pray to the SPIRIT "Mary".. what is lying signs and wonders ?

Father Solanus Casey and his 'favors'
By Vivian M. Baulch / Special to The News

September 22, 1996

Father Solanus Casey shortly before his death at the age of 86


But he left another rich legacy -- a long list of curious "favors" to an equally long list of devoted believers.

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.

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.

Barney Casey was the oldest of 16 children of an Irish-American family from Superior, Wisconsin. He'd already been a lumberjack, a prison guard, and a streetcar motorman. One day while driving the streetcar through a tough section of Superior, he came upon a drunken sailor stabbing a young woman.

"The scene remained with him," wrote his biographer, James P. Derum. "To him the brutal stabbing and the sailor's hysterical cursing symbolized the world's sin and hate and man-made misery.

"He saw...that the only cure for mankind's crime and wretchedness was the love that can be learned only from and through Him who died to show men what love is."

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.

Lugging a trunk, he went to Detroit.

In 1897 he took the name of St. Francis Solanus, a 17th century Spanish nobleman, intellectual, missionary and preacher. Six years later he was ordained.






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.

In the 1950s her legs began to swell, and doctors told her that she would be in a wheelchair soon. She consulted Father Solanus.

"Stand up," he said. "Then he slapped both my legs and said to them, 'Stand up and do your job.'





Father Solanus returned to Detroit in 1924, 28 years after first arriving as a novice. He stayed as doorkeeper until 1945, the year before he retired.

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.

Not all the requests were granted. Gertrude Brennan complained about a minor sinus problem to the priest. At the time he was in the yard of the monastery swatting flies with a fly swatter. He continued swatting during her complaint. She took his actions to mean that some minor annoyances were merely that.








By 1964 the local group had grown to about 3,500 members nationally. They wanted some action toward his canonization. In 1974 Brother Leo Wollenweber started gathering the evidence and filled two big, gray filing cabinets.

TV programs told of Father Solanus, and in 1994, "Unsolved Mysteries" had a show about his "mysteries."

Finally, after 30 years, Pope John Paul II approved the reading of the decree declaring the heroic virtues of Casey. This gives him the title "Venerable," the first of three steps in the rigorous process toward canonization. If he becomes sainted, he will be the first American-born man thus honored. Elizabeth Ann Seton was canonized in 1976.

Father Solanus was buried in a small plot on the monastery grounds. Later, in 1987, his body was exhumed, given a new robe, and placed inside the St. Bonaventure chapel in a crypt. Today thousands of members of the Father Solanus Guild and others carry around as relics threads from his brown habit in decoratively crocheted badges.