In the Fall of 2005 I was just adjusting to my roll as admin for the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Omaha, Father’s Joseph Taphorn and Ryan Lewis respectively. I was called into Fr. Lewis’ office with the news of a very special project. Little did I know I would be part of Church history and potentially the canonization of a little French nun I’d never heard of.
First line of business, read a book that specifies the procedure to convene a tribunal. Okay!?! Nothing like a little job security. After a weekend of cramming and note taking I was able to start the organizational process.
Under the experienced guidance of Fr. Dominic Papa, OP, Vice-Postulator for the Cause for Canonization I organized appointments, schedules, proof read documents, confirmed travel arrangements and even secured a court reporter through the Archdiocesan Attorney. Beyond the practical aspects of putting together such a detailed and important event, it was awe inspiring to think of how amazing such an experience was. The possibility of Blessed Jeanne Jugan being canonized a Saint by the Pope was incredible. Not only for the Archdiocese of Omaha, but for the Church as a whole. I was truly privileged to be a part of this historic event.
After about 3 years of waiting and wondering if this will be the miracle that will Canonize Blessed Jeanne Jugan the day has been set for Sunday October 11, 2009.
Below is the article from the Omaha World Herald that ran Sunday May 31, 2009.
Published Sunday May 31, 2009
Miracle Cure: Wife’s prayers for her husband are answered
BY CHRISTOPHER BURBACH
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Edward Gatz was sure he was a goner.
Doctors had found a fist-size tumor of aggressive cancer cells attacking his esophagus and stomach. Gatz, 51, was a physician himself and knew how dire his situation was.
At the time – 1989 – fewer than 1 percent of people diagnosed with such advanced esophageal cancer survived for five years. The vast majority died within one year.
The doctors told Gatz he had six months to live.
“Ed’s dead,” Dr. Donald Kerr, Gatz’s partner, told their colleagues at what then was Omaha’s Bergan Mercy Hospital, now Bergan Mercy Medical Center.
Doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., removed the tumor. Gatz viewed the surgery as merely palliative. He was resigned to dying.
His wife felt differently.
Jeanne Gatz began praying for a miracle with a family friend and spiritual adviser, the Rev. Richard McGloin. The Creighton University Jesuit suggested praying to Blessed Jeanne Jugan, who had founded an order of nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor, in the 1800s, and who was beatified in 1982.
Meanwhile, Little Sisters around the world also were praying for a miracle – not for Ed Gatz, whom they didn’t know, but for someone, somewhere in the world. The nuns’ beloved founder was ever so close to being named a saint, but they needed a Vatican-recognized miracle before she could be canonized.
After Jeanne and Edward Gatz learned he had terminal cancer, she began praying to Jeanne Jugan, shown in the statue Edward Gatz holds.
The Gatzes and the nuns believe they got their miracle.
Twenty years after his diagnosis of a terminal cancer, Edward Gatz, now 72, is alive and cancer-free in Omaha. His cure was a miracle, Roman Catholic Church officials recently ruled. As a result, Jeanne Jugan is to be canonized this fall in Rome.
This is believed to be the first time that a reported Omaha miracle boosted a candidate for Roman Catholic sainthood over the final hurdle to canonization.
The Vatican ruled that God healed Gatz because Jeanne Jugan interceded for him after Jeanne Gatz and McGloin prayed to her. That fulfills a Vatican requirement that a miracle be attributed to a saint’s intercession after her death, thus demonstrating, under Catholic Church teaching, that she is in heaven.
The Gatzes’ story now will forever be entwined with those of a saint and the Little Sisters of the Poor. The family and Omaha Archdiocese officials played important roles in the ancient, lengthy and rigorous process by which the Vatican evaluates miracle claims and potential saints.
A crucial part of the process played out in secret at 62nd and Dodge Streets, in the offices of Omaha Archbishop Elden F. Curtiss. There, priests essentially put the miracle claim on trial, with Gatz, his doctors and other witnesses giving sworn testimony under pointed questioning by clerics playing roles assigned by Rome.
“We all had a sense that we were part of something potentially very, very exciting,” said the Rev. Ryan Lewis, whom Curtiss appointed to lead the inquiry.
As thrilling as the prospect of an official Omaha miracle was, Lewis and company couldn’t be local boosters and rubber-stamp it. This is serious business.
The process can culminate with the pope declaring that a candidate for sainthood is indeed in heaven. The church then holds up the saint’s life as an example for others to follow. And the faithful are encouraged to take their worries, hopes and needs to the saint who, according to Roman Catholic belief, has the ear of God.
Those are particularly Catholic practices, and part and parcel of Catholic theology. But they often ripple beyond the church into the wider culture – and not only as garden statues of St. Francis of Assisi. In Jeanne Jugan, for example, the Vatican has claimed a champion for what it sees as an important struggle.
