Religion: Snite at Lourdes

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The Holy Father learns with deep solicitude of the devoted pilgrimage of his beloved son, Fred Snite. In fervent prayer he commends him to the loving care of our Heavenly Mother. . . .

Thus last week Luigi Cardinal Maglione, Papal Secretary of State, telegraphed the handsome, devout and courageous young paralytic who, a fortnight before, had traveled 5,000 miles in his "iron lung" respirator to make his devotions to the Blessed Virgin at the healing shrine of Lourdes (TIME, May 29). Happy Fred B. Snite Jr. replied to Cardinal Maglione:

. . . I am simply bewildered by the many prayers being offered for me the world over. . . . Saluting His Holiness with profound reverence as the Vicar of Christ, familiarly as an honorary fellow alumnus of the University of Notre Dame,* I implore a daily remembrance at the altar.

Fred Snite had arrived at Lourdes in a trailer, was greeted by pilgrims crowding around the "iron lung" and clamoring encouragement in many tongues. Thereafter pilgrims, reporters, priests, nuns watched Fred Snite eagerly, day after day, as he attended Masses. Few saw him, however, when twice he was taken from his respirator, wrapped in a towel, placed in a 7-by-3 ft. basin in a bathhouse, to which the healing waters of the grotto are piped. Each time Fred Snite lay in the icy water for half an hour (he can now breathe for an hour without mechanical aid).

Each year, in the Lourdes bathhouse, a handful of pilgrims are cured of ailments attested incurable by doctors. Fred Snite was neither cured nor disheartened. Said he: "I ask no miracle and do not expect one. I came here to offer my thanks . . . to receive the spiritual strength here to keep on getting better."