Hunger for Healing

Hunger for Healing

By Donna Casey
Ottawa Sun

THE soft shimmer of a summer sunset streams through the back doors of St. Anthony’s Church.
Three ceiling fans whirr above the heads of hundreds of bowed heads.

A short, broad-faced Filipino man dressed in red vestments walks across the altar to the pulpit.

“I wonder why all of you are here,” the priest says to the packed church, the space silent except for the muffled cry of a fussy baby.

A white-haired Italian man fidgets with his cane. A blond teenage girl sitting with her parents looks straight ahead, her ear straining to catch every word. A young mother paces the floor near the front of the church, holding her baby boy to her chest, his feeding tube taped to his tiny nose.

“I don’t know why you are here, but God knows why you are here,” the young priest tells the congregation.

“I know almost all of you hunger for healing.”

A strange mix of faith and despair has brought hundreds of strangers together tonight, all with the same wish in their hearts and the same plea on their lips.

They hope the soft touch of the priest’s hand, offered with a whispered prayer, will make them well again.

“God is using my hands to be an instrument of his hands,” the pastor tells the sick, the lame, the blind, the inconsolable assembled before him.

The priest offers a prayer to the group gathered on a muggy June night.

“To those suffering loneliness and depression, release them right now. For those who have so much pain in their bodies, those who cannot breathe, who cannot hear, who cannot see, please Lord bless them right now and heal them.”

Word of mouth has brought the men and women to the Preston St. church to see the man the Catholic Church believes has healed hundreds of people since he was a teenager.

Since his ordination in 2002, Father Fernando Suarez has travelled the world, leaving a trail of testimonies from people who say his prayers and presence have restored their sight, cured their cancer and soothed deep spiritual wounds.

Every month, Suarez’s superiors at his Ottawa-based religious community receive a half-dozen letters from people who say they’ve been healed after the priest prayed with them.

A few years ago, the 39-year-old Suarez was leading an ordinary life as a chemical engineer in his native Philippines.
When he was 16, his life took a fateful turn that would lead thousands of sick and wounded souls to his door.
Suarez was walking near his home when he saw a crippled woman on the street.

The teen asked the woman if she wanted him to pray with her. Suarez wasn’t a churchgoer and had never prayed with anyone before.

“I did it out of pity. She nodded her head and I made the sign of the cross and said the Our Father, a Hail Mary and a Glory Be to God. They were the only prayers I knew,” he recalls.

“All of the sudden she got up and walked. I ran — I got scared.”

The teen started going to church. Sometimes he would pray with people who were sick and later, some of those people would approach him, saying they had been healed of their ailments.

The easygoing kid, who loved tennis, ping-pong and basketball, would tell them to keep it to themselves.
“For the longest period of time, I didn’t even want to talk about this. I was scared that He would tell me something bigger than what I could do.”

A young couple climbs the steps to the altar at St. Anthony’s, the first to ask Suarez for his prayers.
Fabrizio Mascioli cradles his son, Vieri, on his chest, the seven-week-old boy facing outward like an offering.

Suarez draws the couple close, touching the arm of the boy’s mother, Maria. He embraces her and she quickly collapses into sobs.

The baby suffered brain damage at birth and can’t see or swallow, the dad tells Suarez. Doctors say the boy won’t walk and will likely have serious cognitive problems.

Suarez tells Maria to have faith and not lose hope. Don’t be discouraged, God has a plan for all of us.
“Right now, he doesn’t see, so that would be a good sign,” says Fabrizio, standing at the back of the church after seeing Suarez. “We realize that it’s small, little steps, that he’s going to come through.

“I feel good, very good being here,” he says as his son gives a soft bleat in the arms of a relative.
“He wasn’t supposed to cry, but he cries now. They said it couldn’t happen, but it did,” says Maria, her bloodshot brown eyes glancing over to her son.

Suarez entered a seminary in the Philippines and in 1995, he met a man from Winnipeg who encouraged him to continue his studies in Canada.

In 1997, he joined the Companions of the Cross, an Ottawa-based religious community.

Suarez tried to keep his healing gift hidden, but his fellow seminarians noticed “unique things and events taking place in his presence,” recalls Father Galen Bank, the pastor at St. Maurice’s Church in Nepean.

“He’d give it to me in bits and pieces,” says Bank, who has known Suarez since 1995.

After Suarez’s ordination in 2002, Father Bob Bedard, the Companions’ founder, told the new priest he couldn’t keep his gift a secret any longer.

“He told me: ‘The gift is not for you, it’s for the people,’ “ says Suarez.

He began performing monthly healing masses at St. Timothy’s Church in North York, his first posting as a priest.
Within a few months, the community started getting requests for Suarez to visit churches in the U.S., Eastern Europe and the Philippines.

Sitting at the dining table at his community’s headquarters in Hintonburg, Suarez shrugs off comparisons to a miracle worker.

“I cannot understand why people get healed. There’s nothing supernatural about this gift. I’m not in ecstasy, I don’t see angels. I just have love in my heart and the joy of the Lord that I want to give to people who are already in pain,” he says.

“It’s not me. I’m probably the most stupid person on the planet if I take ownership of this gift.

“I try to avoid making false assurances. What I am giving is what Jesus said — do not be very afraid, do not be discouraged, don’t let your hearts be troubled.”