The late Pope John Paul II worried that the world increasingly would view the elderly – especially those without money – as useless and a drain on society. He saw that as potentially leading not only to mistreatment of the aged but to mercy killing and euthanasia. One way to fight the trend: Promote a saint who models how the church believes people should behave.
John Paul II “really wanted to canonize somebody who served the indigent elderly,” said Eileen Burke-Sullivan, an assistant professor of theology at Creighton University.
“The church chooses its heroes overtly, often to address a social, cultural or moral problem that’s being found in the world. They want a witness to the dignity of the human life of the indigent elderly. Mother Teresa is that kind of witness. So is Jeanne Jugan.”
Jeanne Jugan lived from 1792 to 1879 in France. She founded a religious association of women that eventually became the Little Sisters of the Poor.
The work of the new order started simply on a winter’s day in 1839, according to a biography from the Little Sisters. While sharing an apartment with friends, Jugan encountered a blind elderly woman who was ailing and destitute. Jugan carried the old woman home and gave up her own bed to her.
A global ministry grew from that one act of charity. Today, the Little Sisters of the Poor number 2,710. With the help of paid staff and lay supporters, they serve more than 13,000 elderly people in 202 homes across five continents, including 32 homes in North America. The closest to Omaha is in Kansas City.
“She created these old folks homes which really were not warehouses, but places where the elderly could be guests,” Burke-Sullivan said.
People have advocated for Jeanne Jugan’s sainthood for more than a century. The cause for canonization picked up in the 1930s. The Vatican began an inquiry into her life. Her body was exhumed so her remains could be identified – one of the first steps toward canonization.
The Vatican declared her “a servant of God.” As the Little Sisters prayed, the process plodded along. Church officials in Rome examined her life and writings. Then, in 1979, Pope John Paul II ruled that she had lived a spiritually heroic life and declared her “venerable” – the next step.
“Then they needed a miracle for beatification and a miracle for canonization,” said the Rev. Dominic Papa, a New Jersey priest. As vice postulator for the cause of Jeanne Jugan’s canonization, Papa played a role in examining the miracle reported in Omaha.
Jeanne Jugan’s beatification in 1982 occurred after a miracle was declared from France. Over the next two decades, Papa said, several claims of additional miracles were submitted. Rome rejected them all.
Ed and Jeanne Gatz want to be clear about something: This story should not be about them.
He was merely the recipient of a miracle, and not because of any merit of his own, they said. Why? Jeanne Gatz believes the Holy Spirit used the cure to ensure Jeanne Jugan’s canonization. As a doctor, Gatz could help prove that medical science couldn’t explain his cure, his wife said.
Ed Gatz grew up in O’Neill, Neb. He was in the womb when his father died. He was 15 when his mother died of colon cancer.
After serving in the Army, Gatz attended Creighton. There he converted to Catholicism and met wife-to-be Jeanne. Gatz earned a doctorate in pharmacology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. He got his medical degree while teaching at UNMC. Jeanne Gatz gave birth to their only child, Bart, in 1968.
Ed Gatz was a busy anesthesiologist in the prime of his career in 1988 when a dermatologist became concerned about bumps on the backs of his hands.
Gatz’s internist, Dr. David Jasper, thought they might signify a hidden cancer. He scheduled a colonoscopy at Bergan Mercy. Gatz suggested they also do an upper-gastrointestinal scope. Doctors found no colon cancer, but the other scope revealed terrible news: advanced esophageal cancer.
Gatz still has a Polaroid picture from that scope. Instead of just the normal round hole, the photo shows the esophagus surrounded by bumps and lumps – an angry, pink bulbous storm cloud of doom.
“I saw the grim faces when the doctors called our son and me into one of those conference rooms,” Jeanne Gatz said. “I knew it was bad news, but I didn’t know it was that bad. They said it would be six months.”
The tumor occupied two-thirds of Gatz’s esophagus and half his stomach. Another growth, the size of a walnut, on the other side of his abdomen indicated that the cancer had metastasized. Gatz was diagnosed with Stage 3B esophageal cancer.
Mayo Clinic surgeons removed the tumors along with three-fourths of the esophagus and about one-half of Gatz’s stomach. Like Gatz, the Mayo doctors saw the surgery not as a cure but as a measure to allow him to eat during his final months.
Gatz refused doctors’ offers of chemotherapy and radiation. Why endure the side effects, he reasoned, when a cure was impossible?
The surgery left Gatz physically unable to practice medicine. He applied for disability, but didn’t expect to outlive the six-month waiting period.
Gatz began seeing to his affairs. He sold two of the family’s three cars. He shifted investments into shorter-term holdings in his wife’s name. He asked medical school professors to look out for his son, who was about to enter the school.
