Woman's cancer vanishes after prayers to 19th-century Maryland priest
By Arthur Hirsch
June 28, 2009
The treatment for terminal cancer that Annapolis resident Mary Ellen Heibel took at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 2004 and early 2005 worked beyond anyone's wildest hopes, wiping out malignant tumors in her lungs, liver, stomach and chest. Her doctor did not expect it, nor could he explain it.
Surely the outcome was remarkable, but was it - in the sense applied by the Roman Catholic Church in such cases - a miracle?
In a few weeks, a committee appointed by the Archdiocese of Baltimore will begin exploring that question, examining 11 witnesses, including Heibel, pressing her doctors, nurses and friends in an attempt to understand what happened. The findings gathered at the archdiocese's downtown offices will be shipped to Rome, and ultimately will bear on a campaign to have Francis X. Seelos, the 19th-century Maryland priest to whom Heibel had turned in prayer for help, canonized as a saint.
For only the fifth time in its 200-year history, the archdiocese has launched a test of faith and science to help the Vatican determine whether one of its own was not only exemplary in virtue during life but now has the power in death to intercede with God. In the end, it will be up to the pope to rule on whether Seelos is to join the men and women held up by the church through the centuries as models of holiness.
"Did what happened come about by the intercession of Blessed Seelos? That's what we have to discover," said the Rev. Gilbert J. Seitz, the judicial vicar who heads the committee, emphasizing that its job is not to judge the case but to gather information in a process akin to taking a deposition.
The Rev. William Graham, a canon lawyer and member of the committee, says the purpose of the examination is to determine what took place and whether it can be attributed to natural causes.
Heibel and her husband, John, parishioners at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Annapolis, await word from the archdiocese on when they should appear before the committee to tell their story and answer questions.
In the meantime, they continue their weekly routine at St. Mary's of early morning prayers seeking the help of Seelos, the Redemptorist priest who in several ways remains present at the church where he served two brief stints in the mid-1800s. The German native beams from stained glass in the nave, watches from a photograph on a wall near the church office, sits in a statue on a bench in the garden. A chip of his breastbone the shape and size of a pinkie fingernail is preserved in a reliquary kept in the rectory.
For years Seelos - who also served as a pastor in Baltimore and Cumberland - has been a physical presence for Heibel, 71, a slim mother of four, grandmother of 11. In a brass necklace reliquary about the size of a silver dollar, the retired antiques appraiser wears a fragment of his bone no longer than the "L" in relic.
She has carried Seelos with her this way since early 2003, when she was diagnosed with and underwent surgery for esophageal cancer at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. About a year later, doctors there found that the surgery had missed a cancerous lymph node. So began a seven-week, five-day-a-week regimen of radiation and chemotherapy.
She prayed with Seelos. She asked fellow parishioners to do the same.
A reputation is honed
Seelos' following had been building for decades. In New Orleans especially, where he died at the age of 48 in 1867 of yellow fever while tending to victims of the disease, his reputation was enhanced in the early 1970s. That's when a local woman who had been diagnosed with terminal liver cancer was found free of the disease after prayers calling on Seelos. An investigation similar to the one in Heibel's case affirmed this as a miracle, and Seelos was beatified in a ceremony in Rome in 2000.
The priest known as the "cheerful ascetic" would thereafter be officially known as "Blessed Seelos," standing one difficult step away from sainthood.
The difference would be one more miracle, one more case confirmed by a process that has been developing for centuries, as saint-making transformed from a spontaneous phenomenon to a formal procedure giving ultimate canonization authority to the pope.
The method used today reflects a process developed since the 13th century, reformed in the 1600s, enshrined in canon law in the early 20th century and reformed again under Pope John Paul II in 1983.
While elements of the process have been simplified and made more speedy, that is only in relative terms; declaring saints remains a painstaking affair. The rare candidate on the fast track might move from start to sainthood in just under 30 years, Seitz said. The longer causes go on and on. Hundreds stall at the midpoint of beatification, either for lack of a verifiable miracle or the support necessary to bring such information to the Vatican's attention.
Canonization, Seitz said, is "the way the church identifies those who have lived uniquely and remarkably their life in Christ. ... In their single-mindedness, in their dedication to Christ, they could be a model."
Christian virtue affirmed by an exhaustive biographical study is only part of the profile. Since at least the fifth century, these celebrated figures have been associated with some magical event, some evidence of supernatural power.
"The miracle is an indication that the saint is in heaven, this person is already holy and has led a holy life," said the Rev. James Martin, associate editor of the Catholic weekly America and author of My Life with the Saints. "It's an indication to the church that this person is praying for us in heaven."
The Rev. Byron Miller of New Orleans, Seelos' church-appointed advocate in the United States and director of the Seelos Center, is confident that his man has the stuff of holiness.
"I don't want to sound smug," he said, but "we'll get Seelos where he needs to be. I really do think it's a matter of when. There's nothing I can see that would prevent Father Seelos from becoming a saint."
A priest arrives in Baltimore
After moving from Germany to the United States in the 1840s, Seelos was ordained at St. James in Baltimore, and from 1854 to 1863 served as pastor at St. Alphonsus in Baltimore, Sts. Peter and Paul in Cumberland and St. Mary's in Annapolis. By all accounts, he stood out for his good humor.
