A miracle by any other name
An ailing girl's amazing recovery may offer proof needed for Francis Seelos' canonization.
Sunday January 25, 2004
Staff writer
Deep in the lonely hours of one terrible August night three years ago, Dr. Ann Kay Logarbo quietly slipped to the bedside of her great-niece, Caroline Crouch, in the intensive care unit of Children's Hospital. Sedated and on life-support, Caroline lay near death, probably already severely brain-damaged by a massive viral infection. She was 6 years old.
Logarbo, a pediatrician -- Caroline's doctor as well as her great-aunt -- bent to Caroline's ear and whispered an instruction:
"I told her, 'Baby, I'm here because God sent me here. He told me he's going to send you back to us. Come back, baby. Follow God's angels back home.
" 'I need to know you're coming back, baby. So if you can hear me, and I know you can, turn your head to me.'
"And that little girl, with tubes going in her every which way, she turned her head just a bit in my direction," Logarbo recalled recently. "The tech in the room about fell off the chair."
What happened that day and days afterward has convinced Caroline's family that they witnessed a miracle in the literal, theological sense of the word: a divine intervention that reversed a naturally unfolding disaster.
Her story has piqued the interest of the Catholic Church.
Because Caroline's family implored the help of Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos, among many heavenly figures, friends of the 19th century New Orleans priest say the story of Caroline's recovery is their best hope yet to be recognized as the decisive second miracle that might lead the Catholic Church to formally declare that Seelos is a saint.
But Caroline's case is more complicated than that.
Her illness and recovery illuminate also the varieties of faith, whether the kind embraced by Caroline's grateful family, who testify to being touched by a transcendent force that loved a sick child; or, alternatively, a belief shared by some of Caroline's doctors that the mystery of Caroline's recovery is testament to the beautiful, sometimes inexplicable, resilience nature has given children.
In any case, they all agree on this: The story of Caroline Crouch is astonishing.
Seizures begin
Barely 48 hours before Logarbo's pre-dawn visit, Caroline had been taken by helicopter to Children's Hospital from a small hospital in Amite in the grip of uncontrollable seizures. Doctors quickly determined she was being overwhelmed by an onrushing viral infection, probably either meningitis or encephalitis.
The older of Bryan and Mary Ann Crouch's two daughters, Caroline was in the last weeks of summer before entering first grade. She was also recovering from sinus surgery and lately had been running a fever with a viral rash.
But several of her doctors had seen her and pronounced her basically sound, said her mother, a sixth-grade public school teacher.
Certainly, Mary Ann Crouch said, doctors concurred there was no reason to opt out of an upcoming vacation on the Florida Gulf Coast. Besides, plenty of medical care would be on hand, she said. Logarbo, Caroline's great-aunt and doctor, would be there. So would several of Logarbo's brothers. All of them were doctors.
But about 2:30 a.m. on Aug. 4, 2001, the morning they were to leave, Mary Ann Crouch tried to rouse Caroline to force-feed her some water and give her a dose of medicine.
"She was limp," Mary Ann said. "I pulled her up off the bed, and she just fell back in my arms. Then she stopped breathing. That's when I started to scream."
Frantic, the Crouches scooped up Caroline's 4-year-old sister, Mallory, and dashed through the dark to Amite's Hood Memorial Hospital.
Mary Ann drove; Bryan clutched Caroline to his chest, his mouth over hers, pushing his own breath into her lungs and occasionally compressing her chest, hoping to push some blood out of her heart, Mary Ann remembered.
Caroline's seizures began as she reached the hospital.
Seizures are fierce electrical storms that sweep the brain. Chaotic and destructive, their energy starves the brain of oxygen. If prolonged, said Dr. Stephen Deputy, a neurologist at Children's Hospital, seizures batter and permanently damage neural connections, in the worst cases leaving patients profoundly brain-damaged, unable to recognize the world or provide the most minimal care for themselves.
At Children's, Deputy struggled much of the first day to control Caroline's continuing seizures, finally pushing her into a drug-induced coma as a solution of last resort.
By then she had been wracked for 12 to 14 hours, Logarbo said.
"To seize beyond 20 minutes is getting bad. To seize uncontrollably for 14 hours is a disaster," said Dr. Joanne Gates, another of Caroline's doctors.
