sjögren's syndrome, a glandular disease. ...

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/n...e-trinity-the-story-behind-a-new-saint-86118/
 
Pope Francis has canonised a "gaucho priest" from his homeland Argentina, making him the country's first saint.

Jose Gabriel del Rosario Brochero, often pictured in colourful poncho, travelled by mule to minister the poor in remote areas.

He was among seven saints declared in a Mass in St Peter's Square in Rome, which was attended by thousands.

He is credited with at least two posthumous miracles, the minimum requirement for sainthood.

Brochero, one of Argentina's most famous Catholics during Pope Francis' youth, suffered leprosy that left him blind until his death in 1914.

He was moved closer to sainthood with his beatification in 2013. At the time, Pope Francis wrote a letter to Argentina's bishops praising Brochero for having had the "smell of his sheep".

"He never stayed in the parish office. He got on his mule and went out to find people like a priest of the street, to the point of getting leprosy," Pope Francis wrote.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37672188?ocid=socialflow_twitter
 
At last! Someone who deserves to be canonised.

Archbishop Óscar Romero, who was killed in 1980 while he was celebrating Mass in El Salvador, will be declared a saint, Pope Francis has announced. Óscar Romero is revered in his native El Salvador for denouncing repression. Archbishop Romero was beatified in May 2015 in a ceremony in El Salvador which drew huge crowds.

The archbishop spoke out against the repression many of his compatriots suffered at the start of El Salvador's civil war, which lasted from 1980 to 1992. When the US-backed Salvadorean army was using death squads and torture to stop leftist revolutionaries from seizing power, he used what would become his last homily to speak out against it.

"The law of God which says thou shalt not kill must come before any human order to kill. It is high time you recovered your conscience," he said, calling on the National Guard and police to stop the violence.

"I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression."

One day later, on 24 March 1980, Archbishop Romero was shot dead by a sniper as he celebrated Mass in a hospital chapel.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-43317438#
 
I had personal experience of spontaneous, unexpected healing of a medical issue whilst knowing that others were praying for me in the early 2000's. I can't know if it was a 'miracle' as such, but when I told my friend (and CofE vicar) his response was "Good Lord!" and I replied "maybe it was!".

I am mindful that correlation does not equal causation. The time period was 3 weeks from being told I'd need a procedure to being told that it was now unnecessary.

I was booked in for a laser eye surgery called 'panretinal photocoagulation' to treat bilateral central retinal vein occlusions with the expectation that this would permanently reduce my peripheral vision as a side-effect, something that I wasn't looking forward to. My NHS consultant did the usual visual checks with the dilating eyedrops and big optical gizmo then she told me "they're gone!". I didn't need the surgery.

I havetried to keep an open mind about it. Maybe it was a case of spontaneous remission, or of a religious miracle, or of something else I can't name but whatever it was, I'm thankful for it.
 
@AnonyJoolz that was fantastic news!

But (and with the greatest of respects)- I wonder exactly what happened? We will never know.

And if you're unfamiliar of Tim Minchin's "Sam's Mum"....you MUST watch this this right through. And that goes for everybody!
 
@AnonyJoolz

...But (and with the greatest of respects)- I wonder exactly what happened? We will never know....


Exactly. And that, for me, is what made it a precious and valuable experience - I have no desire to name, label or classify it.
 
Posters here may be aware that John Henry Newman was the de facto leader of the Oxford Movement from its inception in 1833 until he "swam up the Tiber," i.e. became a Roman Catholic, in 1845. Robert Isaac Wilberforce (1802-1857), a son of William Wilberforce, was a contemporary of Newman's at Oxford. (Robert's Eucharistic theology was the subject of my PhD dissertation). Robert was somewhat wary of Newman. As a young man, Newman had suffered an illness which Robert believed to have adversely affected his judgement. As a result, Wilberforce gravitated towards the ultramontane Henry Manning, who, like Newman, later became a cardinal. Geoffrey Faber's Oxford Apostles briefly touches on Wilberforce's reservations about Newman. Geoffrey was a great-nephew of Fr Frederick Faber, who founded the Brompton Oratory. Geoffrey himself was a founder of Faber and Faber Limited, the publishing company.

