Woman's cancer vanishes after prayers to 19th-century Maryland priest

http://www.baltimoresun.com/media/photo/2009-06/47757467.jpg
Mary Ellen Heibel, a parishioner at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in
Annapolis, wears a charm bearing a tiny bone fragment from Francis X.
Seelos, the priest to whom she turned in prayer when she learned that
she had terminal cancer. (Baltimore Sun photo by Karl Merton Ferron /
June 24, 2009)

By Arthur Hirsch
June 28, 2009
http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/bal-to.fa.saint28jun28,0,473746....

The treatment for terminal cancer that Annapolis resident Mary Ellen
Heibel took at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 2004 and early 2005 worked
beyond anyone's wildest hopes, wiping out malignant tumors in her lungs,
liver, stomach and chest. Her doctor did not expect it, nor could he
explain it.

Surely the outcome was remarkable, but was it - in the sense applied by
the Roman Catholic Church in such cases - a miracle?

In a few weeks, a committee appointed by the Archdiocese of Baltimore
will begin exploring that question, examining 11 witnesses, including
Heibel, pressing her doctors, nurses and friends in an attempt to
understand what happened. The findings gathered at the archdiocese's
downtown offices will be shipped to Rome, and ultimately will bear on a
campaign to have Francis X. Seelos, the 19th-century Maryland priest to
whom Heibel had turned in prayer for help, canonized as a saint.

For only the fifth time in its 200-year history, the archdiocese has
launched a test of faith and science to help the Vatican determine
whether one of its own was not only exemplary in virtue during life but
now has the power in death to intercede with God. In the end, it will be
up to the pope to rule on whether Seelos is to join the men and women
held up by the church through the centuries as models of holiness.

"Did what happened come about by the intercession of Blessed Seelos?
That's what we have to discover," said the Rev. Gilbert J. Seitz, the
judicial vicar who heads the committee, emphasizing that its job is not
to judge the case but to gather information in a process akin to taking
a deposition.

The Rev. William Graham, a canon lawyer and member of the committee,
says the purpose of the examination is to determine what took place and
whether it can be attributed to natural causes.

Heibel and her husband, John, parishioners at St. Mary's Roman Catholic
Church in Annapolis, await word from the archdiocese on when they should
appear before the committee to tell their story and answer questions.

In the meantime, they continue their weekly routine at St. Mary's of
early morning prayers seeking the help of Seelos, the Redemptorist
priest who in several ways remains present at the church where he served
two brief stints in the mid-1800s. The German native beams from stained
glass in the nave, watches from a photograph on a wall near the church
office, sits in a statue on a bench in the garden. A chip of his
breastbone the shape and size of a pinkie fingernail is preserved in a
reliquary kept in the rectory.

For years Seelos - who also served as a pastor in Baltimore and
Cumberland - has been a physical presence for Heibel, 71, a slim mother
of four, grandmother of 11. In a brass necklace reliquary about the size
of a silver dollar, the retired antiques appraiser wears a fragment of
his bone no longer than the "L" in relic.

She has carried Seelos with her this way since early 2003, when she was
diagnosed with and underwent surgery for esophageal cancer at Walter
Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. About a year later, doctors
there found that the surgery had missed a cancerous lymph node. So began
a seven-week, five-day-a-week regimen of radiation and chemotherapy.

She prayed with Seelos. She asked fellow parishioners to do the same.

A reputation is honed

Seelos' following had been building for decades. In New Orleans
especially, where he died at the age of 48 in 1867 of yellow fever while
tending to victims of the disease, his reputation was enhanced in the
early 1970s. That's when a local woman who had been diagnosed with
terminal liver cancer was found free of the disease after prayers
calling on Seelos. An investigation similar to the one in Heibel's case
affirmed this as a miracle, and Seelos was beatified in a ceremony in
Rome in 2000.

The priest known as the "cheerful ascetic" would thereafter be
officially known as "Blessed Seelos," standing one difficult step away
from sainthood.

The difference would be one more miracle, one more case confirmed by a
process that has been developing for centuries, as saint-making
transformed from a spontaneous phenomenon to a formal procedure giving
ultimate canonization authority to the pope.

