By The postulator of Blessed Zdenka Schelingová’s cause has delivered the dossier on an alleged Denver healing to the archbishop of Bratislava, advancing her path toward canonization.
Blessed Zdenka Schelingová, a Slovak religious member of the Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross (SCSC), may be one step closer to sainthood.
The postulator of her cause, Father Lucián Bogucki of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual, handed the “positio super miro” to the archbishop of Bratislava, Stanislav Zvolenský, last month. The document, whose Latin title refers to a purported miracle, describes an alleged healing said to have occurred through her intercession in Denver.
“The very fact that the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints is dealing with the extraordinary healing through the intercession of Blessed Zdenka Schelingová is a gift from God and a great encouragement,” Zvolenský told EWTN News.
The date for the meeting of the commission of cardinals that will discuss the document and the reported miracle is not yet known but may come within a few months. The final decision on canonization rests with the pope.
The cause is an opportunity to enter “spiritual communion with those whom the Church presents to us as saints and blessed, so that we can also turn to them with a request for their intercession,” the archbishop said.
Zvolenský encouraged the faithful to “admire God’s goodness as he always gives us extraordinary signs of his love.”
A martyr under communism
Born Cecília Schelingová on Christmas Eve 110 years ago in the village of Krivá, in modern-day Slovakia, the future sister joined the Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross and worked as a nurse and later in a hospital laboratory. She helped a Catholic priest escape from a hospital and attempted to do so again; the second time it was a trap, and she was arrested. She was tortured, accused of treason by the recently established communist regime, and imprisoned in various jails across then-Czechoslovakia.
Sister Zdenka was released in April 1955 and died on July 31, 1955, from the effects of torture and her ruined health. She was exonerated of all charges against her in 1970 and was beatified in 2003 by Pope John Paul II.
Respect and admiration for Sister Zdenka “is growing,” as “we have seen this now during various events on her liturgical feast,” which falls on July 30, said Sister Mária Terézia Dobrovičová, provincial superior of the Slovak province of the Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross. The congregation was founded 170 years ago in Switzerland, and soon afterward the sisters were invited to what is now Slovakia, she explained.
Bishop Tomáš Galis of the Diocese of Žilina celebrated Mass on the feast day, quoting Sister Zdenka: “Forgiveness is the greatest thing in life.” The Confederation of Political Prisoners of Slovakia also organized a conference on the religious sisters who lived in secret under the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.
Pilgrims are visiting sites associated with her, including her native village of Krivá; Podunajské Biskupice, where her remains rest; and Trnava, the seat of the congregation in Slovakia.
Sister Mária Terézia said the sisters “receive various requests from people to pray for the intercession” of Sister Zdenka, “but we also have various testimonies about how prayers for her intercession have been heard.” This is encouraging, “and we are happy about it,” she stressed.
The official website dedicated to Sister Zdenka’s memory, zdenka.sk, shares several testimonies from people whose prayers were answered after they prayed to her. It does not, however, include the case contained in the “positio super miro.”
The Denver healing
A man in Denver was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and sent home. His wife knew someone who was a distant relative of Sister Zdenka and, together with her colleagues, reportedly began to pray for him.
The man had his tubes removed and was ready to die, yet his appetite returned and he regained his strength. He later suffered an embolism and died, according to one Slovak daily, which, however, did not cite a source. An autopsy confirmed that he had been cured of cancer, with no trace of the disease, and died three years after his recovery, though from a different diagnosis.
EWTN News contacted Bogucki for details about the case and the alleged healing. Instead, the priest — who is of Polish origin, lived in Slovakia for many years, and served as a confessor at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome — asked for prayers for the final phase before Sister Zdenka’s possible canonization.
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—In China the Communist Party of China (CCP), which is the ruling organization in China today (when the Pope deals with Chinese government he is dealing with a murderous Communist regime), is responsible for the death of between 40 and 80 million people just during the rule of Mao alone.
—Millions died just of starvation during the Great Leap Forward socialist program of this “real socialism” regime.
—Fortunately for China, some time after Mao died, CCP leader Deng Xiaoping began to introduce market (capitalist) reforms that have improved the economy of the country very much and the life of the Chinese people somewhat. Today China even has millionaires. These are the main outlines of the millions of deaths under Communism just under Mao alone:
• “Great Leap Forward Famine: The largest contributor, with estimates ranging from 15 million to over 55 million deaths, primarily due to starvation caused by the socialist collectivization policies between 1958 and 1962.
• Political Repression and Executions: Deaths from the suppression of “counter-revolutionaries,” socialist land reforms, and the Cultural Revolution (where mobs of young people and students, aki to the Antifa and other such young people groups today in the U.S.) are estimated between 1 million and 7.5 million, depending on the source and whether indirect deaths (such as suicides) are included.
• Forced Labor: Deaths within the laogai (labor camp) system are estimated to account for several million lives over the decades of Mao’s rule.
—Scholars such as those cited in The Black Book of Communism (Harvard U. Press) estimate approximately 65 million deaths, while other researchers like Frank Dikötter suggest figures around 45 million premature deaths during the Great Leap Forward alone. Even conservative estimates typically place the total death toll well above 40 million. “
—See the Black Book of Communism
https://www.amazon.com/St%E2%82%AC%C3%B7phane-Courtois-Communism-Crimes-Repression/dp/B00HTJNHV4
The crimes committed by Communists worldwide dwarf those committed by the National Socialists (euphemistically called with the neologism “Nazis” by left wingers and now almost universally used, to avoid using the word “socialists”; the name they themselves adopted was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) National Socialist German Workers Party; they never used the word “Nazi”)
—According to The Black Book of Communism, approximately 20 million people perished under communist rule just in the land of “real socialism” (as it called itself), Communist Russia the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR.
This figure is part of a broader total of 94 million victims by communist regimes globally during the 20th century. The book’s authors, including Stéphane Courtois, estimate the total death toll for the USSR at 20 million, while other contributors like Nicolas Werth and Jean-Louis Margolin suggest between 65 and 93 million for the global total.
• Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: ~20 million deaths
• Global Communist Regimes: ~94 million deaths
• Contributing Factors in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: Executions, forced labor re-education camps (Gulags), deportations, and man-made famines such as the destruction (by withholding their grain so they would starve and by deportation) of the wealthy Russian farmers as a class (the Kulaks, whose deaths are estimated between half a million to 600,000 and whose destruction caused widespread famine) and the subsequent socialist collectivization into collective farms of the remaining farmers, as in the the Holodomor [In 1932 and 1933, millions of Ukrainians were killed in the Holodomor, another man-made famine engineered by the Communist government].
• —But notice that what we hear most about are the crimes and evils of Nazis and fascists. Seldom those of Communists, dismissed as yet more McCarthysm.
—See the Black Book of Communism (Harvard U Press)
• https://www.amazon.com/St%E2%82%AC%C3%B7phane-Courtois-Communism-Crimes-Repression/dp/B00HTJNHV4