An interesting (imho) sociological phenomenon can be found in this movement towards Rome. Newman, Manning and Wilberforce were all Anglicans raised in the Evangelical wing of the Church. All of them experienced the high church renewal of Oxford Movement and eventually joined Rome. This movement of Evangelical Anglicans to the high church faction and eventually up the Tiber was common at the time. Of the six children of William Wilberforce, a prominent Evangelical and member of the Clapham Sect, three of them became Roman Catholics. Two of Robert's brothers eventually joined him while the remaining brother, Samuel (aka "Soapy Sam)," the one-time Bishop of Oxford, remained an Anglican as did Robert's two sisters. Newman, Manning and Wilberforce also had in common the fact that they came from wealthy "new money" families. In this respect they stood in contrast to Edward Pusey, another leading figure in the Oxford Movement. Both sides of Pusey's family were solidly aristocratic and he was not raised as an Evangelical. In the 1920s, Swedish theologian Yngve Brilioth commented on this trend in the Oxford Movement by wryly noting that those, like Pusey, who had been raised in high church homes were less susceptible to what he referred to as "the temptations of Romanism" than were those who had been raised as Evangelicals.

End of today's tabby trivia tidbits.
 
“In 2000, Jack Sullivan, from Boston, Massachusetts, had just completed the second year of a four-year course to become a deacon - the level of Catholic ministry below priesthood - when he was struck by crippling back pain. "I certainly needed a divine favour at that moment, so I prayed: 'Please Cardinal Newman help me to walk so that I can return to classes and be ordained'," said Mr Sullivan.
When he woke the next morning, the pain had gone...”


In May 2013, expectant mother Melissa Villalobos was suffering from unstoppable internal bleeding that threatened the life of her child in the womb. "In prayer she directly and explicitly invoked Newman's intercession to stop the bleeding," it said. "The miraculous healing was immediate, complete, and permanent."


https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-50002085

Well, l can’t see anyone having any problems with that quality of evidence.

maximus otter
 
“In 2000, Jack Sullivan, from Boston, Massachusetts, had just completed the second year of a four-year course to become a deacon - the level of Catholic ministry below priesthood - when he was struck by crippling back pain. "I certainly needed a divine favour at that moment, so I prayed: 'Please Cardinal Newman help me to walk so that I can return to classes and be ordained'," said Mr Sullivan.
When he woke the next morning, the pain had gone...”


In May 2013, expectant mother Melissa Villalobos was suffering from unstoppable internal bleeding that threatened the life of her child in the womb. "In prayer she directly and explicitly invoked Newman's intercession to stop the bleeding," it said. "The miraculous healing was immediate, complete, and permanent."


https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-50002085

Well, l can’t see anyone having any problems with that quality of evidence.

maximus otter

He cured a side of bacon for me.
 
Millennial Miracle Maker

An Italian teenager who used the internet to spread his faith is on a path to becoming the Catholic Church's first millennial saint.

Carlo Acutis, who died of leukaemia in 2006 aged 15, has already been dubbed "the patron saint of the internet". On Saturday, he was beatified at a ceremony in the town of Assisi and moved one step closer to sainthood. The teenager recorded purported miracles online and helped run websites for Catholic organisations.

Acutis was placed on the path to sainthood after the Vatican ruled he had miraculously saved another boy's life. The Church claimed he interceded from heaven in 2013 to cure a Brazilian boy who was suffering from a rare pancreatic disease.He is believed to be the youngest contemporary person to be beatified - the last stage before sainthood. ...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54507064
 
Acutis was placed on the path to sainthood after the Vatican ruled he had miraculously saved another boy's life. The Church claimed he interceded from heaven in 2013 to cure a Brazilian boy who was suffering from a rare pancreatic disease.He is believed to be the youngest contemporary person to be beatified - the last stage before sainthood. ...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54507064

OK, the previous account I had read omitted mention of the Brazilian boy who was "miraculously cured" (important information, I would have thought), and I wondered what miracle Acutis had performed to merit beatification. I thought maybe he had recovered his priest's crashed hard drive or something, which would be setting the bar pretty low . . .
 
There was a spate of "water miracles" in 6th century Italy - miracles involving rains, floods and streams. Newly published research demonstrates these historical miracle accounts coincide with a period of unusually wet conditions in Italy.
Study: Ancient Italy's wet period coincides with stories of 'water miracles'

A research institute said Monday scientific data confirms north and central Italy had increased rainfall in the 6th century amid stories of "water miracles."

