Father Solanus Casey — Priest, Prophet, and Porter

Blogs  |  May. 10, 2017

Father Solanus Casey — Priest, Prophet, and Porter

The next time you run into failure or setback, turn to Father Solanus, the patron saint of apparent failure and setbacks. He knows all about it.

 

Patrick Coffin

If you heard about a seminarian who struggled all the way through seminary, failed one language class after another, and then was ordained on the condition that he give neither doctrinal homilies nor hear confessions – you probably wouldn’t expect him to amount to much.
But Bernard Francis Casey – the sixth of 16 kids from Prescott, Wisconsin – was such a seminarian. And the world is about to find out how far he went in his chosen field.
Nicknamed Barney by his family but better known now as Father Solanus Casey, OFM Cap., this extraordinary figure recently advanced closer to sainthood with the Holy See’s May 4, 2017 announcement that Pope Francis has approved one of the innumerable miracles ascribed to Casey’s prayers.
But those who knew Father Solanus through his decades of service to the poor and the sick in Yonkers, New York, Harlem, and at St. Bonaventure’s in Detroit, either witnessed or heard of many hundreds of similar cures and prophetic happenings at the gentle hands of this holy man.
I first heard of him from his great nephew Kelly Casey, a fellow Franciscan University of Steubenville student and friend. The more I read about Kelly’s great uncle, the more I wanted to read about this simple priest with a heart for the poor and the hurting.
One incident from his life stands out. When Barney was working as a streetcar motorman in Superior, Wisconsin, he witnessed the stabbing of a woman in the street, accompanied by the blasphemous screaming of the man who had just savaged her with a knife. That moment branded itself in his brain: the maniacal yelling, the bright red flash of blood on the blade, the woman’s supine body on the pavement. To Barney, it was a singular manifestation of the reality of sin and the fallenness of the world – and an actual grace to seek after Him who would show men the meaning of true love and mercy. There was no turning back.
He was ordained in 1904, and began a life of priestly self-giving that would last until his last day on earth, July 31, 1957, the anniversary of his first Mass.
It’s the sheer ordinariness of his m.o. that gets you. No histrionics, no fanfare. He simply spoke quietly with the sick or troubled person, blessed him or her (often on the forehead) and said, “You’ll be fine. Everything is going to be okay.” Or, if the situation wasn’t to have a happy ending, Father Solanus would couch it in gentle, palatable terms. Either way, you came away changed, either strengthened for tough times, or dizzy with joy because of a healing.

The recipient of the miracle is a woman who suffered an incurable genetic skin condition (Father Solanus died of a similar virulent condition) and who went to his tomb to pray for some friends. Sensing an inner tug in her heart to beg healing for herself, she asked for the wiry Capuchin’s intercession and was instantly and visibly healed.
With the acceptance of the miracle, Venerable Solanus will become Blessed Solanus in a ceremony in Detroit later this year. He will be the second American-born male Blessed, after Servant of God Father Stanley Rother is beatified in Oklahoma City in September. Father Rother was martyred in 1981 in Guatamala – which jumped him to the head of the pack of candidates for sainthood.
Father Solanus underwent a slow winding white martyrdom, starting with the humiliation of being ordained a simplex priest, unable to deliver official sermons or hear confessions. Put in charge of the altar boy schedule and sacristan duties was a condition most men aspiring to the priesthood would find beyond intolerable.
But Solanus accepted his circumstances, seeing in humiliation the alchemy that produces humility – the virtue with which he is perhaps most identified. People soon understood that the quiet Capuchin who greeted them at the friary door had an unusual gift for really listening to their troubles, a gift that included striking healings that bring to mind St. Padre Pio or St. Andre Bessette, CSC, of Montreal. The astounding part is that it took the Congregation of the Causes of Saints so long to recognize one of Solanus’s miracles, there are so many to chose from.
I love the stories of future saints who knew each other. In the summer of 1935, then Brother Andre was in Detroit and had heard of Father Solanus. Brother was brought to the Saint Bonaventure Monastery and the two enjoyed a brief, somewhat humorous, meeting. None of the onlookers would have grasped the significance of the 65-year-old Capuchin vigorously shaking hands with the spry 90-year-old Holy Cross Brother. Both had become well known for their intercessory gifts. As Father Casey knew no French and Brother Andre spoke very little English, they did what they could do, and what came naturally: they blessed each other in Latin, the universal language of the Church.
Orthodox Catholics have a tendency to value intellect and the life of the mind. We admire scholars, wise professors and doctors, and profound authors. We tend to be slow to accept testimonies of healing. We take our faith clean and tidy. We’re quick to control events and people. But what happens when life throws a painful hardball? How do we face the terrible sword of suffering?
This is Solanus Casey’s sweet spot. He didn’t read German or Latin. He never wrote any books, probably couldn’t quote Thomas Aquinas, and he never traveled beyond where his superiors told him to go.
But he had what every Christian strives to be: he was another Jesus.
One of his recurrent teachings was, “Thank God ahead of time.” Father Solanus was convinced that anxiety and fear impeded God’s designs for His children, and he wondered why people didn’t pray with greater confidence. “We have to put God on the spot,” he’d say with an Irish twinkle in his eyes.
Because of his habit of divine spot-putting, the fame of Father Solanus’s sanctity spread far and wide beyond the grounds of the friaries he served in Michigan and New York. Line-ups trailed out onto the sidewalk and around the corner as people from all walks of life waited for their moment with the man who seemed to exude palpable joy. He told them of future happy events, of inevitable deaths, of surgical procedures that would be needed or not.
Yet no one thought him as “mysticalish” or strange. He was utterly normal, ordinary. According to one of his biographers, Father Michael Crosby, OFM Cap., Solanus’s most striking qualities were his eyes (soft blue) and his voice (slightly high-pitched, an echo of a childhood bout with diphtheria). His child-like aura is captured by the many extant photos of the soon-to-be-Blessed – playing his beat-up violin, ladling soup to the homeless in Harlem, grinning at something out of frame on a farm, listening intently to a couple in his porter’s office.
His body was exhumed in 1987 and was found to be remarkably intact, with some minor decomposition on his elbows. The remains were washed and given a new Capuchin habit and re-interred in his tomb at the Father Solanus Casey Center at the Saint Bonaventure Monastery in Detroit, where, to this day, thousands visit to stop and pray.
The next time you run into failure or setback, turn to Father Solanus, the patron saint of apparent failure and setbacks. He knows all about it.

