Spirit Daily

Church Near New York City With Tearing Icons Reports Alleged Healing Of Tumor

By Michael H. Brown

A church near New York City that has reported phenomena in association with weeping icons for the past four decades has informed its congregation that another "miracle" has taken place, this time the apparent healing of a young boy.

In its March 30 bulletin the church, St. Paul's Greek Orthodox in Hempstead on Long Island, said that the pastor, Father Nicholas J. Magoulias, was approached by the cousin of an eight-year-old boy named Brian who was suffering from serious head tumors. The encounter took place during a tour of the church by six graders from a nearby school.

According to the official bulletin, which withheld the name of the youngster, Father Magoulias presented the cousin with a vial of oil from lamps that burn near icons of Our Lady of Perpetual Help and the Lamenting Mother of God that shed tears in the 1960s. She in turn gave the holy oil (available at the church) to the child's mother, who waited two days, apparently because the boy resisted, but then started putting it on him at night while the infirm youngster was asleep.

"A week later the doctors told them that another tumor was growing in the top of his head," the cousin related to parish authorities. "They said they saw it for a while, but thought it was scar tissue until they realized it was growing. So, three weeks after his last operation, he was now [going to undergo] another surgery. The morning of the operation the doctor took one last x-ray. To his amazement the tumor had shrunk considerably, in fact, it was almost completely gone. The doctor told them that he cannot explain it medically and was quite confused that the tumor should shrink so much as to almost completely disappear. He even suggested that he might not even operate. He chose to go ahead anyway. When he opened him up, the tumor was almost entirely gone and what was left were tissues."

Priests at the church, which is Greek Orthodox, told Spirit Daily they receive on average at least two credible reports of similar miracles each year. The miracles originally involved three icons that shed tears in private homes in the vicinity and were given to the church. Two remain at the church, while a third is now in Florida. It all began on March 16, April 12, and May 7 of 1960. In addition to tears, the eyes on one of the icons were seen moving for hours -- garnering world attention (even that of future president Richard Nixon) -- and when the first icon was processed to church, "a trinity of white sea gulls, soaring against the blue sky over Island Park, heralded the enshrinement of the Madonna of the Tears," reported the New York Journal American -- escorting a procession of thirty cars and circling over the church as services were conducted. Hundreds of thousands began to visit the beautiful church on Long island just east of New York.

[St. Paul's is located at 110 Cathedral Avenue, Hempstead, NY. 11550]