THE FRIAR OF FOGGIA

Hokitika Guardian, 28 August 1920, Page 4

THE FRIAR OF FOGGIA

(By Ferdinand Tuohy, who has just returned from Homo to London).

The other afternoon I called ut the Vatican to see Monsignor Cheretti, Papal secretary and one who, they say, may one day .be Pope. Monsignor Cheretti was not in. From the Vatican I drove to call on an English Franciscan bishop who wont through the. war with us in Palestine. The English Franciscan bishop was not in either. He had gone, with Monsignor Cncretti, to visit the friar of Foggia. * All religious and superstitious Italy -r-that is to say, all Italy—is talking of the friar of Foggia, a young Franciscan of 80, whose monastical mountain fastness has become the Mecca of peasant and student alike. Monsignor Cheretti and the English bishop were students sent to Foggia specially by the Pope to inquire into the exceptional piety of the young friar, .and its resultant effect upon all with whom he comes in contact.

Because extraordinary scenes are being witnessed in Foggia from day to day. The peasants refuse to confess to any but the young friar, or to receive Communion from another’s hand, and in consequence .the rest of the monastery is idle while long queues besiege the young Franciscan and gaze in wonder at the markings on liis hands, sandalled feet, and head. *-■ * * * # These markings have been medically authenticated as white cicatrices, and they are said to correspond minutely to the markings left upon the crucified One of Nazareth. One other, it is recalled, bore similar markings—St Francis of Assisi.

That the young friar of Foggia is so marked, even to a cicatrix in the -Bids, seems to be generally accepted as the fact. But the Vatican is not enamoured of such “revivals,” especially when they lead to a complaint from the beat of the monastery that the ordinary lilts of the place is being interrupted, and so Monsignor Cheretti was sent over hill and dale for three days and nights in a motor car to seek to calm the devout of Foggia, speaking in the name of Pope Benedict.

A day or two later, as we were rushing north in the Rome-Paris express, the case of the friar of Foggia came up in conversation.

i“lt’s" all quite understandable,” quoth my companion, the most brilliant young specialist in Ireland and bearer of a name equally prominent in literature. “These markings can either be the result of pre-natal influence, caused by a mother’s concentration and piety, or may even be acquired in life by a highly sensitive subject. I once put a stamp on the forearm of a woman patient and asked her to imagine there was a blister there. Next morning there was a blister there. ... I can

quite understand the case of the friar of Foggia.” Just then we entered a long darkness—the Mont Cenis tunnel.