POPE FRANCIS MIDNIGHT MASS OF CHRISTMAS HOMILY

 

 POPE FRANCIS MIDNIGHT MASS OF CHRISTMAS HOMILY

 

"God Has Embraced Pagans, Sinners and Foreigners, and Demands That We Do the Same" – In the "Revolutionary Tenderness" of Christmas, "A New Imagination of Love"

HOMILY OF POPE FRANCIS

THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD – MASS IN THE HOLY NIGHT
ST PETER'S BASILICA
24 DECEMBER 2017

Mary “gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn” (Lk 2:7). In these plain and clear words, Luke brings us to the heart of that holy night: Mary gave birth; she gave us Jesus, the Light of the world. A simple story that plunges us into the event that changes our history forever. Everything, that night, became a source of hope.

Let us go back a few verses. By decree of the Emperor, Mary and Joseph found themselves forced to set out. They had to leave their people, their home and their land, and to undertake a journey in order to be registered in the census. This was no comfortable or easy journey for a young couple about to have a child: they had to leave their land. At heart, they were full of hope and expectation because of the child about to be born; yet their steps were weighed down by the uncertainties and dangers that attend those who have to leave their home behind.

Then they found themselves having to face perhaps the most difficult thing of all. They arrived in Bethlehem and experienced that it was a land that was not expecting them. A land where there was no place for them.

And there, where everything was a challenge, Mary gave us Emmanuel. The Son of God had to be born in a stable because his own had no room for him. “He came to what was his own and his own people did not accept him” (Jn 1:11).

And there, amid the gloom of a city that had no room or place for the stranger from afar, amid the darkness of a bustling city which in this case seemed to want to build itself up by turning its back on others... it was precisely there that the revolutionary spark of God’s love was kindled. In Bethlehem, a small chink opens up for those who have lost their land, their country, their dreams; even for those overcome by the asphyxia produced by a life of isolation.

So many other footsteps are hidden in the footsteps of Joseph and Mary. We see the tracks of entire families forced to set out in our own day. We see the tracks of millions of persons who do not choose to go away but, driven from their land, leave behind their dear ones. In many cases this departure is filled with hope, hope for the future; yet for many others this departure can only have one name: survival. Surviving the Herods of today, who, to impose their power and increase their wealth, see no problem in shedding innocent blood.

Mary and Joseph, for whom there was no room, are the first to embrace the One who comes to give all of us our document of citizenship. The One who in his poverty and humility proclaims and shows that true power and authentic freedom are shown in honouring and assisting the weak and the frail.

That night, the One who had no place to be born is proclaimed to those who had no place at the table or in the streets of the city. The shepherds are the first to hear this Good News. By reason of their work, they were men and women forced to live on the edges of society. Their state of life, and the places they had to stay, prevented them from observing all the ritual prescriptions of religious purification; as a result, they were considered unclean. Their skin, their clothing, their smell, their way of speaking, their origin, all betrayed them. Everything about them generated mistrust. They were men and women to be kept at a distance, to be feared. They were considered pagans among the believers, sinners among the just, foreigners among the citizens. Yet to them – pagans, sinners and foreigners – the angel says: “Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord” (Lk 2:10-11).

This is the joy that we tonight are called to share, to celebrate and to proclaim. The joy with which God, in his infinite mercy, has embraced us pagans, sinners and foreigners, and demands that we do the same.

The faith we proclaim tonight makes us see God present in all those situations where we think he is absent. He is present in the unwelcomed visitor, often unrecognizable, who walks through our cities and our neighborhoods, who travels on our buses and knocks on our doors.

This same faith impels us to make space for a new social imagination, and not to be afraid of experiencing new forms of relationship, in which none have to feel that there is no room for them on this earth. Christmas is a time for turning the power of fear into the power of charity, into power for a new imagination of charity. The charity that does not grow accustomed to injustice, as if it were something natural, but that has the courage, amid tensions and conflicts, to make itself a “house of bread”, a land of hospitality. That is what Saint John Paul II told us: “Do not be afraid! Open wide the doors for Christ” (Homily for the Inauguration of the Pontificate, 22 October 1978).

In the Child of Bethlehem, God comes to meet us and make us active sharers in the life around us. He offers himself to us, so that we can take him into our arms, lift him and embrace him. So that in him we will not be afraid to take into our arms, raise up and embrace the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned (cf. Mt 25:35-36). “Do not be afraid! Open wide the doors for Christ”. In this Child, God invites us to be messengers of hope. He invites us to become sentinels for all those bowed down by the despair born of encountering so many closed doors. In this child, God makes us agents of his hospitality.

Moved by the joy of the gift, little Child of Bethlehem, we ask that your crying may shake us from our indifference and open our eyes to those who are suffering. May your tenderness awaken our sensitivity and recognize our call to see you in all those who arrive in our cities, in our histories, in our lives. May your revolutionary tenderness persuade us to feel our call to be agents of the hope and tenderness of our people.

SOME OF MY FAVOURITE PHOTOS FROM 2017

SOME OF MY FAVOURITE PHOTOS FROM 2017

Bob Dylan Wins the 2016 Nobel Prize In Literature

What explains the idiocy of the liberal elite? It’s their education

THE SPECTATOR

What explains the idiocy of the liberal elite? It’s their education

James Bartholomew

26 December 2017

We’re closing 2017 by republishing our twelve most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 6: James Bartholomew on the liberal elite’s reaction to Brexit and Trump:

Enough! Enough! For months, the so-called liberal elite has been writing articles, having radio and TV discussions, giving sermons (literally) and making speeches in which it has struggled to understand those strange creatures: ordinary people.
The elite is bemused by what drives these people to make perverse decisions about Brexit and Trump. Are they racist, narrow-minded or just stupid? Whatever the reason, ordinary people have frankly been a disappointment.
Time, ladies and gentlemen, please! Instead, let’s do the opposite. Let’s try to explain to ordinary people what drives the liberal elite. The elite persists with some very strange and disturbing views. Are its members brainwashed, snobbish or just so remote from real life that they do not understand how things work? What is the pathology of liberal eliteness?
Why would anyone support Hillary Clinton — a ruthless, charmless Washington insider with socialist tendencies? Why do lawyers, churchmen, the BBC and, indeed, most educated people support the EU — an organisation as saturated with smug self-righteousness as it is with corruption; one which created the euro, which in turn has caused millions of people to be unemployed; an organisation which combines a yawning democratic deficit with incompetence over immigration and economic growth?
The elite are supposed to be educated. So why are they so silly?
Ah! There is a clue. That word ‘educated’. What does ‘educated’ mean today? It doesn’t mean they know a lot about the world. It means they have been injected with the views and assumptions of their teachers. They have been taught by people who themselves have little experience of the real world. They have been indoctrinated with certain ideas. Here are some key ones.
They have been taught that capitalism is inherently bad. It is something to be controlled at every turn by an altruistic government or else reduced to a minimum. Meanwhile the pursuit of equality is good. These are truly astonishing things for educated people to believe when the past 100 years have been a brutal lesson instructing us that the opposite is the case. The pursuit of equality brought the world terror and tens of millions of deaths along with terrible economic failure. In the past 30 years, by contrast, since China and India adopted more pro-capitalist policies, capitalism has caused the biggest reduction in poverty the world has ever known. You may know that, but it is not taught in schools. Schools actually teach that Stalin’s five-year plans were a qualified success! The academic world is overwhelmingly left-wing and the textbooks spin to the left. They distort the facts or omit them. 