University of Pisa and the University of Warsaw researchers led the new study in collaboration with an international team, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History said in a press release Monday. ...

Saints bring down or stop violent rains, storms and floods through "water miracles," described in 6th-century accounts from the Apennine Penninsula, especially the Dialogues on the Miracles of the Italian Fathers attributed to Pope Gregory the Great.

The increased frequency of floods and extreme rainfall events, described in the report as "unusual hydroclimatic conditions," occurred during the same time that stories of "water miracles" increased, according to the study published in the journal Climate Change. ...

"In this study, geochemists, geologists, and climate specialists proved a climactic change that written sources only hinted at," first author of the paper Giovanni Zanchetta said ...

"In the 6th century, at least part of Italy really did become a land of torrential rains and floods," said Zanchetta ...

FULL STORY: https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2021/03/29/italy-rainfall-data-water-miracles/1411617045343/
 
Here are the bibliographic details and abstract of the published "water miracles" report. The full report is accessible at the link below.

Zanchetta, G., Bini, M., Bloomfield, K. et al.
Beyond one-way determinism: San Frediano’s miracle and climate change in Central and Northern Italy in late antiquity.
Climatic Change 165, 25 (2021).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-021-03043-x

Abstract
Integrating palaeoclimatological proxies and historical records, which is necessary to achieve a more complete understanding of climate impacts on past societies, is a challenging task, often leading to unsatisfactory and even contradictory conclusions. This has until recently been the case for Italy, the heart of the Roman Empire, during the transition between Antiquity and the Middle Ages. In this paper, we present new high-resolution speleothem data from the Apuan Alps (Central Italy). The data document a period of very wet conditions in the sixth c. AD, probably related to synoptic atmospheric conditions similar to a negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation. For this century, there also exist a significant number of historical records of extreme hydroclimatic events, previously discarded as anecdotal. We show that this varied evidence reflects the increased frequency of floods and extreme rainfall events in Central and Northern Italy at the time. Moreover, we also show that these unusual hydroclimatic conditions overlapped with the increased presence of “water miracles” in Italian hagiographical accounts and social imagination. The miracles, performed by local Church leaders, strengthened the already growing authority of holy bishops and monks in Italian society during the crucial centuries that followed the “Fall of the Roman Empire”. Thus, the combination of natural and historical data allows us to show the degree to which the impact of climate variability on historical societies is determined not by the nature of the climatic phenomena per se, but by the culture and the structure of the society that experienced it.

SOURCE (And Full Article): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-021-03043-x#citeas
 
No doubt some "Covid Saints" will eventually emerge.

A Venezuelan doctor known for treating the poor during the Spanish flu pandemic a century ago has been beatified, a step toward sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church.

José Gregorio Hernández, who was born in 1864, is revered in the country as the "doctor of the poor". He died at the age of 54 in 1919, after being struck by a car in Caracas.

The beatification comes after the Church attributed a miracle to him for saving the life of a young girl.
Yaxury Solórzano survived after being shot in the head during an attempted robbery in 2017. Doctors said that, if she survived, she would be permanently disabled.mBut the girl, who was 10 at the time, made a full recovery and was able to walk just weeks after leaving hospital. Her mother, according to Church records, prayed to Hernández to save her.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-56929767
 

Judge Slain in Sicily by Mafiosi Put on Path to Sainthood

A magistrate slain by mobsters in Sicily and praised by two popes has been beatified by the Roman Catholic church Sunday in the last formal step before possible sainthood.

220px-Giudice_Rosario_Livatino.jpg


Rosario Livatino was gunned down on a Sicilian highway outside as he drove to work in 1990. Three years later, during a pilgrimage to Sicily, Pope John Paul II hailed him a "martyr of justice and, indirectly, of the Christian faith."

Four gunmen shot at Livatino's car as he drove without bodyguards. The alleged masterminds and attackers were eventually arrested and convicted.

Livatino was beatified in a ceremony in a cathedral in Agrigento. For the beatification, Livatino's blood-soaked shirt was taken from investigators' evidence deposits and put into a glass-enclosed reliquary, a holder of relics for faithful who want to venerate those beatified.

https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/vatican-mafia-judge-sainthood/2021/05/09/id/1020686/

maximus otter
 
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