An Active Year for Miracles

The following story is by Christie Hadley of the Cincinnati Catholic Examiner:

This year is the 40th anniversary of the Congregation for the Cause of Saints, and it has been an active one for miracles. Three of the possible miracles that are currently being investigated have been in the news recently, one right here in Cincinnati.

According to an Enquirer Article published on May 10, 2009, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati has begun its first-ever investigation into a possible miracle attributed to someone who is up for sainthood.

The miracle, which occurred in 1989, was the healing of Tim Siemers, the chairman of Franklin Savings. Siemers had a massive hemorrhage in his brain, caused by a ruptured aneurysm. Every medical therapy the doctors attempted failed. And yet, he made a full recovery and is alive today to talk about it. The person Siemers and his family credit with his healing is the founder of the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor, Sister Frances Schervier. She has a special connection to Cincinnati as it was the order’s first site in the United States.

But Cincinnati is not the only archdiocese investigating miracles. Just last week, a Vatican representative landed in Wichita, Kansas to investigate the healing of Chase Kear. A young man of 20, Kear fell while pole vaulting in October 2008 suffering a traumatic brain injury. Within an hour of his arrival at the hospital his family, parish and hundreds of others were praying to Fr. Emil Kapaun for his intersession. He has sense made a near complete recovery from a broken skull. Kapaun has a special connection with Wichita, growing up in Pilsen, Kansas and becoming ordained by the archdiocese of Wichita in 1940. He became an Army Chaplain and died as a prisoner of the Korean War in 1951.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore is investigating the healing of 71-year-old Mary Ellen Heibel’s terminal cancer. In May of 2004, Heibel was told by Walter Reed Medical Center to “go home and die.” She was given six months to live with malignant tumors in her lungs, liver, stomach and chest. Not accepting a death sentence her friends and family began to pray to Fr. Francis Seelos for his help. Seelos was a pastor in Baltimore and Cumberland, Maryland in the mid-1800s and spent time at Heibel’s home parish, St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Annapolis. A month after starting the novena, a CT scan showed that she was tumor free. She has remained that way since 2005.

Being from a Protestant background, it was difficult for me to understand intercessions at first. This just wasn’t apart of my background, but I must say it has always fascinated me. So I looked into it a little bit more. Now I understand it to be a bit like networking. Especially in this economy, it is incredibly helpful if your resume is given to a potential employer by someone that employer already knows and respects. Intercession, to me, seems to work the same way. Your request is placed in front of God by someone He already knows and respects.

Through my research I discovered many Biblical passages that support the idea of intercession, including a powerful one from 1 Tim. 2:1–3 which states, “I urge then, first of all that petitions, prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving should be offered for everyone, for kings and others in authority, so that we may be able to live peaceful and quiet lives with all devotion and propriety. To do this is right, and acceptable to God our Savior.”

What a wonderful idea. When we’re in need we can ask not only our friends, family and parish to pray for us but we can also network a bit with the Saints. This can get our need seen by God with all the more oomph behind it.

God blesses us in so many ways. I’m just so grateful that we have miracles here in Cincinnati and elsewhere in the United States. It shows without question that God is with us and our prayers are answerd. Thanks be to God!

For more information: Sister Frances Schervier, Fr. Emil Kapaun, Fr. Francis Seelos, praying to Saints, sainthood process

Investigator for Vatican Finds Evidence of Miracle in Chase Kear's Survival

Investigator for Vatican finds enough to continue - Featured Story - Wichita Eagle

(Chase Kear's remarkabe recovery is being attributed to intercessory prayer made to Father Emil Kapaun. Father Kapaun is being considered for sainthood by the Vatican.)

The following excerpt is by Roy Wenzl of the Wichita Eagle:

The Vatican found enough evidence of a miracle in the survival of Chase Kear of Colwich that it intends to keep studying his survival, with an eye toward declaring it an official miracle, church officials say.

Declaring it a miracle would help determine whether Father Emil Kapaun of Pilsen will be canonized as a saint of the Catholic Church.

Andrea Ambrosi, a lawyer and investigator for the Vatican, visited family members and doctors for two Wichita-area families on Friday who believe the survival of their children during nearly lethal medical crises recently should qualify as miracles.

One of them involved Chase Kear, a 20-year-old Colwich athlete severely injured in October.

The Rev. John Hotze, judicial vicar for the Wichita diocese, is not allowed to say who or what families are being investigated for miracles. But he said there was one other "alleged miracle" in the Wichita area that Ambrosi studied during his time here.

With both families, Hotze said, Ambrosi met with the doctors involved and studied medical reports and X-rays.

"Afterward, the Vatican investigator said that in years of investigating miracles, he had never seen doctors who made such a compelling case for miracles occurring," Hotze said.

If the miracle is proven, it will significantly advance the chances that the church will declare Kapaun a saint, decades after he died a hero in a North Korean prison camp in 1951. The church requires miracles to elevate a person to sainthood.

Hotze has investigated Kapaun's proposed sainthood for eight years, which is only a fraction of the time the church has been considering whether to elevate Kapaun to sainthood.

American soldiers came out of prisoner-of-war camps in 1953 with incredible stories about Kapaun's heroism and faith. They said that in the fierce winter of 1950 and 1951, when 1,200 out of 3,000 American prisoners starved to death or died of illness in Camp 5 along the Yalu River, Kapaun kept hundreds of survivors alive by stealing food and by force of will.

Kapaun was assigned to the U.S. Army's Eighth Cavalry regiment, which was surrounded and overrun by the Chinese army in North Korea in October and November 1950. He stayed behind with the wounded when the Army retreated. He allowed his own capture, then risked death by preventing Chinese executions of wounded Americans too injured to walk.

To read complete story, please visit the following link: Chase Kear Miracle