What the elite have been led to believe is that governments make things better. ‘Market failure’ is taught; ‘public-sector failure’ is not. In my own area, they are taught that everything was awful in 19th-century Britain until governments came along to save the day with an ever-bigger welfare state. The importance of friendly societies, voluntary hospitals and so on is omitted. It is rubbish — left-wing propaganda. But misleading education of this and other kinds rubs off even on those who are not studying history or politics. It comes through in the Times, the Guardian or, in America, the Washington Post or New York Times. In Britain, BBC Radio 4 is the continuation of university propaganda by other means.
Meanwhile, from early on, environment-alism and recycling are taught as doctrine, rather than as subjects for discussion. My children had to report to their school whether they had arrived by public transport (good), bicycle (excellent) or car (evil). Children don’t escape the propaganda even when they study languages. My daughter studies French and has had to write essays on how marvellous recycling is. There is no analysis of counter-arguments. In fact, no data is offered on which a counter–argument could be based. This is not education. It is not teaching children to challenge ideas and think for themselves. This is anti-education: teaching them what they must think. It is as prescriptive as education in the Soviet Union. At least in the Soviet Union, many understood that they should not trust what they were being told. Here, because the propaganda is less obvious, students do not have their guard up.
One of the most important things schools and universities teach is that the students must never, under any circumstances, be suspected of racism. It is not enough to treat people of all races with respect. You must be even more above suspicion than Caesar’s wife. That is part of why the elite was against Brexit. They could not bear that someone might think they supported it for racist reasons. That, in the minds of the liberal elite, would be too awful. By extension, they also would hate to be thought of as insular or inward-looking. Yes, I know that many on the Brexit side were particularly global and outward-looking, but Remainers assumed that Brexit must equal insularity. It offended their view of themselves as internationalists.
Another central tenet of the dogma is that women have been oppressed, are oppressed and, for the future, there is no limit to what we must do to ensure they get to be in the same situation as men — having as many directorships and military medals and anything else one can think of. Feminist doctrine has so permeated the elite that its members assumed that all women in the USA would vote against Trump after his vulgar, arrogant remarks about touching women were leaked. The elite thought that was ‘game over’ for Trump. Ordinary women took a different view. A majority of white women voted for Trump.
Ordinary people have been subjected to the same kind of indoctrination as the elite. They have just had less of it. They were in the hands of the propagandists for a shorter time and have been in the real world for longer. They do not read the ‘quality’ papers or listen to Radio 4. They watch Sky Sports and Strictly Come Dancing. For their understanding of the world, they rely more on what they see for themselves and experience.
The elite’s fuller education in the key beliefs explains why it was for Remain and Clinton. They voted for Remain because, in doing so, they demonstrated they were not racist but tolerant internationalists. They were not put off by the incompetence of the EU, because they have been taught an irrational respect for government — even EU government. They also perceived the EU as more likely to pursue environmentalism than an elected British government. You could say they were trained to vote for Remain. Clinton, too, ticked every box. Members of the elite could effortlessly show how feminist they were by wanting her to win. She was also the embodiment of the other key tenets: more equality, more government and anti-racism.
You may think, ‘Can’t they think for themselves?’ Unfortunately, formal education, while requiring thought, does tend to discourage too much independent thinking, especially on the key parts of the faith. If a member of the elite, for example, finds him or herself reflecting that it is usually quite difficult to interest little girls in train sets and guns, they must squash that thought. Some rebels do hold on to an ability to think, but it’s noticeable that quite a lot of the most original minds, such as George Orwell and Pascal, never went to university.
Let’s try to understand why members of the elite get so cross when others don’t take the same view of Brexit and Clinton as they do. It’s partly a sense of entitlement. People talk of a culture of entitlement among those who live on benefits. But the elite has its own entitlement culture. They think that because they studied English literature at Durham they understand the world better than a plumber in Croydon. They think they are superior and therefore their view should prevail. They also think they are morally superior because they hold to the views which they were told were virtuous. Anyone who appears not to subscribe to these views must, of necessity, be a sinner or else appallingly misled by the Daily Mail or some other evil force. It is outrageous to the elite that the work of the Devil should prevail.
They are virtuous. They know best. They are the chosen ones. They have only a token belief in democracy. They expect and intend to prevail.

Mince pies amid persecution

by Jonathan Wright

posted Thursday, 21 Dec 2017

 

Puritans denounced mince pies as ‘papistical devices of the enemy of mankind’

The harried English Catholic community stuck to its Christmas traditions, from carols to wild merry-making

