GERMANY’S VILLAGE “SAINT”

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17957, 8 December 1932, Page 4

GERMANY’S VILLAGE “SAINT”

THERESA NEUMANN CHURCH INTERVENES BERLIN, Oct. S 3. Cardinal Faulhaber, of Bavaria, has intervened in the case of Theresa Neumann, .who has become a problem of supreme interest to both religious and scientific circles in Germany. At a conference of bishops this week it was decided to advise the family of this village girl to submit to her removal to a university clinic for four weeks.

Theresa Neumann, who made the secluded Bavarian village of Konnorsreuth world-famous some years ago, lin.s already been medically examined. The history of a young woman whoso saintly life and ecstatic visions recalled the stories of medieval saints, spread far beyond those circles immediately interested when signs of a stigmata appeared upon her body and the intensity of these visions woro corroborated by investigators whoso objective attitude precluded all suggestion of credulity. These external phenomena, which appear every Friday, increased at every Easter-tido, and only the simple piety of the young woman’s parents prevented the village from becoming tho goal of parties of pilgrims .whose one hope it was to gain admission to the cottage where she lives. Visits to her bedside were forbidden by the bishops more than a year ago, but on ordinary days it is still possible to seo Theresa Neumann, with gloved bauds, working in her garden or praying in the' church close by.

MEDICAL EXAMINATION A medical examination ordered by the church in 1927, which provided l that four trained nurses placed under oath should watch by her bedside ; night and day, resulted, in a confusion of the doctors and a triumph ; of believers in tho spiritual mission of j which Theresa believes herself to be tho chosen vehicle.

For the most astonishing claim of family, friends, and father confessor seemed to bo substantiated.' Dr, Beidel, in charge of tho case, supported by the professor of* psychiatry at Erlangen, stated that “Though her body functions normally, I am convinced that Theresa Neumann lives entirely without food. 1 Medicine cannot explain the phenomenon of Konnersreuth. ’’

Professor Evvald added as his contribution to the case that he believed science would in the course of time be able to explain the phenomena, but that for tho present ho, too, was at a loss. The medical examination has been ordered not to prove the genuineness of the stigmata, which has already been attested, but whether a human, being can really maintain life on an occasional nibble at the wafer present'ed at Holy Communion. An expert is also to be called in to see whether the words spoken during Theresa Neumann ’s trances are, as is believed, of Aramaic origin. The church lias now been forced to intervene owing to the power with which Theresa has subdued all personal antipathies by the magic of her porsonalityy. Visits to her bedside were fopbidden, not only because of tho constant attacks upon Catholics in Germany as a political body, but because North Germans, Protestants i and Jews, who came to scoff, remain-

ed to pray—astounding testimony to | tho power of the spirit.