Health Campaign

The Roman Catholic Church has lately noticed in rural Europe an increase of morbid, ultra-mystical worshippers and of strange fanatical figures deemed holy by the ignorant. Fairly well-known by Catholics throughout the world are the German peasant Therese Neumann and the Italian Franciscan Padre Pio, both of whom are reputed to have stigmata on their bodies. In Belgium and in Northern Spain are nuns who "sweat blood" during their devotions. Last week the Church moved to quiet the activities of all such persons. The Holy Office in Rome ordered the Belgian and Spanish women to be treated as medical cases. Padre Pio and Therese Neumann were forbidden to receive pilgrims. Padre Pio was ordered to cease singing mass in the Apulian village where a cult almost of sainthood has grown up around him. The Holy Office put on the Index Expurgatorius the large amount of mystic literature written around Padre Pio, and suppressed a community of women called the "Little Hosts" which, founded in his honor, had grown too impassioned and hysterical. Also disciplined were the "Little Victims of Christ," the Order of St. Bridget of Sweden, and a Carmelite group who had so cut themselves off from the world as to be called "buried alive." Margherita Spezzaferri, founder of the "Little Hosts," was forbidden the use of any religious building for services. The other nuns were to be transferred to less ecstatic nunneries.

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