Thomas Hodgson had trouble sleeping on Christmas Eve in 1599. He was a man of Catholic sympathies, well-connected in recusant circles and teaching children in the household of Elizabeth Vaux. For all that, he had continued to conform to the Protestant religious settlement of late Tudor England.
“On the very night of Christmas,” as the Jesuit missionary priest John Gerard reported, Hodgson had listened to the Catholic liturgy echoing through the halls with everyone but him “celebrating the birth of the Lord”. He “began to feel a sense of shame stealing over him”, “a trembling overwhelmed him” and, as Hodgson himself later recalled, “I went over my sins and my ingratitude with tears, sobs and sighs.”
Action was required, so Hodgson rushed to the chapel, demanding Confession, and we are informed that “after a few days spent in a careful examination of conscience he became a Catholic and joined us in celebrating the last days of the feast”.
Such was the power of Christmas within the much-harried English Catholic community. There was no better time to assert identity through outlawed rituals and devotions. Carols that blended late-medieval piety and the demands of post-Tridentine theologising were sung. Gifts that encapsulated a besieged faith were exchanged. Lucky John Gerard, who witnessed Hodgson’s return from the schismatic life, once received “a precious ornament with the Holy Name engraved on it” from one of his aristocratic protectors: it was “twice the size of a sheet of paper”, decked out with solid gold pins and pearls. As an early 17th-century ballad put it: “The Catholic, good deeds will not scorn / Nor will he see poor Christmas forlorn.”
Christmas also carried risks, of course. A few years later, in 1609, Sir John Yorke of Gowlthwaite Hall in Yorkshire mounted his annual theatrical entertainments for an exclusively Catholic crowd. Unfortunately, the Protestant Marmaduke Dornebrook, on the hunt for Catholics behaving badly, “by private means got into the house” and witnessed a play that was to the “great scandal of true religion”. In the play, a Catholic priest squared off with a Protestant minister and, following the latter’s defeat and humiliation, “the devils came and fetched him … one of them taking him by the arm and carried him away on his shoulder.” The ensuing legal prosecution made it all the way to the Star Chamber.
Happily enough, most early modern English Catholics did not have to inhabit a country which detested Christmas. As every schoolchild used to know, the 1640s and 1650s saw the holiday being banned but, both earlier and subsequently, most level-headed Protestants managed to sustain the traditions of hospitality and merry-making. The sniping always came mainly from the puritanical extremes: the grumbles about the holiday’s pagan origins, the lack of biblical precedent and the supposed invitation to moral turpitude. As the endlessly censorious Philip Stubbes put it: “More mischief is at that time committed than in all the year besides… what masking and mumming, wherein robbery, whoredom, murder and what-not is committed.”
Thankfully, such strictures were broadly ignored. But this did not prevent Catholics from defining and curating their particular vision of Christmas. Admittedly, enthusiasm occasionally spiralled out of control. A regrettable example was set by the Catholic-minded servants and tenants of Brampton, Westmorland, in 1608. When Christmas came around they “most grossly disturbed the minister in time of divine service … some of them drank to the minister when he was at prayer … others fired guns and brought in flags and banners … others sported themselves with pies and puddings in the church.”
It was more elegant, perhaps, to adopt strategies that displayed a winning combination of magnanimity and mischief. The Countess of Arundel had once helped a priest escape from the clutches of the Elizabethan authorities by bribing one of his pursuers. A sizeable amount of money had been paid to the man on the spot but the countess “sent him every year as long as he lived a venison pasty to make merry with his friends at Christmas”.
The pie-eating rabble in Brampton did foreshadow one curious Christmas quarrel, however. Radically minded Protestants took exception to all manner of Catholic holiday enjoyments but, according to one 19th-century antiquarian, mince pies were particularly offensive. They “were things of horror to all good Puritans, who looked upon them as papistical devices of the enemy of mankind”.
This did not spell disaster. On the contrary, as our author continued, “we fancy it is to their energetic denunciations of it that the mince pie owed its reputation as the sovereign dainty of the great festival, for of course the more the one party railed against it, the more the other delighted in enjoying it.”
Mince pies are not what they used to be and confessional enmities are pleasingly in abeyance but, as a nod to less congenial times, be sure to serve some up if the local vicar pops round for his glass or two of Christmas sherry.
Jonathan Wright is an honorary fellow in the department of theology and religion at Durham University
This article first appeared in the December 22 2017 issue of the Catholic Herald. To read the magazine in full, from anywhere in the world, go here

GENE ATTACKED BY SNARLING NOBODY!

GENE ATTACKED BY SNARLING NOBODY!


Detterling when you can write with such searing honesty about yourself as I do then come back and attack me.


In the meantime stay in your place as a nobody.

Detterling aged fifteen trainspotting in 1959

Hooray! Gene's ' GENE ... a voice in the wilderness' returns today

Hooray! Gene's GENE ... a voice in the wilderness returns today

Sorry  about the unfortunate hiatus folks but today Gene's blog is back - and back to stay! Today is the Feast Day of St Stephen the First Martyr. Appropriate indeed as Gene has been a martyr for the cause of freedom of speech.

St. Stephen

The deacon Stephen, stoned in Jerusalem two years after the death of Christ, has always been the object of very special veneration by the faithful. He is the first martyr. The account in the Acts of the Apostles relating his arrest and the accusations brought against him emphasize the parallel with our Saviour's trial; he was stoned outside the city wall and died, like his Master, praying for his executioners.

Stephen belongs to the group of seven deacons whom the Apostles associated with their work in order to lighten their load. He was "filled with faith and with the Holy Spirit," "full of grace and strength" he showed himself as a man of God, radiating divine grace and apostolic zeal. As the first witness to Christ he confronted his opponents with quiet courage and the promise made by Jesus (Mark 13.11) was fulfilled: ". . .Disputing with Stephen they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit that spoke."

In St. Stephen, the first martyr, the liturgy emphasizes the imitator of Christ even to the extent of the complete gift of self, to the extent of that great charity which made him pray in his suffering for his executioners. By establishing the feast on the day after Christmas the Church draws an even closer comparison between the disciple and the Master and thus extends his witness to the whole mission of the redeeming Messiah.

Professing the Christian Faith Demands the Heroism of the Martyrs
On the day after the solemnity of Christmas, we celebrate today the feast of St. Stephen, deacon and first martyr. At first glance, to join the memory of the "protomartyr" and the birth of the Redeemer might seem surprising because of the contrast between the peace and joy of Bethlehem and the tragedy of St. Stephen, stoned in Jerusalem during the first persecution against the nascent Church.

In reality, this apparent opposition is surmounted if we analyze in greater depth the mystery of Christmas. The Child Jesus, lying in the cave, is the only-begotten Son of God who became man. He will save humanity by dying on the cross.

Now we see Him in swaddling clothes in the manger; after His crucifixion, He will again be wrapped in bandages and placed in the sepulcher. It is no accident that the Christmas iconography sometimes represents the divine newborn Child lying in a small sarcophagus, to indicate that the Redeemer was born to die, He was born to give His life in ransom for all. 

St. Stephen was the first to follow in the steps of Christ with martyrdom: like the divine Master, he died forgiving and praying for his executioners (cf. Acts 7:60). During the first four centuries of Christianity all the saints venerated by the Church were martyrs. 

They are a countless multitude, which the liturgy calls "the white army of martyrs," (martyrum candidatus exercitus). Their death was not a reason for fear and sadness, but of spiritual enthusiasm, which always gave rise to new Christians. For believers, the day of death, and even more so, the day of martyrdom, is not the end of everything, but rather the "passage" to immortal life, it is the day of the final birth, the "dies natalis." Thus is understood the link that exists between the "dies natalis" of Christ and the "dies natalis" of St. Stephen. If Jesus had not been born on earth, men would not have been able to be born for heaven. Precisely because Christ was born, we are able to be "reborn." 

Also Mary, who took the Redeemer in her arms in Bethlehem, suffered an interior martyrdom. She shared His Passion and had to take Him, once again, in her arms when they took Him down from the cross. To this Mother, who felt the joy of the birth and the anguish of the death of her divine Son, we entrust those who are persecuted and those who are suffering, in different ways, for witnessing and serving the Gospel.

With special spiritual closeness, I am also thinking of the Catholics who maintain their fidelity to the See of Peter without giving in to compromises, at times even at the cost of grave sufferings. The whole Church admires their example and prays that they will have the strength to persevere, knowing that their tribulations are a source of victory, though for the moment they might seem to be a failure. 