A private, professional consensus began to form rather early among Caroline's attending physicians, several said later -- and among Logarbo and her brothers: Sedated, dependent on a mechanical ventilator for her next breath and swept by a devastating virus, Caroline's chances for recovery were slim.
And given the near-certainty of the accumulating brain damage brought on by a half-day of seizures, chances she would return to a normal life were even slimmer.
"She's not going to make it," a colleague confided to Logarbo privately. "And you and I both know it's better if she doesn't."
At one point, one of Caroline's doctors took Mary Ann Crouch aside to prepare her. "They said, if Caroline lives she will probably be a vegetable, and you need to plan to take about a year off from school and get prepared for a new kind of life," Mary Ann said.
Prayers to Seelos urged
By that time, the waiting room of the pediatric intensive care unit at Children's had become the gathering point for Caroline's large and devout family.
Catholic on Mary Ann's side, evangelical on Bryan's, the family stormed heaven according to their traditions, Mary Ann and others said.
Mary Ann's mother, Ursula Sherman, said she contacted every friend of every denomination and asked that Caroline be placed on every prayer list they knew of. Priests dropped by. Preachers dropped by.
In groups and individually, the Catholic wing of the family said rosaries, repeatedly beseeching the Blessed Virgin to intercede with Christ on Caroline's behalf.
Nor was that all. "We were praying to the Blessed Virgin, to St. Joseph -- you name it. We were praying to everyone we could think of," Logarbo said.
About midafternoon on Monday, about 36 hours after Caroline's admission, Logarbo's mother-in-law called from Baton Rouge and suggested prayers to Seelos, seeking his intercession.
"I'd never heard of him," Logarbo said. Indeed, it took some research to learn that in New Orleans there was a Seelos Center, a group of volunteers who memorialize the life and work of Seelos and hope to see him canonized a saint.
An uncommonly popular and devout Bavarian priest, Seelos worked among German immigrants in New Orleans for a year before his death by yellow fever in 1867. In 2000, after a formal study of his life and virtue, Pope John Paul II declared him blessed, one step from sainthood. As part of that process, the Vatican found that prayers to Seelos led to the unexplained disappearance of advanced cancer in Angela Boudreaux, a Gretna housewife, in 1966.
The church requires one more miracle to complete the process for canonization.
Seelos volunteers are regularly summoned to local hospitals, where they bless patients who ask with a replica of the Redemptorist missionary's cross.
"They said they could not get a volunteer out to bless Caroline until the next day but that they'd begin praying for her immediately," Logarbo said.
About that same time, Logarbo found later, Caroline's medical chart records that she drew her first spontaneous breaths over the ventilator.
A miracle needed
In their own ways, each of the people who loved Caroline was carrying on his or her own struggle, alternately praying, encouraging each other, sometimes weeping in solitude, several members of the family said.
For Mary Ann, time became a blur. But at some point on the second or third day of the crisis, she said, she felt swept by a deep reassurance.
Someone had pressed into her hands "God Calling," a book of devotionals that seemed to comfort her on every page, Mary Ann said.
"It said God wanted wonderful things for me, and I knew that it would be true, whether I got Caroline back as a vegetable or not. I can't explain it, but I was sure I'd be able to deal with whatever he was going to do," she said.
Separately, in the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday, the third day, Logarbo withdrew to be alone and pray. Her professional training told her Caroline was all but gone, she recalled later.
They needed a miracle, she thought. Nothing less would do.
"There was just nothing there to work with, medically," she said.
Alone, Logarbo said she experienced a crushing chest pain so unnerving she self-diagnosed a heart attack, "replaced by a fullness and a sense, not heard, but distinctly felt, that God was speaking to me."
"And what he said, was 'Get up and go see her.' "
At that point, she said, Logarbo knew with full confidence that Caroline would survive. It remained only to slip into her room and call Caroline back home.
"I was a faithful person before, but not with the faith like I have now," she said.
From that morning forward, Caroline's records document a steady, unexpected recovery, Caroline's family said.
On Tuesday, the evening of Logarbo's visit, Caroline lay calmly awake, taking in her surroundings and acknowledging commands, according to her medical records.
