Mother Marie Adele Garnier, a London nun, witnessed the Eucharist turn to bloody flesh in a priest’s hands during Mass, prompting Pope Francis to put her on the road to sainthood.
Mother Garnier wrote a letter to Abbé Charles Sauvé, a priest friend, describing the experience:
“At the moment in which the priest took a particle of the Holy Host and put it into the chalice I raised my eyes to adore and to contemplate the holy particle,” she wrote.
She continued: “Oh, if you could know what I saw and how I am still moved and impressed by this vision. The fingers of the priest held not a white particle but a particle of striking red, the colour of blood and luminous at the same time…The fingers of the priest were red on the right of the particle, as from a blood stain that seemed still wet.”
According to the Catholic Herald, a book written in her honor titled “The Path of Mother Adele Garnier,” written by Fr. Gianmario Pica, an Italian priest who analyzed her letters and other writings in preparation for the book, is to be published via the Vatican Press.
The Vatican Press also volunteered to launch the book’s premier in the Vatican’s Marconi Hall on the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Mother Garnier was a governess who turned down a marriage proposal to establish a religious order in Montmartre, Paris at the end of the 19th century.
She led a community of women dedicated to the perpetual adoration of the Holy Eucharist, but her group was often attacked with obsession, possessions and objects being overturned or thrown around rooms.
One sister was hit by invisible blows and the sisters were covered with particles of alter breads.
The nuns continued on their journey of prayer but the anti-clerical Law of Associations led to the nuns fleeing London in 1901.
They settled in Notting Hill two years later and Mother Garnier’s order, the Adorers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Montmartre, spread around the world.
Pope St. John Paul II invited them to open a convent close to the Vatican and specifically asked them to pray for him and his successors.
Since her passing on April 12 last year, many pilgrims have journeyed to Mother Garnier’s tomb and Pope Benedict XVI’s spokesman stressed the importance of her teachings.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols celebrated Mass in Tyburn Convent to mark the golden jubilee of Tyburn Association of Adoration, a movement to share the perpetual adoration along with the nuns.
Cardinal Nichols spoke of Mother Garnier to say she: “wanted each one of her convents not only to be a place in which Jesus is continually adored in the Blessed Sacrament, but also to be a place in which lay people could share in this perpetual adoration. The association fulfills her deep desire.”
By Kenya Sinclair
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