Word: heroldsbach
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...Heroldsbach's pious farmers believed them. Led by Father Johannes Gailer, 65, the village pastor, they marched to the hillside spot the children described. A few days later, two other children ran home to describe similar visions. Soon people from neighboring towns began flocking to the new holy place...
Within six months Heroldsbach was famous. Pious sightseers (more than 1,500,000 in two years) poured in by the thousands in buses and special trains. Ornate shrines sprouted on the hillside. Pilgrims carrying crosses made daily processions through the town. As the crowds got bigger, the children added to their visions...
...floodlights, and a public address system was installed to broadcast reports of the visions to the waiting crowds. Pilgrims contributed heavily for the shrines and other local improvements urged by the "vision children" on "instructions" which the Virgin passed on to them. Packed inns and crowded souvenir shops lifted Heroldsbach's 1,100 inhabitants to a wild zenith of prosperity...
...burghers of Heroldsbach were not easily convinced. When a priest from Bamberg read a papal condemnation of the visions from Heroldsbach's pulpit, he was shouted down by the villagers. The church proceeded slowly against the visionists. But when they kept organizing processions, the archbishop excommunicated 22 of the leaders...
...Rome, the church considered a case quite the opposite of the Heroldsbach visions. Since 1918, a quiet Capuchin friar, Padre Pio, has exhibited the stigmata, i.e., bleeding from the side, hands and feet in the same spots where Christ was wounded on the Cross (TIME, Dec. 19, 1949). Doctors have examined him and found the open wounds beyond medical explanation. Throngs of pilgrims come every year to make their confessions to Padre Pio and to receive his blessing. A devout and humble man, living quietly in a monastery in southern Italy, he has helped thousands on their spiritual journey...