Angelus Message, Pope Benedict XVI, December 26, 2006

Patron: Casket makers; coffin makers; deacons; headaches; horses; masons; diocese of Owensboro, Kentucky; stone masons.

Symbols: Deacon carrying a pile of rocks; deacon with rocks gathered in his vestments; deacon with rocks on his head; deacon with rocks or a book at hand; stones; palm of martyrdom.

Who’s funding Ireland’s abortion lobby?

by David Quinn

posted Thursday, 28 Sep 2017

Ireland's Prime Minister Leo Varadkar (Getty Images)

   

Numerous international groups are trying to influence Ireland into legalising abortion

The great and the good internationally have a big interest in the outcome of Ireland’s looming abortion referendum, planned for next year. They want Irish voters to erase from their constitution the so-called Eighth Amendment, which gives the unborn child the same right to life as every other human being.
Abortion is only permitted in Ireland when the life of the mother is at real and substantial risk. This amendment was inserted into the constitution following a referendum in 1983 which passed by a two-to-one margin.
Ever since then secular liberal opinion has been bent upon overturning that referendum. When liberals lose a referendum, they do not take no for an answer and Irish liberals have found plenty of allies abroad in their quest for change.
Among those allies is the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, various United Nations committees, including the UN Human Rights Committee and the UN Committee against Torture (yes, torture), in addition to the billionaire George Soros.
Through his Open Society Foundations, the Hungarian-born Soros has already provided three pro-abortion groups in Ireland, including Amnesty International’s Irish branch, with a combined total of around $400,000 (£295,000). The other two groups are the Irish Family Planning Association and the Abortion Rights Campaign.
A leaked document from the Open Society Foundations revealed the reasons behind the funding. It said it was so that the three groups could “work collectively on a campaign to repeal Ireland’s constitutional amendment granting equal rights to an implanted embryo as the pregnant woman”.
It continued: “With one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world, a win there could impact other strongly Catholic countries in Europe, such as Poland, and provide much needed proof that change is possible, even in highly conservative places.”
That pro-abortion groups in Ireland are receiving foreign funding has received very little media coverage and almost no political reaction. This is despite journalists and politicians showing a permanent interest in alleged foreign funding of Irish pro-life organisations. The lack of curiosity in foreign funding of pro-choice outfits says a lot about the double standards of the Irish media and many politicians.
In any event, the reason the Open Society Foundations gives for providing the funding – namely that turning a once strongly pro-life country into a pro-abortion country would serve as an example to other countries – is also the reason why Justin Trudeau and the UN see fit to comment on our pro-life law.
When Trudeau met the new Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, in Canada recently, he brought up the Eighth Amendment and indicated that Ireland should repeal it in the name of “human rights”. There is no indication that he met with any resistance from Varadkar or that the Taoiseach criticised Canada’s extremely permissive law, which allows abortion for any reason right up to birth and gives scant conscience protections to doctors and nurses.
Varadkar describes himself as “pro-life” but favours repeal of the Eighth Amendment where a woman’s health is considered to be at risk. This ground will be very familiar to British readers who know it has led to abortion on demand in their country and almost 200,000 terminations per annum.
The UN has regularly been putting its oar in, encouraged by Irish pro-abortion groups. Ireland, like Britain, is a signatory to numerous UN treaties, and again like Britain, must periodically appear before this or that UN committee to report on how well it is implementing various treaties.
Again and again we are told that we must permit abortion. These UN committees are very ideologically biased. They have long since been co-opted by the pro-abortion Left and they are more than happy to dance to whatever tune Irish abortion groups choose to play. The committees never consider the rights of the unborn child. They pretend that whatever UN treaty or convention they are charged with overseeing permits abortion. This is despite abortion getting no mention in any UN treaty or convention. These same committees then give the false impression that their opinions carry a legal weight they simply do not have.
Depressingly, Irish governments tend to tip the hat to these committees and treat them with a wholly undeserved deference. This suits the present government, of course, because it wants to see our pro-life law overturned. It is therefore convenient for it to pretend to the Irish people that “we are letting ourselves down” in the eyes of the international community, led by the UN, and that the UN is somehow the unbiased and objective arbiter of morality. In fact, the UN acts as a sort of Magisterium to those of a secular liberal persuasion. It cannot be questioned. The UN has spoken, the matter is closed.
Why are these international figures really so determined to see us change our abortion law? The charitable explanation is that they genuinely believe in the right to abortion and that the child in the womb has few if any rights. Many do obviously believe this.
But the less charitable explanation is that they know that Ireland’s law, and Ireland’s still reasonably strong pro-life culture, is a standing rebuke to the abortion laws and the pro-choice culture that exists in practically every other Western country, including Britain.
In the UK, one pregnancy in every five ends in abortion. In Sweden, it is one in four. The Irish rate is about one in 18 pregnancies, even allowing for the roughly 3,500 Irish women who travel to Britain each year to have an abortion. In other words, Ireland shows that when a country has a highly restrictive abortion law, far fewer abortions take place even when a near neighbour permits abortion and women can easily travel there.
But surely, some say, our abortion law means that more women die in pregnancy? This is not the case. The Irish maternal death rate is somewhat lower than the British one.
Against this, you may have read about the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar who died in an Irish hospital in 2012 after being refused an abortion. But it transpired that she died of sepsis and the hospital had not spotted the deadly infection until it was too late. If it had known she had sepsis, it could have ended the pregnancy, which was miscarrying in any case. In British hospitals pregnant women also die from sepsis on rare occasions. Britain’s very permissive abortion law does not save them.
Given that the Irish law is such a challenge to the abortion regime in most Western countries, you can see why big international players want Ireland to change its law. The Irish law has saved the lives of countless unborn babies while also protecting the lives of pregnant women. That is a win-win. Ireland should be proud of its law. Other countries should be ashamed.
Will we be able to resist internal and external pressure to change our pro-life culture? We are likely to know by next summer because the referendum will have taken place by then.


David Quinn is a columnist with The Sunday Times and The Irish Catholic. He is the founder and director of The Iona Institute (ionainstitute.ie)
This article first appeared in the September 29 2017 issue of the Catholic Herald. To read the magazine in full, from anywhere in the world, go here

This is Why Bob Dylan’s Genius is Biblical

This is Why Bob Dylan’s Genius is Biblical

BOB DYLAN ... 1966

Blogs  |  Sep. 28, 2017

Dylan’s art is often informed by Scripture—and the idea of returning to the sources for insight and progress is itself a biblical idea.

