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The Catholic Counter-Reformation in the 21st century |
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HE IS RISEN! |
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No 74 |
Editor : Abbé Georges de Nantes |
November 2008 |
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The Catholic Counter-Reformation in the 21st century |
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HE IS RISEN! |
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No 74 |
Editor : Abbé Georges de Nantes |
November 2008 |
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He will return with his immense
heart, with his heart of fire, his poor man's soul |
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A MIRACLE OF JOHN PAUL I On 23 November 2003, in the Cathedral of Belluno, the cause for the beatification and canonisation of John Paul I was solemnly introduced. The diocesan inquiry “on the virtues” ended on 10 November 2006, after two hundred and three sessions. A hundred and seventy witnesses were heard in the bishop’s houses of Belluno, Vittorio Veneto and Venice, and in Rome.
Among the numerous testimonies relating graces received through the intercession of John Paul I, the account of the healing of Giuseppe Denora arrived at the postulation in 2003. The inquiry on this case was opened on 14 May 2007. According to Mgr Giorgio Lise, vice-postulator of the cause, rector of the “Papa Luciani” Centre, this recognition gives hope that the Italian Pope will be raised to the altars more rapidly than either his predecessor, Paul VI, or his successor, John Paul II. A journalist met Giuseppe Denora (photo) at his home. He is a sixty year-old inhabitant of Altamura, a former bank clerk who was healed of a malignant stomach tumour sixteen years ago through the intercession of Pope Luciani. « His recovery was sudden, complete and lasting, so that his case led to the opening of an investigation into the prodigious happening that will now be studied by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. This is the first time that he has spoken of what happened in 1992, now that the inquiry set up by the diocesan ecclesiastical court of Altamura is about to terminate its sessions officially. He interrupts me while opening the front door of his house: « “We are a family like so many others. I have a newspaper clipping with a picture of Pope Luciani. Two, in fact. One is down in the garage… If you like, I will show it to you.” » « That is how he begins his story, without frills, from the garage of his home. “Here, you see, that is it. There is also the date: 1978, 3 September 1978. At the time I was with my wife at the Chianciano spa. On Sunday, 3 September, we decided to make a visit to Rome, and we ended up in St Peter’s Square at the Angelus of the new Pope. Pope Luciani appeared [at his window] and we watched him as he spoke. I said to my wife: You can see that he is a fine man indeed. I was impressed. An honest man. On my return I bought a copy of the Avvenire newspaper with his photograph and took it home. I even framed it… That one.” « And then? « “Well, he died soon after …” « As for you, what were your occupations in those years? « “My work, accounts to audit, my three children to raise… I have been married for thirty-seven years and I worked in the bank until 2000… In short: everyday things and sacrifices.” « And the other photo? “It is not here; it is upstairs. Come on up. Here, you see, he is in the red mozzetta and stole, one of his first photos as Pope… it is neither one of the best known nor even one of the finest. It is also from a newspaper clipping, a newspaper clipping the size of a business card that I somehow found on my desk in the office in 1990. Who could have put it there or how it got there, I do not know. « At that time, there was no more talk of this pope. I took the photo, I had an enlargement made and I hung it in my bedroom, there, between the window and the wardrobe, looking toward my side of the bed. There it stayed... not because I have some mania for religious things.” « You did it as an act of devotion? « “I did it, that is all. This photograph was left discreetly, as someone faithful and close to me would have done. Later too, when I fell sick, I would look at him, there in front of me. I have to be honest, though, I did not pray to him as you do to great saints, I did not turn to him as to a great saint… No, I spoke to him as man to man.” « When did you fall ill? « “At the beginning of 1992. I went to the doctor here in Altamura. He did a gastroscopy on me and told me: “Things are looking bad, very bad. You will have to go see a certain oncologist at Bari hospital”. The oncologist did another gastroscopy on me. Same diagnosis: Non-Hodgkin’s gastric lymphoma. I returned home and began chemotherapy”. « They did not operate? « “No. « At that time you were forty-four years old… « “Yes, I had just