1. A Vision Fulfilled

Ten thousand people came seeking not just a miracle. They came in search of their miracle.

On March 13, 2005, they came to Garfield Heights, Ohio, to Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church by private ambulance, in motorized lift vans, and in sedans displaying handicapped hangtags. They came alone and they came with families. They walked with heads held high and they hobbled through the parking lot on crutches. They stood in Disney World–long lines that snaked across a network of sidewalks crisscrossing the parish campus. They came looking for hope. They came looking for healing. At twenty-one degrees and with a piercing wind blowing, many would later recall the desperation of the day wrapped in a memory of brittle cold.

Constructed in the 1950s, the Romanesque church seats eight hundred beneath her graceful arches and towering col­umns. Painted murals and stained-glass windows depict St. Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus and the primacy of St. Peter, among other images. As caretakers pushed loved ones up the aisles, some in wheelchairs, some on hospital gur­neys, hymns were being played by the pipe organist in the loft above. Canes, crutches, and walkers could be seen throughout the dense gathering, hard evidence of injuries, disease, or just the physical deterioration of old age. In the pews, bald children pressed close to their parents.

People entered the church filled with a mixture of faith and skepticism, trust and fear, acceptance and anger. They braved the frigid weather and then waited many hours inside, lured by a glimmer of hope that they might be released from the pain in their bodies and the suffering in their questio...