Francis Beckwith

“I can hear a sweet voice gently calling
Must be the Mother of our Lord.”
—Bob Dylan, Duquesne Whistle (2012)

I first discovered Bob Dylan in 1976 while rummaging through a satchel of cassette tapes owned by my cousin, Peter Casella, who had inadvertently left it at my parents’ home. The album was Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits. I was 15 years old at the time, with my music listening habits dominated by the great pop acts of the late 1960s and mid-1970s: Wings, the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, the Beatles, the Byrds, Elvis Presley. I was not prepared for Dylan.
Because somebody had already listened through Side One, I plopped the cassette into the machine and began with side two, which starts with Mr. Tambourine Man. I had heard the Byrds’ Beatle-beat, Wrecking Crew, highly abridged version of the tune. So, I expected to hear from Dylan something similar. But it wasn’t even close. His performance just knocked my socks off. It had a sound I had never heard before, but yet it seemed as familiar as Happy Birthday or God Bless America. Or as Izzy Young would put it, by “writing about contemporary ideas in traditional forms” he sounded “current and old at the same time.” Central to Dylan’s “sound” were the words and his cadence while singing them. I could not believe that anyone could do something like that in popular music. I know that some of the old Tin Pan Alley lyricists were accomplished wordsmiths, but could any of them really have pulled off anything like this:

Though I know that evenin’s empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming

After returning the satchel to my cousin, I forgot about Dylan until late August 1978 when I was driving through Utah on my way to Pocatello, Idaho. I happened to be listening to a radio station that every weekday selected an entire album to be played during the lunch hour. On that day it was Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits. As I listened, I recalled my initial hearing of the album two years earlier, and wondered why I had not explored Dylan’s larger body of work. That was quickly remedied.
About a year later, Dylan released the album, Slow Train Coming (1979). It was evident from the songs’ lyrics that Dylan had undergone a profound religious conversion to evangelical Christianity. This caused quite a stir in popular culture and the entertainment press. Many were scandalized, largely because of what Dylan had represented to the counterculture movement of the 1960s. He had pretty much written the songs that would become the unofficial anthems for social change in America, even though Dylan himself bristles at the “spokesman of a generation” moniker. (These songs include Blowin’ in the Wind, The Times They Are A-Changin’, Only a Pawn in the Game, Masters of War and Chimes of Freedom.) To embrace Evangelical Christianity, which by 1979 was beginning to be associated with the religious right, was a bridge too far for many of Dylan’s most devoted fans.
This, of course, was not the only time he had ticked people off (or, at least, surprised them).
In the mid-1960s, after releasing two albums that included several folk songs that were appropriated by the civil rights and anti-war movements (clumsily labeled “protest songs”), Dylan moved on to pen more abstract, surreal and “stream of consciousness” compositions, among them Mr. Tambourine Man, Gates of Eden, My Back Pages and It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).

He showed up at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and “went electric,” much to the chagrin of the folk music purists in the audience who booed him. A year after releasing the double-album masterpiece, Blonde and Blonde (1966), for which Dylan used some of the finest studio musicians to help create what he would call that “thin, wild mercury sound,” he released John Wesley Harding (1967), an album that seems pared-down and basic in comparison to its predecessor. It includes many biblical and religious allusions that Dylan biographers speculate were the result of regular Bible reading he had taken up at the time.
Although often considered a man of the political left, Dylan wrote in his 2004 autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One, that in the 1960s his favorite politician was Barry Goldwater. In 1969, he gravitated to country-western music and released Nashville Skyline. And in the past of couple of years he has released albums consisting exclusively of standards from what some call The Great American Songbook.
Behind these (and other) seemingly inscrutable transformations is a consistent theme, which I like to call, “Bob Dylan’s biblical genius.” I think Izzy Young caught a glimpse of it when he first heard Dylan’s first compositions and said that they sounded both “current and old at the same time.”
There is in Dylan’s artistic journey a continual return to the sources: Scripture, the folk tradition, American standards, Great Books, etc. For Dylan, these are not merely museum pieces to be dusted off so that we can appreciate (and perhaps admire) our primitive ancestors. Rather, they are, as he said of St. Augustine, “alive as you or me.” They serve as both guidelines and raw material from which one can compose new lessons from perennial truths. This requires that one deny the modern fetishes of moral innovation and cultural debunking while at the same time rejecting the traditionalist reflex to be skeptical of all change and dissent. This is precisely what I believe Dylan is doing in his so-called “protest songs.”
In his early days, he clearly connected the progressive cause of civil rights to a return to those biblical ideals of justice and fairness that everyone, down deep, knows are true. So much so that they are “blowin’ in the wind,” “the first one now will later be last,” and for those who suppress the truth, “like Pharaoh's tribe they'll be drownded in the tide, and like Goliath, they'll be conquered.”
Dylan’s most recent album of original material, Tempest (2012), takes its name from Shakespeare’s play and includes a song about the sinking of the Titanic (“Tempest”) that serves as a metaphor for the hubris of the modern world and the divine judgment that is sure to follow:

The captain, barely breathing
Kneeling at the wheel
Above him and beneath him
Fifty thousand tons of steel

He looked over at his compass
And he gazed into its face
Needle pointing downward
He knew he lost the race

In the dark illumination
He remembered bygone years
He read the Book of Revelation
And he filled his cup with tears

Dylan’s genius is biblical, not simply because his art is often informed by Scripture, but because the idea of returning to the sources as a necessary condition for insight and progress is itself a biblical idea: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (Matthew 5: 17). “So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter” (2 Thessalonians 2:15)
On Nov. 3, Columbia Records is releasing, Trouble No More (2017), a boxed set of live recordings and studio outtakes from Dylan’s so-called ‘Christian era” (1979-1981), the period that included Slow Train Coming and two subsequent albums in which he sings explicitly of his newfound faith. This extraordinary collection will no doubt revive questions about Dylan’s personal journey, whether or not he still identifies as a Christian.
As a Catholic, I certainly hope he does. But as a fan, I am content with sitting back and listening to his biblical genius. 
 
Francis J. Beckwith is a professor of Philosophy and Church-State Studies at Baylor University. His most recent book is Taking Rites Seriously: Law, Politics, and the Reasonableness of Faith (Cambridge University Press, 2015), winner of the American Academy of Religion’s 2016 Book Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the category of Constructive-Reflective Studies.

GENE'S BLOG CLOSING DOWN TODAY 1st August 2017

GENE'S BLOG CLOSING DOWN TODAY 1st August 2017


More details to follow.

How one priest saved countless souls in the First World War

by KV Turley

posted Thursday, 27 Jul 2017

The sun sets behind the Cross of Sacrifice in Passchendaele (Getty)

   

Fr William Doyle showed staggering courage at Passchendaele

Like so many caught up in the conflict that came to be known as the Great War, Fr Willie Doyle was buried where he fell, without a marker, just another casualty among millions. He might have been forgotten; however, it proved not to be the case.

