'DAILY MAIL' TELLS

THE STORY
OF LOURDES
"THAT'LL be another great clay for the Irish," says Rhona Churchill on ending her series of five articles in to-day's " Daily Mail," called " Do you believe in Miracles ?", in which she has been vividly relating the stories of miracles at Lourdes, some of them already authenticated.
Her last story is about 27year-old Mary Henry, a hairiiresser in Ireland, who is said to have been cured of paralysis at the Shrine. Miss Churchill went to see Fr. M. F. Buckley, Pilgrimage Organiser, and he was very stern about it all: " Sure an' you must not say that our Mary's cured !" he warned. It is being left for the authorities at LOurdes to decide, and, says Dr. Pierre Nieudan, the Lourdes Medical Board Vice-President: " We think on the evidence we saw last year, that Mary Henry stands a very good chance of becoming the first Irish pilgrim to have her cure proclaimed miraculous by the Church." Mary's case comes up for discussion by the Bureau next year, the Lourdes Centenary Year.
The "Daily Mail" articles on Lourdes deal with people who are now Using. and who hase been interviewed by Miss Churchill. It v. as her task to relate stories V. ich a re unbelievable, which consequently must attract general attention.
Resignation
BUT the millions of Catholics who have gone !ninthly and confidently to Lourdes, sometimes hoping for some relief from their own particular physical maladies. more often in a spirit of loving resignai ion to the Divine Will, know there is another story of miracles-spiritual miracles of te resration of mental peacethese arc the intimate stories one may not often care to pass on to a reporter.
So the things that are the wonder of Lourdes to all. believers and unbelievers, were made readily available to IVErssChurchill by the people concerned and their friends. She speaks of "a woman thing from cancer who is suddenly restored to health" . . w . A hopeless paralytic walks . . medically incurable blindness vanishes. "When things like this happen, people say it's a Miracle'," .says Miss Churchill.
Here, in brief, is one of the
k'itSCS hich she relates in detail: Jeanne Fretel suffered from tuberculous peritonitis, with additional uneningeal symptons developed after appendicitis operation in 1939, when shc was 24. Tuberculousis spread to stomach, intestines, feet. and mouth. By 1948 doctors said the was all but dead, and she receised the Last Sacraments. She had undergone 13 operations, her records include 80 pages of hospital reports and 18 pages of fever charts and numerous X-ray records. In October 1948 friends sent her to 'Lourdes. lhere, too comatose to know where Fete was. she was carried to the Shrine. Within seconds she was conscious, well and freeof pain. She suffered no relapse.
And so on. Catholics are familiar with it all.
SAYS Miss Churchill: "Ntedical science has proved many times that the mind can overrule the body and think up illnesses from which a patient may -then really suffer. "Butthe mind has never been known to cure serious organic diseases in the twinkline of an eye --which is what seems to happen at Lourdes. "Faith may move mountains. Religious fervour may cure hysterical sickness. But could a child of three after having meningitis imagine himself totally blind and paralysed in all four limbs, then at four he so full of religious faith at Lourdes that he is completely curette 'THEY told me at Lourdes that e` this startling cure had come to Francis Pascal nearly 19 years ago. The records stated that he was struck down by meningitis in December 1937 when three and rendered completely blind and paralysed in arms and legs.
"A lumbar puncture confirmed the diagnosis of meningitis. An oculist confirmed that he could nen distinguish between
not day
and night. "To the five doctors and specialists alio examined him before he went to Lourdes in August 1938 he seemed doomed to a helpless. sightless existence. "Yet on his return front Lourdes he could see, walk. run. and wave his arms as well as any of the neighbours' children.