On Wednesday she spoke and took some food. On Thursday she sat up.
She began to recognize faces. She wrote her name and remembered her favorite songs. She ate. She walked.
Eleven days after her admission, she was discharged, and but for some residual "easily controlled" epilepsy, remains essentially untouched by her ordeal, Deputy said.
She began first grade a few days behind her classmates.
Decisive intervention
Today, Caroline lives with a mild form of cystic fibrosis diagnosed several months before her illness.
And a tragedy more terrible than Caroline's illness befell the family in September 2003, when Bryan Crouch died of a sudden, undiagnosed heart arrhythmia while on the job as an air-conditioning technician, leaving the family fatherless.
Yet in the months after Caroline's release, Mary Ann Crouch came to believe firmly that Seelos' intervention had been decisive for Caroline. They are untroubled, they say, by her remaining cystic fibrosis.
"We didn't pray that her cystic fibrosis be cured," Logarbo said. "We asked that she be given back to us without any neurological deficits. We were praying for life, and praying for quality of life. And that's what we got."
In the spring of 2002 the family, fulfilling a pledge that if Caroline were healed they would proclaim their gratitude, approached the Seelos Center with the full story of her recovery.
"Every time I wondered whether we should be doing this, I'd get a little nudge," Crouch said.
In what one person might regard as mere coincidences, Crouch saw signs pointing to Seelos, they said.
For example, Caroline was released from the hospital on the feast of the Assumption. Seelos served and is buried at St. Mary's Assumption Church.
And this past November, about the time she was praying for guidance, Mary Ann Crouch opened a suitcase of her husband's clothes and found a prayer card to Seelos. She knew it was in there somewhere, she said. But its very prominence in a place it had never been before -- "it was sitting right on top" -- suggested to her that Bryan was signaling her to proclaim Seelos' help.
Intrigued, the Seelos Center listened to family's story, then forwarded a summary to the Rev. Antonio Marrazzo, the Vatican-based Redemptorist priest whose job is to make the best possible case for Seelos in Rome.
Marrazzo has asked for a full set of medical records, which Logarbo recently prepared for his scrutiny. "He sent a very encouraging letter," said the Rev. Byron Miller, who heads the Seelos Center. "He didn't say, 'You're wasting your time, go look for something else.'
"At the moment, I think this is our best shot."
By the end of February, Caroline's full medical record, complete with physicians' transcribed notes, will be at the Vatican for scrutiny by Marrazzo, and perhaps later by the saint-makers at the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Miller said.
Different interpretations
But the lesson of Caroline's recovery takes different forms, depending on the observer.
Among Caroline's family -- including Logarbo, the pediatrician -- there is the firm conviction that "there is no medical reason this child should be normal."
Her recovery, they say, is literally miraculous.
"I sense that Mary's prayers to her son saved Caroline," said Logarbo, recalling their entreaties to the Blessed Virgin. "And it was Seelos' prayers that gave her back to us whole.
"Everything is part of a plan," she said. "And God's plan was to give Caroline back to us whole so Seelos could be made a saint."
Her other physicians, meanwhile, prefer to interpret Caroline's gratifying recovery as a breathtakingly rare, but natural, event -- perhaps unexplainable, but not unheard of, and not necessarily supernatural.
For one thing, as several said, children have astonishing recuperative powers. And encephalitis "produces a very wide and variable range of outcomes," said Deputy, her neurologist.
"I'm thrilled for her recovery, and I wouldn't have predicted she'd do this well," he said. "But to say this is a one-time case, absolutely unprecedented? I couldn't say that."
Indeed, in the course of a career every physician sees a very few cases that defy reasonable expectation, said Gates, who recently retired.
"Do we understand them? No. Do we know they happen? Absolutely. We've all seen them," she said.
"I think things happen for which there is no explanation. And I must admit I'm not sure whether any of us can say for sure whether it's one thing or another. These are things that happen, and we say that they're miraculous because they're unusual and they surprise us.
"Whether they are miraculous in the theological sense, I don't know.
"But inexplicable? Yeah, I'll take that one."
School boasts history, miracles
By ANGELA M. HAUSER
Special to the Southwest Daily News
Academy of the Sacred Heart in Grand Coteau is not only a place of rich history but the site of a miracle. Sacred Heart, founded in 1821, is the second oldest school west of the Mississippi.
Sister Madeleine Sophie Barat founded the Society of the Sacred Heart in 1800 in France. The congregation came to the United States in 1818 under the direction of Sister Philippine Duchesne who sent two nuns to Louisiana.
Mother Eugenie Aude and Sister Mary Layton left St. Louis on a steamboat in August 1821. When they arrived at Plaquemine, they rode in an ox cart and flat boat to reach Bayou Teche. They rode on horseback to the home of Mrs. Charles Smith in Grand Coteau.
Smith donated a house and land to the sisters to build a Sacred Heart Academy. News of the new school spread and by the end of the first year there were 27 students. Today there are over 200 schools all over the world.
The chapel for the school was originally built in the gothic style with a spiral staircase leading to the choir loft. The altar's gothic spires were replaced when the sanctuary was renovated in 1970.
The style has changed over the years but some of the original architecture is still there. There are stalls along the sides of the sanctuary where the sister said the Divine Office and sang antiphons. An antiphon is where nuns on one side of the church would sing a line of prayer, and the other side would respond in kind. The students sat in the middle.
The sisters of Sacred Heart were a cloistered community who observed a large part of their day in silence. They listened to spiritual readings during meals but we allowed time for recreation.
A nun sat at an elevated desk in the classroom and presided over the girls. Each Monday their behavior the previous week would be addressed in front of the community.
Each girl would receive a card that stated whether her behavior was good or bad. These cards are framed in the old schoolroom in the Le Petit Museum.
Visitors to the museum can step back into time and see how the nuns and girls lived. There is the habit the sisters wore with the fluted bonnet, photos, letters, an old hand crank printing press. One can visit an old schoolroom, kitchen, infirmary. And of course there is the Shrine Room.
Sister Barbara Moreau tells the story of the miracle at Grand Coteau.
"Mary Wilson was a young novice who was very ill," began Moreau. "Probably today she would be diagnosed with cancer of the throat. She had not eaten for days and the community had begun a novena to St. John Berchmans. One morning the sister in charge of the infirmary went to Mass while Mary prayed. She felt a presence and asked if it was St. John Berchmans. He answered yes he was, and told her she would get better. When the sister came back she found Mary sitting on the side of her bed."
Mary's dream was to become a nun and she was sent to Louisiana because of her delicate health. When she became ill Dr. Campbell of Opelousas came to Sacred Heart to examine her.
Mary was diagnosed in December 1866 with malignant cancer from her throat into her stomach. The doctor said she would not live long. She was bedridden, unable to eat or drink, and on her deathbed when the apparition appeared to her.
"The doctor came the next day and was surprised to see her downstairs," continued Sister Moreau. "He said this was truly a miracle because nothing he had done would have made her well. The Catholic church uses a miracle as a process to sainthood. There have to be three verified miracles with documentation. The church recognized this as a place of miracle and apparition. Other places have had miracles, but a miracle and an apparition in the same place recognized by the church is rare. The first apparition was Dec. 14, 1866. The second was January 1867, when St. John Berchmans told Mary she would die before her first vows. It's believed she died of an aneurysm or hemorrhage. Mary died on August 17,1867."
Posted: March 30, 2004
Jesus is on our fireplace Apr 4 2004
Lucy Ballinger, Wales on Sunday
GOOD Lord!
A Welsh couple believe Jesus' latest miracle has happened in their living room!
Rose-Mary and David Gower found this picture of Christ on their living room fireplace last week.
"The face of Christ appeared on Thursday and I know it was not there three or four days previously," said Rose-Mary.
"I do not believe in spirits coming back from the dead and think there must be some sort of natural explanation for what is happening. But my husband is a scientist and he is very sceptical."
The artist, who does ghost tours of her house in Treuddyn, outside Mold, says this is the latest in a run of supernatural images to appear there.
"On January 2, 1999 the first word appeared on the wall," said Rose-Mary. "It was the Welsh for 'peace be with you'. In that first month we had about 20 words come and go.
"Since then pictures, crosses and Welsh words have been appearing all the time on the wall and around the fireplace in a brownish stain.
"They come and go. The words always seem to have a virtuous or religious connotation.
