The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show - Ariel Gore [73]
Within that tradition, stigmata has been reported in dozens of countries, and the recipients have ranged from Dominican priests to Poor Clare nuns and from Cuban teenagers to Midwestern grandfathers. There are famous saints such as Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Genoa, John of God, Rita of Cascia, Marie of the Incarnation, and Padre Pio. But laypeople get the stigmata, too. Irma Izquierdo was nineteen years old when she received the wounds. She’d been known at her school in the Consolacíon region of Cuba for being rather pious, but her classmates didn’t know that Irma saw strange winged beings in the school corridors. Shortly before Easter in 1956, she lost her appetite and started having vivid dreams filled with Catholic symbolism. She tried to ignore the visions, but she couldn’t ignore this: she suddenly “saw” the passions and the crucifixion in her mind’s eye with such clarity she felt herself to be fully present at the event. She experienced being nailed to the cross and pierced at her side as though it were all happening to her. Shaken, she sought medical help, but doctors told her she was hallucinating. In the days before Easter, the five classic wounds appeared on her hands, feet, and side.
One of the most famous current stigmatics is the moon-faced Giorgio Bongiovanni, a Catholic member of an Italian UFO cult who received the wounds on his hands and forehead during a visit to Fatima in 1989. His religious lesions can’t be explained by doctors and, according to several news reports, they appear and disappear at will.
Emiliano Aden, a young Argentinian stigmatic has described the prelude to his first episode, saying, “It felt like something was moving on my skin.” He then felt a burning sensation like heat from a fire. “I saw a tap in a garden and went to wet my head,” he recalled. “When the water touched me, I felt as if my head was opening.” At first, the lacerations on his wrists simply bled, but soon crosses appeared and the blood felt cold. Emiliano’s stigmata now appears intermittently. He describes the pain as “more like an inner pain, not borne from the wrists but from my heart.”
Another Argentinian stigmatic, Gladys Quiroga de Motta, was just a shy housewife before she started getting messages from Our Lady and received the wounds of Christ in the early 1980s. These days, Gladys entertains pilgrims and shares her messages from the Blessed Virgin Mary.
And on Ash Wednesday in 1993, Francis, a midwestern great-grandfather who uses only his first name, was asked by Jesus if he would accept suffering.
Be careful what you agree to.
Forty days later, swelling on the top and bottom of his hands broke open and bled profusely.
He ain’t the Messiah, but folks wait in line for hours to see him, and his healing powers are well-known to his devotees. In 1995, Kathy Crombie, a “marginal” Catholic who had “issues” with the church, took her teenaged son to see Francis on the suggestion of a friend. Chad Crombie had found a lump in his neck shortly after graduating from high school and been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Nothing to lose, Chad agreed to go and see the holy man in Flint, Michigan.
Kathy later described Francis’s wounds to a reporter as “huge—about the size of a silver dollar—deep, deep purple-red, scabbed-over wounds. On the back of his hands were Band-Aids and you could see blood under them.”
When Francis put his hand on Chad, he felt “a chill more electric than cold” that shot straight through him. He felt completely relaxed.
When mother and son got back in their car, they were overwhelmed by the smell of roses. Chad’s hand automatically went to his neck. And miraculously, the lump was gone.
Years later, there’s still no sign of the Hodgkin’s disease.
Now there’s something that