The Mystery of the Discarded Crutches

Various shrines around the world exult in displaying walls covered with crutches, braces, and other orthopedic devices that have been discarded by people healed by the water, vibrations, earth, atmosphere, or prayers there, and joyously left behind as material evidence of their cures. Is this not positive proof that the cures have taken place? If it is not, what happens to those people? The answer is that they simply fall down. I cannot say that this is the case for all shrines, but I can relate my personal experiences with two. I was recently lecturing at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico. Taken on a sightseeing trip by my hosts, I visited the Santuario de Chimayo, a shrine about 20 miles east of Los Alamos. There I found supportive devices hung about the walls, and in the souvenir shop I was able to buy various photos of these adornments. But no two photos were the same. That is, the display of crutches and braces changed from time to time. The reason for this was well known to an orthopedic surgeon there. He knows the Santuario because he visits there about every six months. Why? To reclaim the orthopedic devices left there by his own patients, often poor people who cannot afford to replace the expensive mechanisms that they discarded. The priest at the Santuario knows this physician and permits him to remove what he recognizes as the property of his patients. By this time, however, they may have already been photographed.

A Personal Experience in Canada

In Montreal, Canada, St. Joseph’s Oratory occupies a prominent position in the city’s skyline and mythology. A gardener there, named simply Brother André, became famous as a result of healing miracles claimed by hundreds who visited the church both before and after his death in 1937. Those who said they were cured were mostly those who believed themselves affected by Brother André’s relics. This diminutive, humble worker is commemorated at the oratory by the preservation of his personal belongings and the “cell” where he lived out his last years. He died at the amazing age of 92, whereupon his heart was removed from his body and can be seen today, preserved in formaldehyde, suspended in an illuminated container at the oratory. Veneration of this man is so great that he is at the stage of being termed “blessed” and on the way to official sainthood. When I lived in that city, I would frequently visit my maternal grandparents, who lived near the oratory, then go over to the shrine and watch the long lines of faithful supplicants painfully “walking” up the long flight of stone steps on their knees to earn their confidently expected rewards. Inside the shrine, rows upon rows of crutches, canes, braces, and orthopedic devices covered the walls. Testimonials to the miracles wrought in the name of Brother André were posted everywhere, and the air was saturated with the sweet odor of burning candles. Off to one side was the inevitable souvenir shop, where one event took place that convinced me, at age 12, of the fakery practiced there. I was squatting at a sales counter reading one of the comic books that told the story of Brother André’s life. I was out of sight of the young man who approached—on the other side of the counter—and began refilling the many bins of medals, crucifixes, beads, rings, and buttons that were for sale to the faithful. There were two adjacent bins of crucifixes, one labeled “Blessed at the Oratory,” and the other “Blessed at Rome.” The hand of the clerk appeared above me and poured half a paper bag of crucifixes into the first, then emptied the rest of them into the second. Seeing he had gone to the far side of the counter, I stood up and looked at those bins. I discovered that though the holy items were not differentiated as represented—coming as they did from the same bag—they were at least both the same price. It started me thinking. But it was my father who gave me the biggest jolt concerning the oratory’s souvenir business. At that same counter, I’d seen a row of two-inch squares of cloth stapled to gold-colored cards. These were being sold as pieces cut from the very cassock worn by Brother André on his deathbed. My dad told me that he’d been employed by the tailor shop of Morgan’s Department Store in downtown Montreal when I was a boy, and that on one occasion his manager had sent him and his close friend James Hamilton, who was my godfather, to St. Joseph’s Oratory to deliver a bolt of heavy wool cloth. His boss had instructed them to stay there after delivering the goods and do some “cutting” for the priests. They were given two large pairs of pinking shears to take along with them. To my father’s amazement, the two found themselves assigned to marking the wool fabric into two-inch squares with tailor’s chalk and then cutting it up for sale in the souvenir shop! (James Hamilton became a Christian Scientist. He and my dad later traveled as advertising salesmen for Bell Telephone Company in Canada. Hamilton died of a heart attack in his hotel room right in front of my father, refusing to call a doctor and asking my father to pray for him instead. The doctor, summoned by my father in spite of Hamilton’s pleas, arrived too late.)