GOOD FRIDAY MARVEL

Hokitika Guardian, 16 April 1925, Page 2

GOOD FRIDAY MARVEL

SENSATION IN ITALY. AIISTIIA 1.1 AN' AND N.Z. CABI.E ASSOCIATION LONDON, April 15. The “Daily Chronicle’s” Rome correspondent relates a curious case ol religious traumatism, at Montal louffugo, i,r Calabria, where a tailor’s invalid daughter. Elena Ajello. 25 years of age. has sweated blood every Friday during the months of March and April, and especially on Good Friday, for the past three years.

This year a party of Italy's most eminent physicians attended, and they found the village swarming with people of all classes, and from all parts of Italy, to participate in what they regarded as a miracle.

Exactly at noon. Elena went into a trance, and when she was entirely unconscious. she went through the story of Christ’s death. At three o’clock she complained of a great pain in her hands and feet, as though they were nailed to a cross. Finally Elena agonisingly cried out:—

“A Crown of thorns is piercing my head.” Exactly at the moment, blood oozed from the forehead, from her knees and from her feet. The girl .sweated blood copiously for three hours. The medical observers declared that the ease defiied every ordinary pathological explanation. It could, they said, only be described as a most unusual form of a religious hysteria.

The girl sought to enter a Convent five years ago. She took the novice s veil, but she was not allowed to continue on account of illness. She then became an invalid. She lias spent-the last three years in lied, being constantly absorbed in religions contemplation.