NEW ORLEANS - Carroll Dugas needed healing. Diagnosed with an aneurysm and not knowing where to turn, Dugas attended a healing mass in honor of Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos.
Dugas visited another doctor after the mass and the aneurysm had disappeared. Seven years later, he returned to say thanks. Dugas and hundreds of people packed St. Mary's Assumption Church in the Irish Channel Sunday.
The healing mass celebrates the birthday of Father Seelos, a 19th-century priest who spent his final years of service in New Orleans. Seelos is now under consideration for sainthood.
"Right now for Father Seelos, because he was beatified, that puts him in that elite company of one step removed from being a saint," says Father Byron Miller, director of the National Seelos Shrine. "That means that he only has one more miracle, a bona fide physical healing that would declare him a saint for the Catholic church."
Father Miller says the priest forgave the unforgivable and loved the unlovable, and Father Seelos seemed to have a gift for healing even after his death.
The healing mass draws the biggest crowd of the year to the church.
"It only seems natural that with Father Seelos' prayers in heaven that so many people pack this church where he is trying to say to God, 'Please give healing to the un-healable,'" says Miller.
Maria Stelly hopes to be one of those healed. She'd been sick for a long time and after attending a mass for Father Seelos, finally got a diagnosis.
"We prayed with somebody that I would find out what's wrong with me and hopefully be healed," says Stelly of Reserve. "God has different ways in which he heals us and if my way is finding out and being able to treat it through medical and what I can do to help as well, then that's his way of answering our prayers."