"Watching the fireplace in our house is as entertaining as watching the television!"
The couple have tried in vain to make the living room more cosy for day-to-day use by covering up the evidence of their spooky housemates.
"I have tried to paint over the words and crosses," said Rose-Mary. "I mean, we do have to live here! But they still appear."
The grandmother also claims they share their house with the ghost of a monk, they have christened Brother Adolphus, nicknamed Brother Doli, and that furniture and ornaments "go walkabout", appearing in places they should not be.
But this is not the first time supernatural happenings at the house have come to light.
Seven years ago, an Irish couple reported seeing the Virgin Mary on their fields, and claimed the vision cured them of their ailments.
Rose-Mary said: "Just after we moved here the vision appeared, then people started coming to our field gate and seemed to report to having been healed after that."
Ghanaians flock to see 'miracle' - Thousands of people in Ghana's capital, have been thronging to a Catholic Church where they claim the image of Jesus Christ has appeared on a wall - Nov/3/04
Chain of prayers built for Jeanna worldwide - In two month's time, 15-year-old Jeanna Giese's recovery from rabies has been deemed so triumphant that believers around the world have attributed it to the miracle of prayer. 12/11/04
Faith and Healing - 'Miracle' cures suggest to some a linkage of spiritual and medical - 12/12/04
Church workers recover rotting bodies at Indian Marian shrine - In a Dec. 29 statement, basilica officials noted that about 2,000 pilgrims attending Mass were "miraculously saved" when the surging waves stopped at the gates of the shrine compound.
Filipinos flock to Christ statue - The faithful, many of them barefoot and in maroon tunics, surged to get near the religious icon in the belief it has miraculous powers.
Madonnina di Pantano - In 1995 a phenomena occurred that could be said to be paranormal; a miracle which left national public opinion literally astounded and which has set off number debates within the Italian and foreign atholic environment and even caught the attention of the Holy Father.
ICON WEEPS ANEW - More than 100 people of various faiths and ages descended upon the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of St. Sophia yesterday to witness The "Miraculous, Myrrh-weeping Icon of St. Anna." - 9/20/05
No blood, sweat or tears - An Italian committee is causing uproar by debunking a host of the nation's favourite religious 'miracles', writes Barbara McMahon - 10/6/05
Our Lady of Fatima and the Miracle Candle Dripping Images
Fascinating reports are coming forward in the news.... "The Virgin Mary" cheese sandwich image, which created some interesting press. "Virgin Mary" images on tree trunks, and just recently, the statue of "Our Lady" crying blood in front of a Catholic Church in Sacramento, Ca. Cynthia Long wants to share the amazing wax images recently dripping off of a drip less candle that she was nudged to share with the world.
(PRWEB) December 21, 2005 -- Intriguing reports are coming forward in the news.... "The Virgin Mary" cheese sandwich image, which created some interesting press. Also, "The Virgin Mary" images on tree trunks, and just recently, a statue of "Our Lady" crying blood outside of a Catholic Church in Sacramento, Ca. How about fascinating wax images recently dripping off of a drip less candle that Cynthia Long was nudged to share with the world?
Six years ago, something remarkable happened when Cynthia Long traveled with family members to Fatima, Portugal to visit the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima. While sitting on the steps of the Fatima shrine, Cynthia noticed an alcove with an incredible bright light shimmering from that space. Cynthia called to her sister and both rushed over to the alcove area where they witnessed many unusually bright candle flames lit by countless visitors.
"The brilliant flames took our breath away! It was an incredible and powerful light I've not experienced before. We took the candles home for years and gifted to those in need of healing support."
Experiences and fascinating stories came pouring in, and remarkably, the candle flame has brought immense comfort, various levels of healing, and some answers to unanswered questions."
Cynthia adds that she was drawn to research the history of candles which dates back to 3000 B.C. and uncovered more interesting information, including the miracles at Fatima, in Portugal. During the 1951 gathering at Fatima, Portugal, one million people came together in that small village, holding one million candles in vigil, that, itself, tells the story of the divine power of candle flames. What is the true purpose of this ancient ritual? Cynthia believes most people have lost those sacred answers, but many still quietly gravitate, like holy magnets, to candles during life's difficult moments.
