Detroit, Michigan: Blessed Solanus Casey Center: A Healing Priest, “God’s Doorkeeper”
About Blessed Solanus Casey:
It is a wonderful thing to see how God can take what seems like failure to the world and turn it in to something spectacular. Such is certainly the case of Venerable Solanus Casey. He did not perform well in his seminary classes (partly due to the fact that they were in German, which he did not speak fluently). He was ordained in 1904 at the age of 33 but in a capacity that did not allow him to hear confessions or to preach doctrinal sermons. He served for 20 years at the Capuchin Friaries in the New York area before being transferred to Saint Bonaventure Monastery in Detroit.
What must have looked like a bleak future for one wanting to become a pastor, instead became one of infinite blessing to those who encountered him.
He served in Detroit for over 20 years, taking on the lowly role of doorkeeper and porter at the Monastery. He soon developed a reputation for healing and helping others to pray for relief of their burdens. During this time he filled seven notebooks with more than 6,000 requests for help from petitioners. He also recorded cures from cancer, leukemia, tuberculosis, diphtheria, arthritis, blindness, and other maladies. These brief postscripts also report conversions of fallen-away churchgoers and favorable resolutions of domestic and business problems.
At the time of his death in 1957 (remarkably at the same day and hour of the first Mass that he celebrated) his fellow priests were astonished when over 20,000 people filed past his casket. This simple, humble priest had touched many lives.
His Feast Day is celebrated on July 30.
About Saint Bonaventure Monastery:
His body was later dis-interred and found to be incorrupt when it was transferred to the Monastery. He was placed on the path to sainthood in 1960, and he was raised to the second step toward sainthood when Pope John Paul II declared him Venerable in 1995, and then his Beatification took place on November 18, 2017 at Ford Field in Detroit….which made him Blessed Solanus Casey (a miracle due to his intercession has been approved).
The monastery remains a place of pilgrimage and reports of his intercession continue. Thousands of visitors come to the monastery to ask his intercession every month.
Address: 1780 Mount Elliott, Detroit, MI 48207
GPS coordinates: 42° 20′ 55.7664” N, 83° 1′ 31.4256” W
Tel: +1 (313) 579-2100 (Office) Fax: +1 (313) 579-5365
e-mail: amorris@thecapuchins.org
Click here for the Solanus Casey Center in Detroit. There are details concerning pilgrimages, hours of operation and much more. And be sure to check out their bakery for some really delicious baked goods.
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