Monsignor Arthur Bastress of St. Alphonsus speaks of Seelos' popularity with parishioners there, evident in the lines for his confessional that commonly stretched around the nave. While other priests "could give them a tongue-lashing, well, he didn't do that. He would be more compassionate, or gentle or cheerful," Bastress said.
Kind, compassionate, good-humored, martyred in service to the sick - Seelos was all that. But, a saint?
Heibel turned to him when her ordeal of treatment began at Walter Reed. She sought his help when she got the word in spring 2004 that the cancer had returned, turning up in five places where it had not been found before. That May, her doctor at Walter Reed told her that she probably had six months to live.
"I went home and started doing my own research" on the Internet, Heibel said. She found out about a chemotherapy trial for esophageal cancer patients being conducted at Hopkins. While she did not qualify for the trial, Dr. Michael K. Gibson, agreed to treat her with a new combination of two established drugs. He began with modest expectations.
"I told her this could be controlled but it could not be cured," said Gibson, now an assistant professor of medicine and oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. At best, he thought, the treatment could double her life expectancy to 12 months.
"You try to be hopeful but realistic," he said.
He said records show that Heibel took weekly treatments at Hopkins starting on June 22, 2004, with CT scans about every three months. As long as there was cancer present, her treatments would go on.
A call to a special prayer
In January 2005, a friend who had recently converted to Catholicism suggested that the Heibels ask their pastor to begin a schedule of novenas - prayers for a particular purpose recited nine days consecutively or once a week for nine weeks - appealing to Seelos.
As they recall, they began on a Wednesday in late January, stepping into a conference room with then-pastor Rev. Denis Sweeney as the Seelos reliquary - a metal ornamental piece that looks roughly like an elaborate candlestick - was brought in from the rectory and placed on the table. They prayed, addressing themselves to the "Divine Physician" and asking for help from Seelos, who had been given "the gift of your healing."
They cannot remember exactly how many times they prayed in this way before Heibel underwent the scan of Feb. 8, a week after her final chemotherapy treatment.
Gibson said his recollection is that the cancer must have been diminishing along the way, but this scan showed something extraordinary. While there was a possibility that residue of the disease remained, Gibson said, "all the other stuff she had went away."
Amazed, he departed from his usual practice and left a message on Heibel's answering machine.
"Dr. Gibson called and said, 'Congratulations on your CT scan,' " she said. "He said, 'There's no tumors left. They're all gone.' "
Her husband recalled that later, the doctor said "it wasn't his treatment that did it."
Explanation eludes doctors
Gibson, who has been practicing medicine since 1996 and specializing in oncology for about five years, said he had not seen a similar case.
"I'd never seen anybody be cured and not recur until her," he said, adding that a scan in March 2008 was clear.
The Heibels say that each scan since has been clear. She was last examined a year ago and has a scan scheduled in August.
"Something worked very well," said Dr. Larry Fitzpatrick, chief of surgery at Mercy Medical Center, who will serve as medical expert on the archiocesan committee.
Preparing for his committee role, Fitzpatrick spoke to specialists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
"They've all got a few stories like this," he said. "Is this woman really any different from these, what I would call 'statistically improbable' cases? The outcome is very unusual, but it's not the only one."
Fitzpatrick said his role on the panel is to be the scientist, to "be the Doubting Thomas," but as a Catholic, he says, he must entertain the possibility of a supernatural cause.
Gibson, a Presbyterian, is not discounting the idea of divine intervention in Heibel's case.
"The easy answer is, 'I'll take any help I can get,' " he said. "It was probably a combination of the chemotherapy and good fortune."
Heibel is not sure how to explain it.
"The only thing we're not supposed to call it is a miracle," she said.
Well, perhaps not yet.
Francis Xavier Seelos
•Jan. 11, 1819: Born in Füssen, Germany
•May 16, 1843: Begins novitiate at St. James, Baltimore
•Dec. 22, 1843: Ordination to the priesthood
•1845-1854: Serves as assistant priest at St. Philomena, Pittsburgh
•1854-1857: Serves as pastor and religious superior, St. Alphonsus, Baltimore
•Spring 1857: Serves briefly at St. Mary's, Annapolis
•1857-1862: Serves at Sts. Peter and Paul, Cumberland
•1862-1863: Serves at St. Mary's, Annapolis
•1863-1866: Serves as itinerant preacher
•1866-1867: Serves at St. Mary's Assumption in New Orleans
Joined: 19 May 2009 Posts: 335 Location: Washington, NJ
Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2009 12:12 pm Post subject:
I saw a program/documentry on EWTN about Father Seelos. Although I don't agree with everything on EWTN, they do have a lot of informative and educational programs dealing with Conservative Catholicsm in a secular world. _________________ Pray the Rosary, I find it to be very powerful!!
I saw a program/documentry on EWTN about Father Seelos. Although I don't agree with everything on EWTN, they do have a lot of informative and educational programs dealing with Conservative Catholicsm in a secular world.
Yes, that's true. SOME of their programs are very helpful. It is a mixed bag, however. There are so may other programs about which are just plain loathsome, even dangerous to Catholics! _________________ Salus animarum prima lex
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