The Saint They Almost Overlooked

He stood but 5 ft. 4 in., so they called him "the little priest." He was a shy sort, not much of an orator, and enough the awkward immigrant from Bohemia that some of his colleagues lobbied in vain with Rome to keep him from becoming the bishop of cultured Philadelphia. When he died at 48, the carvers misspelled his name on the tombstone.

John Nepomucene Neumann,* who on June 19 becomes America's third Roman Catholic saint, was no ecclesiastical superstar, but a priest of simple piety and workaday faithfulness. So much so that Vatican officials who screen candidates for sainthood nearly overlooked him. They shelved his case in 1912 because of serious doubt whether he had displayed the necessary "heroic virtue."

Neumann's advocates persisted, and they finally got a hearing with Pope Benedict XV and a board of Cardinals in 1921. Just a few hours before that meeting, the main opponent of Neumann's canonization collapsed and died in a barber's chair. Benedict subsequently designated Neumann as Venerable (worthy of veneration and a proper recipient of private prayers)--the beginning of the long process to sainthood. In doing so the Pope set a precedent for the future judgment of possible saints by declaring: "Even the most simple works, performed with constant perfection in the midst of inevitable difficulties, spell heroism in any servant of God."

Priest Surplus. This path of humble heroism began when Neumann graduated from seminary in Prague but could not get ordained because there was a surplus of priests. He took a boat to New York City in 1836, hoping to be a missionary even though he had no assurance that there was a job for him. German-speaking priests were in short supply in America, and Neumann was quickly ordained and dispatched as a missionary to farmers around Buffalo. He later ministered in Pittsburgh, Baltimore and many other towns.

In 1842 Neumann became the first man received into the Redemptorist order in the U.S., and only five years later was named head of the nation's Redemptorist missions. After two years he asked to be relieved of the administrative burden, which made him an unlikely candidate to be a bishop. But Neumann's quiet spiritual stamina appealed to Francis Kenrick, who had left Philadelphia to become Archbishop of Baltimore. When Neumann heard that Kenrick was recommending him as his successor in Philadelphia, he beseeched nuns to pray against such an appointment, which he considered "a grave calamity for the church."

Pope Pius IX thought otherwise, and in 1852 Bishop Neumann plunged into the hurly-burly of mid-century church affairs. The debt-ridden church was swelling with poor immigrants, and Neumann was forced to become absorbed in bricks-and-mortar fund raising. He began building churches at the rate of one almost every month, and devoted much care to the completion of the cathedral roof. He was particularly concerned with the building of Catholic schools, for he said openly that public schools were dens of immorality and heresy. When he became bishop, only 500 Philadelphia children went to parochial schools; within three years that number rose to 9,000.

It was Neumann's deep spirituality, not the buildings, that fostered a campaign for sainthood, beginning six years after his death. Once he was pronounced Venerable in 1921, the next stage was to be named Blessed, which meant that two healings were certified by the Vatlican as miracles attributed to Neumann's intercessions in heaven. One further healing was required for sainthood. The church provides these accounts of the Neumann miracles:

Eva Benassi of Sassuolo, Italy. In 1923, when she was eleven, she suffered acute peritonitis, and by the time a doctor was called he judged her beyond help. A nun at Eva's school, however, organized prayers to Neumann for healing and touched the girl's swollen abdomen with a picture of the bishop. That night the disease disappeared.

J. Kent Lanahan of Villanova, Pa. In 1949, at 19, he was standing on the running board of a car when it swerved into a utility pole. The crash crushed the young man's skull, broke his collarbone and punctured a lung. He was in a coma with a 107DEG fever and high pulse when doctors decided to cease treatment. A neighbor lent the parents a piece of Neumann's cassock. Soon after they touched Kent with the cloth he began to recover. Now a music teacher, Kent Lanahan says, "They couldn't explain what happened, so I guess it was the Man Upstairs."

Michael Flanigan of West Philadelphia, Pa. In 1963, when he was six, doctors gave him only six months to live because of what they considered an incurable case of Ewing's sarcoma, a bone cancer. Several times his parents carried Michael to the Neumann Shrine at Philadelphia's Church of St. Peter the Apostle, where the bishop's body is on display behind glass in the altar. Six months after the diagnosis was made, there were no signs of the disease.

All three of these healed people are still alive and will attend the open-air ceremony at St. Peter's when John Neumann is canonized by Pope Paul. John Cardinal Krol, Neumann's successor six times removed in the Philadelphia see, will join the Pope in celebrating Mass for some 20,000 people. Back home, Apostolic Delegate Jean Jadot will conduct Mass at the Aston, Pa., mother house of a nuns' order founded by Neumann, while ethnic delegations will parade to the Philadelphia shrine.

The traditional gifts presented to Pope Paul during the Vatican rites will include candles, bread and wine from areas where Neumann ministered, and a scale model of a school he founded. Another gift will be clothing to be donated to a needy family, signifying that Neumann gave away much of his personal clothing, food and money to the poor. Because of this, the most fitting tribute for America's new saint is a description of his crowded 1860 funeral, written with Main Line disdain in the Philadelphia Bulletin: "The chances of pickpockets were superior, had the pickings been desirable, but the ragged outcasts and very humble citizens with an infusion of colored little ones who made up the motley crew offered no tempting inducements for the light finger."

* Pronounced Noy-mun; not to be confused with John Henry Newman, the celebrated cardinal-theologian who was a contemporary in England.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.