He then went on to describe how a certain nun at Slapton, “a middle-aged lady,” who had been a cripple for thirty-eight years, was healed by applying the said charm to her diseased limb. I will give you his own account of this supposed miracle.
On Tuesday, Sept. 21st, 1880, just seven days after the last apparition had been seen, she was quivering from head to foot with pain. She was going to lie down without lifting her diseased limb with the other limb on the bed, when something told her to use the leaf, which she had put, wrapped up in an envelope, in her pocket. She took the leaf out. She took the rosary and said ten “Hail, Mary’s”; and, at the end of the “Hail, Mary’s,” she took the piece of leaf and laid it upon these painful abscesses. The very instant the piece of withered leaf was laid upon the abscesses they closed up and the discharge ceased; her knee was loosened at the joint, her foot was on the ground, and she was cured instantaneously.
The next morning she told and showed the reverend Mother and her sister nuns the miraculous wonder of God’s infinite goodness towards her; and the news quickly spread in the village.
The vicar of the parish came to the convent, and the village people rang the village bells, for they were very fond of the nuns; and, in a day or two, there was a service of thanksgiving in the Priory Chapel, for the miracle that God had wrought. There was also an account in the local papers of what had taken place.
Father Ignatius then mentions other miracles of healing that were, he affirms, wrought by the use of the withered rhubarb leaf. The following words may be interesting to some of my readers; they appear at the close of the oration:
To sum up, then:
A solemn, public testimony has now been given to a most startling, supernatural phenomena, in a Church of England monastery, in the midst of this unbelieving, materialistic age.
By these phenomena the mysteries of Christianity have been solemnly confirmed; and the Word of God has received one more “So be it.”
The Church of England has been supernaturally recognised as a true portion of the Catholic Church, and her Sacraments acknowledged by a miracle.
The monastic revival, long persecuted[23] because of the two special points above alluded to, viz., the restoration of the reserved Sacrament, and the cultus of the mother of our Lord, have now received a sanction from on High, by these marvellous manifestations.