Before his death, he had requested that his private papers be burned. Thankfully, his wishes were ignored. The discovery of the papers, and their subsequent publication as part of a biography published in 1920, were a surprise to those who had known him.

After days spent giving retreats, hearing confessions and, above all, saying Holy Mass, his spiritual notebooks revealed another dimension of Fr Doyle. Hours were spent at night in long watches in front of the Blessed Sacrament, praying for the sanctity of priests. Then there was the frequent use of the discipline (whip), immersion in cold lakes, and nocturnal, barefoot pilgrimages in reparation of sins. All this was hidden from view, but, importantly, with the knowing approval of the Jesuit’s spiritual director. And then there was his less dramatic daily “war” on self: for instance, the “Butter Tragedy” – some days butter on his toast, others not, just one example of a constant spirit of mortification in everyday matters.

The personal papers revealed an intense inner life that edified some. Others deemed his mortifications too harsh, his prayer life too extreme; and yet, this was a man with a reputation unlike that of any gloomy ascetic. He was a much loved, affable priest, a perpetual prankster. This paradox only seemed to deepen the mystery surrounding Fr Doyle.

Willie Doyle was born in Dublin on March 3, 1873. His parents were both well-to-do and devoutly religious. Four of their seven children entered some form of religious life. Having been educated in both Ireland and England, Willie entered the Society of Jesus.

Finally, he was ordained in 1907, and soon after was assigned to the Jesuit mission to parishes throughout the British Isles. From the start he excelled as preacher and confessor. Crowds flocked to him, but only after his death was the secret of his “success” revealed: penance.

When war broke out in 1914, Fr Doyle volunteered immediately. He understood that, with thousands on their way to death, a priest was needed for what would prove to be the decisive hour for many souls, with all lost or gained, and for all eternity.

In 1915, he landed in France with the Royal Irish Fusiliers. From then on, he marched every mile alongside these soldiers – forgoing all privileges that his officer rank afforded him. By the end, these battle-hardened troops would come to love their Padre. It was no surprise, as he suffered as much as they did. Through barbed wire, and in spite of bullets, shells and gas, Fr Doyle sought out the dying, who often lay terrified and alone in mud-filled battlefields, administering the last rites, bringing Viaticum.

For his bravery, Fr Doyle was mentioned in despatches and recommended for the highest award for gallantry, the Victoria Cross. He was passed over, deemed by some to have had a triple disqualification: Irish, Catholic and Jesuit. It was to make little difference. His eyes were on an altogether greater prize: the sanctity and the salvation of the men in his charge.

As if the dangers and privations of the Front were not enough, throughout it all Fr Doyle continued his own inner “war”. When possible, in those flooded, fetid trenches, with the sounds of hell reverberating all around, the priest, with a pyx containing the Eucharist around his neck, spent hours on his knees adoring the Prince of Peace.

His letters home to his widowed father reveal the strain of it all as he marched on through the bloodstained fields, with names later synonymous with suffering: Loos, the Somme, Passchendaele … Like his comrades, he was shot at, shelled and gassed, narrowly missing being killed on numerous occasions, his only rest being in the same rat-infested trenches. Despite his brother officers’ pleas, he refused to leave the Front, determined to remain until the end.

On August 16, 1917, during the seemingly never-ending Passchendaele offensive, Fr Doyle was desperately trying to drag a wounded comrade back to safety from No Man’s Land. He was blown to pieces by a German shell. Unlike the many to whom he had given a Christian burial, his remains were hastily interred in a makeshift communal grave.

As the 100th anniversary of his death draws near, it is worth recalling that on the Western Front alone an estimated 40,000 military personnel converted to the Catholic faith. No doubt, this was due in no small measure to the exemplary service of Catholic chaplains – holy men such as Fr Willie Doyle.

KV Turley is a writer and filmmaker. He is the author of Fr Willie Doyle & World War I: A Chaplain’s Story (CTS)

This article first appeared in the July 28 2017 issue of the Catholic Herald. To read the magazine in full, from anywhere in the world, go here

Orange Order calls on Protestants not to use the phrase 'RIP' 

Image caption The Orange Order dates from the 17th century battle for supremacy between Protestantism and Catholicism

The Orange Order has asked its members to stop using the term 'RIP' to express grief or sympathy after a death.

It said the phrase is unbiblical, un-Protestant, and a form of superstition connected to Catholicism.

RIP is an abbreviation of 'rest in peace' or in Latin, 'requiescat in pace'.

In a publication marking the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, the order called on Protestants to stop using the phrase.

Wallace Thompson, secretary of Evangelical Protestants Northern Ireland, wrote a Facebook post on which the article was based.

'Prayers for the dead'

He told the BBC's Talkback programme: "Observing social media, we have noticed that the letters RIP are used a lot by Protestants, and by some evangelical Protestants."

Mr Thompson explained that for him, 'RIP' is a prayer and he did not encourage prayers for the dead.

"From a Protestant point of view, we believe, when death comes, a person either goes to be with Christ for all eternity, or into hell.

Image caption Wallace Thompson believes that the phrase 'RIP' is effectively a prayer for the dead and therefore un-Protestant

"That's what we believe the gospel to be and in this 500th anniversary year of the Reformation, I think Luther, when the scales fell off his eyes, realised that it was all by faith alone, in Christ alone, the decision is made during life, on this earth, so that when death comes it has been made and no decision has been made after death," he said.

'Remembrance'

Speaking on the same programme, former Presbyterian moderator Dr Ken Newell said he did not use the phrase very often.

"I think when people use [RIP] in social media, there's a remembrance and a good wish in it, almost a blessing," he said.

He disagreed that people are praying for the dead when they used the phrase.

"If folk in the Orange Order want to take this line that's perfectly up to them, they are making a good point.

"I think ordinary people have not worked out the issues. This comes out of the human heart," he added.

In response to a request for a spokesperson of the issue, the Orange Order referred the BBC to comments made by the county grand master of County Fermanagh Grand Orange Lodge, Stuart Brooker, in the Impartial Reporter newspaper.

In it he said: "I think the message in the article is very clear and well put together, and I couldn't add anything further to it.

"This article clearly explains why we as Protestants, and members of the Orange Institution, shouldn't use the term 'RIP'.

"It also reminds us that if we need guidance in any matter, we should refer to what the bible teaches."

The Orange Order is the largest Protestant organisation in Northern Ireland.

It regards itself as defending civil and religious liberties of Protestants and seeks to uphold the rule and ascendancy of a Protestant monarch in the United Kingdom.

What a bolus of nutters!

