Milestones: Miracles in Malden

Flocking, pushing, stepping on toes, upsetting policemen, trampling shrubbery, scores of thousands of Roman Catholics moved in a long line which surged and babbled but scarcely dwindled all week long—not to get into a football stadium or a prizefight arena, but to see and if possible touch the tombstone of a priest, the Rev. Father Patrick J. Power in Holy Cross Cemetery at Maiden, Mass.

Father Power died at 25, of phthisis, some 60 years ago. About 30 years later rumor crept about that his grave held miraculous powers of healing. Fortnight ago the rumors grew and flew. From Boston, from all New.England, from the outer-States and Canada came the sick, the halt, the blind, the faithful, the curious; also quick-lunch vendors, souvenir postcard hawkers, trinket peddlers, troublemakers. From dawn to dusk, day after day, the slow-shuffling queue wound through the cemetery to the silent grave, heaped with flowers, surrounded with guttering vigil lights. Boston's Irish Catholic Mayor-elect James Michael Curley came with his son to kneel beside the shrine. Last week the estimated attendance was 250,000.

Finally came Rome's ranking U. S. prelate, William Henry Cardinal O'Connell, Archbishop of Boston. He preached no sermon. He stood quietly watching this enormous demonstration. Asked if he would make any official pronouncement, he shook his head. Said he: "All we know is what we can see with our eyes, and you can see as much as I."†

Many were the miraculous cures reported; many were the reports denied. Some allegations:

Morris Goldstein, 14, paralyzed, walked for several yards.

Vincent O'Neill, 7, born blind, cried: "I can see, grandma, I can see people."

Teresa Amendola, 6, spoke for the first time.

Cornell Landry, 8, helped to the grave by a chauffeur, removed his leg-brace and walked back unassisted.

Martha Clark, 13, left her crutches on the grave.

The parents of William Gaul, 6, wrapped a handkerchief soaked in rainwater from the grave around his neck. Doctors at Boston City Hospital said they noted a sudden improvement in his throat trouble.

Gardner Jackson, onetime chairman of the Sacco-Vanzetti defense, made investigations and reported:

That Laura J. Moody, 18, whose family physician pronounced her spinal cure "a miracle," had already been discharged from Boston City hospital. Hospital officials said: "The majority of her trouble was hysteria."

That Vincent O'Neill (see above), according to the boy's father, was never stone-blind. Said his father: "He has a no-growth cataract over one eye. The other eye has perfect vision."

That Harold Sheehan, 7, reported as having left his leg-braces at the grave, did not do so, according to his mother, and is still being sent to the Children's hospital for regular treatment.