Meanwhile, Jeanne turned to McGloin. A former Little Sisters of the Poor chaplain, McGloin urged her to pray a novena – a specific set of prayers – to Jeanne Jugan.
Jeanne Gatz began praying a novena – a specific set of prayers – every day. McGloin did, too.
A check three months later showed no cancer. At six months, again no cancer. Then nine months. Then one year.
Each time, Gatz and his doctors expected to find the cancer had returned. Each time, blood tests and CT scans were clean.
After 2½ years, the disability insurance company became suspicious. It thought Gatz should have been dead by then, he said. They suspected fraud, or a misdiagnosis.
The Mayo Clinic still had the tumor. Pathologists did more advanced tests on it. They wanted, Gatz said, to see if the tumor was diploid or aneuploid -”regular cancer or wild and crazy cancer.” It was, he said, “the wildest of the wild.”
The new tests showed the cancer was more advanced than initially thought. The original prognosis of surviving six months was probably overly optimistic. It was more like four months.
In a letter, Mayo surgeon Dr. Victor Trastek wrote that Gatz “is certainly one of the lucky ones” and had beaten significant odds. “All those who prayed for his recovery, I believe, helped him to be cured,” Trastek wrote.
Jasper went further. Asked by telephone if he believed the cure a miracle, the doctor said: “I don’t know any other explanation for it.”
Jasper, who is Catholic, said the lesson to take from the experience is this: “Whatever their religious affiliation is, the key thing is for patients to always have faith and patience. Faith that they can get better, and patience to wait to get better.”
Gatz and his wife believed his cure was a miracle. As years passed and tests came back clean, Bergan Mercy people started calling him “Miracle Man.” Gatz told them he hadn’t done anything; God had.
It might have remained local lore if not for a casual dinner chat in Omaha with a priest in 2002. Gatz happened to mention his cure to the Rev. Charles Broderson. Broderson suggested the Gatzes inform the Little Sisters of the Poor. McGloin concurred.
Jeanne Gatz dialed up Mother Marguerite McCarthy at the Little Sisters of the Poor home in Kansas City. McCarthy immediately was intrigued, although two miracle claims already were being examined by Rome.
Those two fell through. The Gatzes forwarded their information to the Little Sisters. The story went to the Vatican.
In the summer of 2005, the telephone rang at the Omaha chancery with an unprecedented call. The Vatican was on the line. Church officials wanted Archbishop Curtiss to conduct an inquiry into an alleged miracle. He should expect more information by mail soon.
Not long after, a package from Rome landed with a thud on the desk of the Rev. Lewis, the fresh-faced vice chancellor of the Omaha Archdiocese. The most recent local graduate of canon law studies, Lewis was appointed to oversee the inquiry.
Truth be told, Lewis and other local church officials didn’t know how to do that. The pressure was on to get up to speed, fast.
“The cause for her canonization has been open for I don’t know how many years,” Lewis said. “She was beatified more than 20 years ago. Then, all of a sudden, there’s a report of a miracle emanating from the diocese of Omaha. There’s a real sense of duty. It’s also daunting, because you know your work will be examined at the Vatican level.”
Lewis and company picked up a book written by an expert for diocesan officials in just such a pickle. They sought advice from the Rev. Papa, the New Jersey priest.
Following the Vatican playbook, they assembled the witnesses. They even hired a court reporter to record the testimony.
Lewis explained to the doctors that the inquiry wasn’t trying to prove that a miracle had occurred. Rather, it would examine what happened and try to discover if there was a medical or scientific explanation for Gatz’s cure.
Lewis asked specific queries from Rome, including technical medical questions raised by Vatican doctors. Another priest, the Rev. Patrick Harrison, probed further in his role as promoter of justice – a job that used to be called the devil’s advocate.
The testimony consumed two days. Participants made an oath of secrecy on the Bible. In fall 2005, Omaha church officials shipped off the results to the Vatican.
They had to keep the secret for more than three years while Vatican cardinals and doctors studied the reports. Finally, on Dec. 6, 2008, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints officially decreed Gatz’s cure was a miracle through the intercession of Blessed Jeanne Jugan.
Pope Benedict XVI is scheduled to canonize her in a ceremony Oct. 11 at the Vatican. The Gatzes and Omaha church officials are invited.
It helped, Papa said, that Gatz is a doctor, had kept such good records and was alive to testify. It helped that the insurance company raised questions, thus causing further testing of the tumor.
It also helped that Gatz had no chemotherapy or radiation. The Vatican often rejects claims of miracles when such treatments are involved, because they could provide an alternative explanation for the healing.
In all those twists, the elated Mother Marguerite McCarthy sees the hand of God at work.
“It was beautiful to see all the steps that led to this moment,” she said. “This is the culmination of so much hope and prayer, by so many people around the world.”
• Contact the writer: 444-1057, christopher.burbach@owh.com