Suarez’s ministry fits into a Catholic tradition that started with Jesus and the apostles, says Martin Rovers, professor of human sciences at Saint Paul University in Ottawa.

The Catholic Church believes certain people are blessed with a special gift to heal people.

Article 1508 of the Church’s catechism states that “the Holy Spirit gives to some a special charisma of healing so as to make manifest the power of the grace of the risen Lord.”

Suarez’s gift throws light on an ancient mystery: Why do people suffer and why does God heal some and not others?

The Catholic Church teaches that God heals out of love and as a sign of mercy, but often the most faithful believers must endure trials and hardships, says Father Scott McCaig, moderator of the Companions of the Cross.

“He doesn’t heal everybody and I don’t understand why necessarily,” says McCaig, adding the Church teaches that those who suffer can offer their burdens as “an incredible powerful prayer” that will bring them closer to God.

The mass has ended and clusters of the most needy make their way to the altar.

Suarez asks the crowd to be patient, he will pray with everyone who wants to see him. He explains how others he has prayed with sometimes fall backwards and “rest in the spirit.”

“Don’t deprive yourself of this experience. Most people feel tremendous joy and peace and love, but you don’t need to fall down to be healed,” he says.

An usher brings Suarez to the front pew to see a dark-haired woman in a wheelchair.

Suarez prays with the woman, who’s in her 40s. He helps her stand up and the woman falls limp. Two men help lay the woman on the floor. After a few minutes, the woman gets up and makes her way to the pulpit.

“I have for years had pain in my legs, cancer has torn them apart,” the woman tells the crowd. “Now I don’t feel pain right now, so I praise the Lord.”

Suarez circulates quietly around the chaotic choreography invading the altar. He brings the anguished close, offering a gentle touch and whispering a quiet prayer.

A long-limbed girl dressed in capri pants and flip-flops walks up the altar steps, her father guiding her way.

Suarez approaches the girl. Weronika Janeczek tells him she’s 14 and that she’s been blind since a brain tumour took her sight when she was four.

The healer tells her to trust in God and believe in him.

He touches her eyes with his fingers and says a prayer. The girl’s father, Chris, falls backwards on the floor, while an usher directs Weronika to a pew on the altar. She sits quietly for a few minutes, a serene smile on her face.

The girl’s mother, Anna, brushes away tears as she watches from the front of the church, her eyes weary, her hands clasped in prayer.

Last year, her daughter started noticing shadows after Suarez prayed with her at a healing mass.
“For me, it was a sign, it was something. Some people get something right away. Maybe it will be step by step. I don’t know,” says Anna, her voice trailing off.

“Some miracle may happen, but also miracles don’t happen very often,” she adds as her husband and daughter walk back from the altar.

“I was hoping for some healing,” says Weronika, the footsteps of others taking her place on the altar.
“I feel like I’m at peace. The Lord is really present,” she says.

If Suarez has cured the sick, the Catholic Church takes a cautious and exacting view of the gift, treating it like a stick of dynamite.

“One of things the church always warns this sort of ministry about is sensationalism,” says McCaig, the Companions’ moderator.

“You have to be very careful not to be sensationalistic and give people false hope.”

There’s a danger healings can become “all about a show or about money,” McCaig adds.

At every healing mass Suarez performs, a collection is taken for Mary Mother of the Poor, the foundation Suarez started to fund medical missions and other projects in the Philippines.

Rovers says the Church will keep Suarez in check with a good support network.

“If anything, the Church is too skeptical and will test him and question him,” says Rovers, adding Suarez’s superiors will be quick to root out any hints of a God complex.

It’s to Suarez’s credit that he kept his healing gift under wraps for 20 years, says Father Jeff Shannon, who acted as Suarez’s spiritual director when he was a seminarian.

“If he wanted to abuse this power or use it any way, he would never had hid it for so long.

“He’s such a humble man and he’s very simple. He preaches very simply that it’s God that heals.
There’s really nothing in it for him — it’s pure giving,” says Shannon, who will soon join Suarez full-time on the road.

In a culture where irony rules and Jesus is a conspiracy theorist’s dream, people who attest to spiritual healings often come across as “a little flaky,” says Rovers.

“Probably most of the secular world think ‘Hey, what’s this little kookiness going on here?’ “

While hundreds claim to be healed from Suarez’s prayers, Rovers says the people who fill churches wherever he travels are the true testament of his work.

“Are they walking out of there a little crazy or duped, or are they are walking out there more happy, more content, more peaceful and more hopeful? If they didn’t, there’d be questions around that,” says Rovers.

“The finger needs to point to God,” he adds. “If the finger points to the faith healer, there’s trouble.”
Suarez will ultimately be judged on what Rovers calls “the fruits of his work.”

“If what’s left behind when he’s gone is faith, love, hope, peace and generosity, the Church says ‘Thank you, God.’ “

Father’s mass appeal

• Father Fernando’s next mass in Ottawa is Sept. 1 at 7 p.m. at St. Maurice Parish, 4 Perry St., Nepean.

• Countries where Suarez has performed healing masses: Canada, the U.S., the Philippines , China (Hong Kong), United Arab Emirates, Austria, Slovakia

If you want to contact Suarez, your can e-mail him at: email@fatherfernando.com or visit www.fatherfernando.com; donna.casey@ott.sunpub.com
Printed with permission from Ottawa Sun (Slightly shortened version)