Shrine Dedicated Lourdes In Ohio Is Yet Another Place In State Of Intervention

By Michael H. Brown

A while back we wrote about all that goes on in Ohio. In the past 12 years, reports of apparitions there have been voluminous -- spanning from a venerable nun to a man who was recently arrested for abetting illegal aliens and had a record of robbery.

Some claims we believe and some, obviously, we're not so sure about. It's from Ohio that have come the dramatic "Our Lady of America" messages, (those are the ones from the nun and located on the same archive page as this story). Phenomena have been reported the length and breadth of the state of Ohio -- quite literally, from the southern end near Cincinnati to vicinities like Steubenville and Columbus and Fostoria.

To the north, near Cleveland, is Euclid and a shrine dedicated to the Blessed Mother of Lourdes.  (http://www.srstrinity.org/ourl.html). As we have previously pointed out, Lourdes grottos -- whether in France, Ireland, or elsewhere -- have been the site of claimed supernatural events, and such is also true of America. There are reports of healings at Mount St. Mary's in Maryland (we'll be investigating this shortly), and also at the Euclid shrine, which is about ten miles from downtown Cleveland and stands as a replica of the French shrine where St. Bernadette saw the Virgin Mary in 1858. In fact, a finger-nail sized piece of the actual Lourdes grotto has been embedded in a fountain at Euclid and appears to be a source of what are reportedly miraculous healings.

"We never called them 'miracles,'" notes the administrator, Sister Rochelle. "We call them 'graces,' because we don't determine miracles." But she and her fellow nuns, Sisters of the Most Holy Trinity, have logged a number of cases that hint at God's intervention. There is the case of Sister Mary Sulko, a nun from Mingo Junction, Ohio, whose eyesight was afflicted by a hemorrhaging retina but dramatically improved after bathing her eyes in the shrine's water. There is the case of a man who was able to turn in his crutches after being crippled for six years (the result of a car accident).

Another person who was healed there (identified in the records only as "P.F.F.") testified to the effects on an eye tumor. "I went to the hospital at the time appointed for the operation, but for some unforeseen reason, the doctor could not get the needle to work in the machine with which he was to operate, although he worked long and strenuously to adjust it," says this older account. "I became very nervous, and said I would like to have another doctor present and get his opinion. The doctor was quite satisfied and decided to wait till the next day.

"I went home and that evening before retiring I made the sign of the Cross over my eye with the blessed water from the shrine, asking Our Blessed Lady to cure me. When I awoke in the morning, the growth had disappeared, not even a sign of it remaining."

Everything from severe headaches to immune disorders have been healed or improved after visits to this shrine -- as there are also healings at Lourdes itself and at grottos dedicated to Lourdes at places like Betania in Venezuela. We are in a time of supernatural healings -- real grace -- and must take advantage of it. Virtually every part of the world and every state has somewhere where graces are being dispensed. According to Sister Rochelle, the reports come in sporadically, sometimes several in a month. "I read the letters that come in, but we don't categorize them," she says. "It's not always the miracle of physical healing but often the miracle of acceptance. What we try to present is that you come, you believe, you pray, and however God or Mary answers you is a miracle."