WHEN MALACHI MARTIN WORKED A MIRACLE; A WOMAN SAVED FROM DEADLY CANCER

 

Had Malachi Martin lived, he'd have celebrated his 105th birthday on July 23rd. Martin, born in Kerry, Ireland, became famous and something of an oracle here in the USA in the wake of his bestselling books.  

In his native Ireland, he trained as a Jesuit priest before becoming a Vatican spy, who read and made known the Third Secret of Fatima and was an advisor to three Popes. Hence why Robert Marro titled his book on the mysterious, polymath priest, Malachi Martin, In the Shadows of the Vatican. 

Martin's life bridged two vastly opposing worlds. He was raised in a bygone era in Ireland, became a Jesuit in the 1940s and 50s, and then was an assistant to Cardinal Augustin Bea during the Second Vatican Council.  Bea nurtured Martin as a wunderkind, and the German prelate was an architect of ecumenical encounters with Protestants. 

Bea's plans for accommodating Protestantism would have been unthinkable in the time of Irish President, Eamon de Valera who was the most important political influence on Martin and his family, especially when the Kerryman was in seminary.

Martin returned to his roots, and after the Second Vatican Council, asked to be dispensed from all his vows except celibacy; most keenly the vow of obedience. He retained, however, an insider's experience of Vatican intrigue and how figures like him were put out in the cold. 

To be fair to Martin, I believe his reasons for leaving the Jesuits owed to his genuine piety and belief that his fellow priests had for all intents and purposes abrogated the holy practices such as exorcism for which they had been ordained. For someone who had a role in bringing the Second Vatican Council to bear on the worldwide Church, Martin turned around and wanted the ways of his youth in Ireland to hold sway in the modern era. He will, I argue, see this come to pass from his place in Heaven.

His own Jesuits became some of his most energetic enemies, and it was oft said that Martin was a womanizer who lied when he claimed to have left the Jesuit Order for spiritual reasons, because the reality was that he wanted to satisfy his lusts. 

Martin still divides opinion dramatically; and the fact remains he is polarizing, people either love him passionately or hate him. This is evident in the reviews that Marro's book has garnered; the majority are glowing, yet there are a few which excoriate Martin. 

But there is now much more love than hate being shown for Martin, and I think those who hate him will become fewer and their voices quieter because they can't make their case as easily and as loudly as they once did in view of the true accounts of Martin's life. 

Martin could well be a saint. And while Marro clearly orientates himself as a close friend and ardent admirer of Martin, who is not an objective biographer, there is one case in In the Shadows of the Vatican that puts Martin's sanctity in objective perspective. 

In 1994, in the hubbub of New York City, Marro befriended Laura, a Jewish actress who became enthralled with Marro's descriptions of Martin as a fearless exorcist. Laura confided in Marro when she was grief-stricken, her sister-in-law, Jessica had just delivered a healthy baby boy, but she was perishing from late-stage leukemia. Jessica had bravely delayed treatment because of her baby boy in utero. Now she was dying rapidly.

Marro asked his dear friend, Malachi Martin to come and bless Jessica, and the exorcist agreed. Martin came to Mount Sinai Hospital in a cable-knit Aran sweater, and blessed the cancer ridden lady with chrism oil, and then placed a small reliquary to her forehead. 

Martin showed himself to be a mystic when Jessica asked him, "Am I going to die?" And he replied emphatically, "No, ma'am. You're not going to die." 

Later Marro queried Martin as to why he'd made this declarative statement, and for the first time saw Martin get angry and hot under the collar. In fact, Marro said that in response Martin gave him a glare that would have frozen boiling water. 

Martin was alarmed at Marro's lack of faith. But Marro never told Laura and Jessica about this cross reaction, and that very evening after their visit, Laura called him with the most ecstatic news, Jessica was cured and there was no trace of the deadly cancer. 

When Marro later enquired as to the relic with which Martin had blessed the dying mother, Martin said simply, "It was a splinter of the True Cross."

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The account of the Reverend Doctor Malachi Martin being a miracle-worker is informed by pages 114 - 118 of Malachi Martin, In the Shadows of the Vatican.