GENE

The cycling legend and devout Catholic who risked his life to protect Jews

by Aili McConnon and Andres McConnon

posted Friday, 21 Jul 2017

Italian cyclist Gino Bartali at the Parc des Princes, Paris, after winning the Tour de France for the second time on 25th July 1948 (Getty)

   

Gino Bartali won the Tour de France twice and defied Mussolini. He also helped a cardinal to save Jewish lives in the 1940s

If Chris Froome triumphs this Sunday in the final stage of the Tour de France, he will have more than confirmed his place among the greats. But there is one record that he won’t have broken: for the longest time span between victories. That is held by the Italian legend Gino Bartali, who won in 1938 and 1948. He was also known as “Gino the Pious” because of his passionate devotion to his Catholic faith.

Bartali’s most lasting accomplishment, however, was one few people know about. During the Second World War Bartali helped Jews hiding in Tuscany and Umbria escape detection by the Nazis and Fascists. Bartali secretly sheltered a family of Jews in an apartment he owned and he travelled between Florence and Assisi, transporting false identity documents hidden in the frame of his bicycle. In both his humanitarian work and his cycling, Bartali’s Catholic faith was the cornerstone of his life at all of its critical junctures. As he put it: “My faith in God, my heartfelt love for religion, have always given me the strength to overcome all the things that were first thought impossible.”

From a young age, religion played a pivotal role in Bartali’s life. Born into a humble labourer’s family living in a working-class hamlet on the outskirts of Florence, Gino became involved in devotional life early on. At the age of 10 he joined the lay group Catholic Action and remained involved throughout his life. Formed in 1867, Catholic Action organised a wide range of activities for young boys and men, ranging from prayer meetings and Bible classes to summer camps and athletic associations.

Catholic Action became even more important to Gino after the first big tragedy rocked the Bartali household. In an amateur race in Turin, soon after Gino had won his first Giro d’Italia in 1936, Gino’s younger brother, Giulio, raced in rainy, slippery conditions. On a precarious downhill descent Giulio was hit by a car that had either missed or ignored instructions about the race. Doctors operated on Giulio, trying to save his life, but the 19-year-old died a few days later.

Gino was devastated and quit cycling. As he grieved for his lost brother his way of viewing the world transformed. Already an active Catholic, he devoted himself further to the Church and turned to his faith to ground him in the world. At Catholic Action meetings he began taking a more visible role, speaking frequently to young boys at meetings, explaining the role of his faith in his success. In their family home, Gino built a small chapel and dedicated it to Giulio so that the Bartalis would have a private place to offer daily prayers for the repose of Giulio’s soul. With few other career options, Gino made the difficult decision to return to cycling. Through prayer he found a new motivation: he would race to honour his brother’s memory.

As Bartali reached the summit of his sport in 1938, his faith came into the glare of the political spotlight in Europe. In a stunning victory, Bartali won the Tour de France in 1938. By this point, Mussolini’s Fascist government tried to use every Italian athletic victory as proof of the strength of the Fascist ideology. In this environment, it was expected that athletes, particularly those competing abroad, would dedicate their victories to Mussolini. Bartali behaved very differently after his Tour win. Instead of thanking Mussolini, he thanked his fans in his victory speech and the next day he was photographed taking his victor’s bouquet to a local church in Paris, where he laid it at the feet of the Madonna. The Fascist regime took note. Just a few days later Mussolini’s press office sent a secret missive to newspapers throughout the country (which Mussolini controlled at this time), and ordered them to avoid any discussion of Bartali’s personal life – including his religion – in any news articles about his cycling.

Bartali, like so many other young men of his era, saw his life upended by World War II. At a moment when his future appeared uncertain, his faith served once more as an important pillar in his life. In the early days of war, when he was conscripted into the army, it offered him an inviting escape from the dreariness of military life and his growing frustration with Mussolini’s government. “I plunged myself into reading the lives of the saints. I frequently read St Anthony, St Catherine, St Thérèse of Lisieux,” he said.

By the autumn of 1943, when the German army occupied Italy, Gino was challenged like never before. As Jewish refugees flooded into Florence, hoping to escape deportation to camps, they turned to the Archbishop of Florence, Cardinal Elia Dalla Costa, for help with shelter, food and false identity documents. The cyclist and the cardinal had been friends since well before the war through the Catholic community; Dalla Costa had married Bartali and baptised his son. Dalla Costa was a spiritual mentor to Bartali, but his request was a very perilous one. He was asking Bartali to risk his life for a community of strangers, and if Bartali was caught his own life would be endangered, not to mention those of his wife and young son.

Bartali understood the dangers involved but he also knew his conscience would not let him stand idly by. As one fellow member of the resistance put it: “One made the choice to be on the side of the Fascists or to defend the people.” Bartali mustered his courage through prayer and made his decision to help.

After the war, Bartali struggled to re-establish himself as a cyclist. As he returned to the Tour de France in 1948, he performed poorly in the first half of the race. Many journalists declared that Il Vecchio (“the old man”), as Bartali was known because he was 10 years older than most of his competitors, had no chance. But Bartali showed the power of his resolve once more.

On the 13th stage, hampered by a more than 21-minute disadvantage behind the race leader, Bartali felt his legs surge beneath him. Not only did he make up much of the lost ground, he also pulled into the lead of the race the next day. A few days later, as Bartali was preparing at his hotel for one of the final stages of the competition, he was surprised by a visitor. It was an emissary from the pope who had appeared to give Bartali a special medal, telling him that “His Holiness wishes that you win the Tour, as a loyal and athletic champion”.

Off the bike and in the years following his retirement, Bartali’s faith would continue to be a source of happiness. In the autumn of 1947, Pope Pius XII referenced Bartali in an address to a crowd at St Peter’s Square when he linked Bartali’s battles on the bike to the larger moral battle to lead a virtuous life. Bartali had the honour of meeting Pope Pius XII, and later met popes John XXIII and Paul VI.

In his early 80s, as Gino’s health began to fail him, he shared his wishes for his final arrangements with family members. He requested a traditional funeral Mass and asked to be buried in the brown robes of the Carmelites, of which he was a lay member. On the afternoon of May 5 2000 Bartali quietly passed away. News of his death was broadcast on Italian television and Pope John Paul II joined those in mourning, hailing Bartali as a “great sportsman”. A few years later, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, commended Bartali’s “great strength” and “great character”. Giorgio Goldenberg, the surviving member of the Jewish family who Bartali sheltered in one of his apartments during the war, offered his own appraisal of the cyclist’s legacy in 2011. “There is no doubt whatsoever for me that he saved our lives,” he said. “He was a hero and he is entitled to be called a hero of the Italian people during the Second World War.”

This is an adapted version of an article which first appeared in 2012. Road to Valour, Gina Bartali: Tour de France Legend and Italy’s Secret World War Two Hero by Aili McConnon and Andres McConnon is available for purchase online.