"A few years ago, as I sat next to the sacred candle flame after meditation and prayer, I heard "Share this gift with the world." I waited months before proceeding as I was confused with the very unusual request and needed more information and guidance. Shortly after, precise guidance came pouring in, giving me insight and a lighted way."
The sacred candle flame has been passed forward, all over the U.S. Cynthia continues, "Recently, when I personally light the drip less candles, the wax from the candle is dripping incredible images, esp. when I'm in meditation, prayer or giving a spiritual counseling session. It's truly amazing! I've not seen anything like this! Saints, like St. Joseph, doves, angels and other images are appearing. I want to share this unique experience as candles continue to be a beacon of light in the world."
The blessed candle can be purchased on Cynthia's website.
Cynthia M. Long
925/236-1828
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Something wonderful happened - Once miracles were supernatural events, utterly inexplicable. But, really, you don't need divine intervention for a Lazarus-like recovery, or unexpected joy. Craig Taylor investigates five modern miracles. - 12/24/05
Inexplicata
The Journal of Hispanic Ufology
March 6, 2007
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Date: 03.05.07
MEXICO: Image of BVM Weeps Blood
The EFE news agency reported on March 3, 2007 that for the past ten days, hundreds of people have filed past the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in a humble abode in the city of Nuevo Laredo. They claim that the image puts forth blood, although a priest has asked the faithful to wait until a scientific investigation is carried out.
Maria Guadalupe Salazar Martinez, the image's owner, says that the the Virgin began weeping tears on Ash Wednesday and has continued doing so ever since.
The story has drawn hundreds to Nuevo Laredo, a city that borders Laredo, Texas, on the U.S. side, to visit the Salazar house. Salazar, 33, has been a devotee of Our Lady of Guadalupe for over a decade.
The woman, who lives with her husband in a wood, tin and cardboard shack, claims that on February 21, the day marking the start of Lent, the image of Our Lady began to weep "normal tears" that later turned to blood.
Father Luis Antonio Romo Esparza, a Nuevo Laredo parish priest, told EFE that after learning of the event, he visited the Salazar home to see the image for himself.
Romo Esparza declared himself unfit to rule on the existence of a miracle or not, adding: "Before qualifying it as a miracle, we need the approval of our bishop, Ricardo Watty, to conduct an investigation and scientifically ascertain the authenticity of these tears." Romo Esparza, however, did not dismiss the possibility that it could be a divine manifestation.
According to Catholic belief, the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared on December 12, 1531 before Juan Diego on Tepeyac hill, where a temple to an Aztec deity once stood.
(translation (c) 2007. S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Ana Luisa Cid).
Expecting miracles - Separate events in the South Bay to bring religious leaders who say supernatural healing for attendees is possible. - 3/17/07
Inexplicata
The Journal of Hispanic Ufology
June 18, 2007
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SOURCE: Universo Prohibido and EFE news agency
DATE: 06.17.07
ITALY: St. Gennaro's Blood Liquefies Before the Eyes of the Orthodox Patriarch
A "miracle" occurred in Naples this Sunday. The pulverized blood of Saint Gennaro, the patron of the city of Naples, liquefied in an extraordinary manner during a visit to the church by Chrysostom II, Patriarch of the Cypriot Church, as he paused before the reliquary that contains the blood allegedly belonging to the saint.
The strange phenomenon took place when Crescencio Sepe, Cardinal of Naples, showed the reliquary to Chrysostom, who is visiting the Vatican and had paid a visit to the southern Italian city.
According to religious sources, the cardinal noticed that the powdery blood had become liquid in an unprecedented event, as this phenomenon occurs only three times a year: once, on the Saturday preceding the first Sunday in May, another on September 19th and the third on December 16th, and always related to celebrations involving the patron saint and the city.
The May events commemorate the transfer of the saint's relics from Pozzuoli, in the province of Naples, to the city. September 19th is the anniversary of the saint's decapitation in the year 395, during the Christian persecutions of the Emperor Diocletian. December 16th commemorates the catastrophic eruption of the Vesuvius in 1631.
(Translation (c) 2007, IHU. Special thanks to Universo Prohibido)
All Copyrights © are acknowledged. Material reproduced here is for educational and research purposes only.