The method used today reflects a process developed since the 13th
century, reformed in the 1600s, enshrined in canon law in the early 20th
century and reformed again under Pope John Paul II in 1983.

While elements of the process have been simplified and made more speedy,
that is only in relative terms; declaring saints remains a painstaking
affair. The rare candidate on the fast track might move from start to
sainthood in just under 30 years, Seitz said. The longer causes go on
and on. Hundreds stall at the midpoint of beatification, either for lack
of a verifiable miracle or the support necessary to bring such
information to the Vatican's attention.

Canonization, Seitz said, is "the way the church identifies those who
have lived uniquely and remarkably their life in Christ. ... In their
single-mindedness, in their dedication to Christ, they could be a model."

Christian virtue affirmed by an exhaustive biographical study is only
part of the profile. Since at least the fifth century, these celebrated
figures have been associated with some magical event, some evidence of
supernatural power.

"The miracle is an indication that the saint is in heaven, this person
is already holy and has led a holy life," said the Rev. James Martin,
associate editor of the Catholic weekly America and author of My Life
with the Saints. "It's an indication to the church that this person is
praying for us in heaven."

The Rev. Byron Miller of New Orleans, Seelos' church-appointed advocate
in the United States and director of the Seelos Center, is confident
that his man has the stuff of holiness.

"I don't want to sound smug," he said, but "we'll get Seelos where he
needs to be. I really do think it's a matter of when. There's nothing I
can see that would prevent Father Seelos from becoming a saint."

A priest arrives in Baltimore

After moving from Germany to the United States in the 1840s, Seelos was
ordained at St. James in Baltimore, and from 1854 to 1863 served as
pastor at St. Alphonsus in Baltimore, Sts. Peter and Paul in Cumberland
and St. Mary's in Annapolis. By all accounts, he stood out for his good
humor.

Monsignor Arthur Bastress of St. Alphonsus speaks of Seelos' popularity
with parishioners there, evident in the lines for his confessional that
commonly stretched around the nave. While other priests "could give them
a tongue-lashing, well, he didn't do that. He would be more
compassionate, or gentle or cheerful," Bastress said.

Kind, compassionate, good-humored, martyred in service to the sick -
Seelos was all that. But, a saint?

Heibel turned to him when her ordeal of treatment began at Walter Reed.
She sought his help when she got the word in spring 2004 that the cancer
had returned, turning up in five places where it had not been found
before. That May, her doctor at Walter Reed told her that she probably
had six months to live.

"I went home and started doing my own research" on the Internet, Heibel
said. She found out about a chemotherapy trial for esophageal cancer
patients being conducted at Hopkins. While she did not qualify for the
trial, Dr. Michael K. Gibson, agreed to treat her with a new combination
of two established drugs. He began with modest expectations.

"I told her this could be controlled but it could not be cured," said
Gibson, now an assistant professor of medicine and oncology at the
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. At best, he thought, the
treatment could double her life expectancy to 12 months.

"You try to be hopeful but realistic," he said.

He said records show that Heibel took weekly treatments at Hopkins
starting on June 22, 2004, with CT scans about every three months. As
long as there was cancer present, her treatments would go on.

A call to a special prayer

In January 2005, a friend who had recently converted to Catholicism
suggested that the Heibels ask their pastor to begin a schedule of
novenas - prayers for a particular purpose recited nine days
consecutively or once a week for nine weeks - appealing to Seelos.

As they recall, they began on a Wednesday in late January, stepping into
a conference room with then-pastor Rev. Denis Sweeney as the Seelos
reliquary - a metal ornamental piece that looks roughly like an
elaborate candlestick - was brought in from the rectory and placed on
the table. They prayed, addressing themselves to the "Divine Physician"
and asking for help from Seelos, who had been given "the gift of your
healing."

They cannot remember exactly how many times they prayed in this way
before Heibel underwent the scan of Feb. 8, a week after her final
chemotherapy treatment.

Gibson said his recollection is that the cancer must have been
diminishing along the way, but this scan showed something extraordinary.
While there was a possibility that residue of the disease remained,
Gibson said, "all the other stuff she had went away."

He departed from his usual practice and left a message on Heibel's
answering machine.

In the previous article, Hoodoo  <hoo...@spamcop.net> wrote: