GERMAN “SAINT”

Taranaki Daily News, 23 December 1932, Page 14

GERMAN “SAINT”

ECSTATIC VISIONS. CASE OF THERESA NEUMANN., 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 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 Konnersreuth world-famous some years ago, has already been medically examined. The history of a young Woman whose 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, were corroborated by investigators whose objective attitude precluded all suggestion of credulity. These external phenomena, which appear every Friday, increased at every Easfer-tide, and only the simple piety of the young woman’s parents prevented the village from, becoming the 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, blit , on ordinary days it is still possibly to see Theresa Neumann, .with gloved hands, working in her garden or praying in the church close by. A medical examination ordered by the church in 1927, which provided that four trained nurses ; placed underoath' should watch by her bedside night and day, resulted in a confusion of the doctors and a triumph of believers in the spiritual mission of which Theresa believes herself to be the chosen vehicle.

For the most astonishing claim . of family, friends and father confessor seemed to be substantiated. Dr. Seidel, in charge of the 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. Medicine cannot explain the phenomenon .of Konnersreuth.”

Professor Ewald added as his contribution to the case that he believed science would, in the course of time, be able to explain the phenomena. 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 presented at Holy Communion. The church has now been forced to intervene owing to the power with which Theresa has subdued all personal antipathies by the magic of her personality. Visits to her bedside were forbidden, not only because of the constant attacks upon Catholics in Germany as a political body, but because North Germans, Protestants and Jews, who came to scoff, remained to pray—astounding testimony to the power of the spirit.