turned forty-four, and my youngest girl was then only four. In two months I was only a shadow of my former self. I no longer ate; I could hardly get out of bed. I lay there with the photo of this man in front of me. I looked at him and I let him in on my worries and I spoke to him in silence, and in this way I said to him: « “Look at the state that I am in, I cannot work any more... What can I do? Cecilia is still small... my children are in need. « “I am here, but you are up there, I would tell him other times, you know them well, those above, those that are higher up than you. You ask those who are higher up than you what I am to do, if they will help me, if they can help me. You tell them that.’” « “On the night of 27 March I felt that I was really dying from the pain. Convulsions in my stomach reached such a pitch that, I felt myself burning. I was also burning inside with the pain of having to leave my family. I looked at him and said again: « “If I have to die now who is going to be the breadwinner of these children…” » This request must have touched Albino Luciani who, when he was a child, walked kilometres to bring some bread to his brother, without touching it himself, although he was hungry! « “The room that night was lit up as always by the lampposts in the street… I saw him at the foot of the bed: a dark shadow that came forward and passed alongside me rapidly with a hand stretched out; a hand, an instant, and in that instant it was as if that fire I had inside was doused with water.” » When the Third Secret of Fatima was unveiled on 26 June 2000, our Father saw in John Paul I « the Pope of the Secret »: « We saw in an immense light that is God, something like the image that a mirror reflects when someone passes in front of it: a Bishop dressed in White – we had the presentiment that it was the Holy Father. » Here, the “light” is that of the lampposts in the street; it is thus a “shadow” that passes similarly… “Rapidly” as was the passage of John Paul I, the time of a brief pontificate. « I fell asleep and in the morning I woke rested, reborn. As I woke up I heard my wife calling me shaking me a bit: « “Pepe, Pepe, have you got a fever?” « I got up and went to have breakfast; the next day I went back to work. Nothing, from that moment on nothing more. I immediately felt just as I am now: in perfect health. That is how it happened.” « You immediately re-did the clinical examinations? « “Yes; seeing the results, the doctors wrote: « “Complete Remission. « You said nothing about the fact? « No. Why should I go around talking about it? They saw I had recovered, that was enough.” « You said nothing to your family? « “To my wife, yes, of course, she knew. In June, three months later, I went with her to Rome. I went down below St. Peter’s Basilica and I put a note near the tomb of Pope Luciani: « I am Giuseppe and I have come to thank you. « Since then I have done it every year. In 2003, it was the twenty-fifth anniversary of his election and I sent a letter of thanks also to the church in his birthplace. From that letter all this process began that I would never have imagined.” « Have you been to Canale d’Agordo? « “I went for the first time two years ago, in 2006. I stayed for a week. For the first time there I had in my hands the biography of this man who became Pope, and [I learned] also the dignity of that family, what they had suffered in the struggle to keep going… I saw the house where he was born; I met one of his nephews and his brother Berto”. « What did the Pope’s brother say to you? « “He said: I am glad that you are well. « “Listen, I do not know, I do not know how I snatched this favour from him. I certainly did not merit it, not at all. Perhaps it was the way I asked him… I do not know. Today I still ask myself: why, why did he come all the way down here, just for me…” « On the way home, before my departure, Giuseppe goes into a bakery and comes out with a packet of tarallucci biscuits: « “Taste how good they are, take them back to Rome. One thing, however, I still want to say: do not write things I have not said. You know how people are; they get all kinds of things into their head, even about us… I have never done anything extraordinary”. » (Excerpt from an article in the quarterly review Humilitas, year xxv, no 4, October 2008, p. 12-13, column: “Towards the Beatification”, “Thank You, Pope Luciani!” by Stéphanie Falasca, which we have translated from Italian) Now that all has been gathered together for the recognition of a miracle, we can hope that the beatification of Pope Luciani will not be long delayed. On 27 June 2008, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints signed the decree De Validitate, which validates the acts of the diocesan inquiry and opens the Roman phase of the cause, with a view to establishing the exercise of heroic virtues of the Servant of God, Albino Luciani.
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