Tongues-speaking girl puzzles Neapolitans

Press, 5 December 1985, Page 38

Tongues-speaking girl puzzles Neapolitans

NZPA-AFP Rome A Naples schoolgirl, aged 15, who began speaking in an unknown tongue during a religious lesson has struck the fear of God into superstitious Neapolitans, and experts are undecided whether they are witnessing a “miracle” or a publicity stunt. Psychiatrists, linguists, exorcists and para-psycho-logists who have visited her are baffled about why shy and studious Sara Sarracino has turned without warning into a modern-day Joan of Arc, ready to sally forth to announce her “message of truth.”

Only her brother, Marc, claims to be able to understand the language spoken by Sara which is said to be a mixture of Portuguese, Provencal (a dialect spoken in southern France), Spanish, and some Hebrew words.

In a television interview, Sara, a Pentecostalist like

her parents, said she had lost the use of Italian.

An expert, quoted in the “Corriere Della Sera” newsKr said the phenomenon m as glossolalia — the Biblical “speaking with tongues” — was observed in mediums and people in an abnormal mental state.

It was differently viewed as a diabolical manifestation or as a miracle, said the expert quoted by the newspaper. The Rev. Andrea Roesch, the only teacher of parapsychology officially employed by a Vatican university, said he had an “open but realistic” mind regarding the case.

"There is no explanation for glossolalia,” Father Roesch said, recalling the German peasant medium, Teresa Neumann, who intrigued Catholic experts in the 1950 s by her “testimony” about the death of Christ made in a Hebrew dialect

used in the first century A.D.

“Various theories are possible — conscious or uncon- > scious fraud, telepathy in- , volving a near or distant < person speaking the ‘mys- * terious’ language, or a per- • son of some other era. It j may be the result of ‘rein- .? carnation therapy’ in vogue “ today — a kind of hypnosis 1 provoking ‘psychic regres- « sion’ which I myself can * produce in a person. ■*

“In the last resort, there ’ is Divine inspiration, but all - I can say is that I have seen ’’ many impostors in my >' career,” Father Roesch said.

Neapolitans say Sara is a ) “sign from above” that a - momentous event is about to happen in the city. ; Opinions are divided as to whether this will take the < form of a record win on the f lottery, a defeat for the j city’s soccer club, or an eruption of Vesuvius.