The anniversary service marks the day 12 years ago when Audrey, then aged three, was dragged unconscious from a swimming pool. She has been in a coma-like state ever since. Statues in the Santo home in Worcester have wept oil and blood and remarkable cures have been claimed through Audrey's intercession. As her fame has grown, so have the numbers at her anniversary service, from 2,000 in 1996 to the 10,000 who last year crammed into a local football stadium to receive Mass, with Audrey lying in a glass-walled cabin in the centre of the ground. It was this spectacle which led Bishop Daniel Reilly to insist that there should be no Mass at the anniversary service at Christ of the King Church this week. Instead Audrey's followers queued for a five-second glimpse of the Sleeping Beauty through a large window into an anteroom. No priest officiated, unlike last year when more than 30 celebrated Mass.
``The anniversary service was very subdued, and that is largely down to the decision not to celebrate Mass,'' said Father Charles McCarthy, rector of a local seminary, attending as a family friend.
A swift calculation by Santo spokeswoman Mary Cormier produced the estimate that at 1,500 an hour, more than 6,000 people had seen Audrey.Diocese spokesman Delisle, who watched a local TV broadcast, estimated the crowd at 2,000. Whatever the true figure, there was no mistaking the belief of those who attended from all over America and Canada. One elderly couple made a 25-hour train journey from Chicago with their grandchildren, seeking help for the children's mother who was desperately ill. Another group of 25 flew 1,500 miles from Iowa. Many of the miracle claimants were urged to contact Audrey in the first place by their priest.
And it was a priest, Fr Leroy Smith of Cincinnati, who raised hackles in the Church establishment by describing Audrey as a ``victim soul'' terminology normally reserved for Jesus when he addressed a Marian Conference last year, detailing her suffering and her stigmata.
The alarm bells started ringing in the Church. One priest told me, ``You can hardly blame the hierarchy. No bishop wants to have a mystic or a miracle worker on his patch.''
In January a team set up by Bishop Reilly issued a preliminary report saying that the cases of healing they had studied involving Audrey Santo ``did not provide proof of miracles''. The public were asked ``to pray for Audrey, not to her'' and urged to refrain from visiting Audrey's home.
Mrs Santo agreed that the bishop's ongoing inquiry was appropriate and there had to be proof. Then she added, ``It's just as well that Jesus Christ wasn't here in America, then we would really be in trouble.''
Church Investigates Miracle Claims
The cult of a real-life Sleeping Beauty who thousands of followers believe is capable of miracles this week has received a sharp setback at the hands of the Catholic Church in the US. After local bishop Daniel Reilly, who accompanied President Clinton on his most recent visit to Ireland, decreed that no Mass should be said at 15-year-old Audrey Santo's anniversary service, many stayed away from the event at a church in Worcester, Massachusetts. At the same time a Church spokesman revealed that tests would be completed by December which would establish whether or not Audrey is ``aware'' of what is going on around her, as her parents and followers claim. ``Everything stands or falls by that,'' said Ray Delisle, a spokesman for the Catholic diocese in Worcester, Mass, who admitted the bishop was walking a tightrope in the case of Little Audrey.
of `Sleeping Beauty' Coma Girl
[Source: Irish Independent / Dublin / By Noel Young in Boston - August 15 1999]
