.. Mary gives guidence ??.....a Carreer ??...........The uncorrupted body Fr. Solanus Casey

Father Solanus Casey had come to Detroit to be a Capuchin friar. During his years as a priest he spent time in other states, but he began and ended his career in Detroit.





Barney believed the Lord wished him to dedicate his life to Him and he decided to study for the priesthood. But he was having troubles academically. Then he planned a novena, prayers to Mary in preparation for her Dec. 8 feast of the Immaculate Conception. He became aware of the Blessed Virgin's presence: "Go to Detroit," he distinctly heard her say.

The thin, bald ascetic with horn-rimmed spectacles and a flowing gray beard spent 23 years at St. Bonaventure Monastery in Detroit. He was a man of rare holiness. A mystic.



During his 21 years as porter at St. Bonaventure, he filled seven notebooks with more than 6,000 requests for help from petitioners. And to some 700 of these he recorded reported 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.



After his death, Clare Ryan, a former Detroiter, started the Father Solanus Guild. Mrs. Ryan believed that Father Solanus cured her on two occasions: of stomach cancer in the 1930s; and 20 years later, of paralysis of the legs.




The uncorrupted body of the ‘Venerable’ Fr. Solanus Casey O.F.M. Cap.,


or the “Best loved man in Detroit” as he is declared by many Michiganders, is interred at St. Bonaventure’s Monastery in Detroit, Michigan.

Buried in the cemetery at St. Bonaventure’s Monastery in 1957, his body was exhumed in 1987, and moved to a special crypt within the transept of the monastery’s chapel.

The Archbishop was witness to the fact that after thirty years the body of Fr. Solanus was found to be intact and lacking any signs of decomposition.

Fr.Casey was then re interred and sealed in a steel casket with the seal of the Archbishop and entombed in the chapel. There are still numerous pilgrims everyday that visit St. Bonaventure’s and many claim miraculous recoveries and many are brought back to the faith at this spot. In staggering numbers, actually.



So Michigan has it’s own uncorrupted saint, residing in death in Detroit. If you find yourself in that neck of the woods, might I suggest a side trip to St. Bonaventure’s in Detroit. Who knows, many still claim to be healed there.