Naperville woman recalls 'miracle' as faithful view relics of Catholic saint

As hundreds of faithful filed through Naperville's Ss. Peter and Paul Catholic Church on Friday to view relics of a saint, one volunteer may have felt the strongest connection.

The church hosted the only public veneration in Illinois of six relics of Saint Padre Pio, an Italian priest who died in 1968.

Ss. Peter and Paul parishioner Anne Hartnett-Beasley, 80, of Naperville was among those on hand to help greet and organize the crowds. But her experience with Saint Padre Pio runs deeper than viewing the relics on display - a lock of his hair, his mantle, a glove and handkerchief, and cotton gauze stained with Saint Pio's blood.

Hartnett-Beasley's first husband, Jim Hartnett, had his cancer cured in 1964 in a miracle attributed to Saint Pio, she and leaders of Ss. Peter and Paul say. Hartnett even wrote a letter to the Vatican describing his healing experience when church leaders were considering elevating Pio to sainthood.

The couple had visited Pio's church in Italy and watched him give a Mass while on their honeymoon in 1963. They felt compelled to return the next spring, after Hartnett had been diagnosed with a type of sarcoma in his left fifth rib, because they remembered Pio's fervency in prayer and had read about his ability to heal bodies and souls.

The cancer had been causing Hartnett strong pains in his chest, but it was first misdiagnosed as a strained muscle. When doctors realized it was a malignant tumor, they removed it along with his left fifth rib. But he didn't feel cured.

Then the couple visited Pio's church in Italy for the second time, and that's when they believed the miracle happened.

During a ceremony called consecration toward the end of the Mass, when the priest prays over the hosts to be given during Communion to turn them into the consecrated body of Jesus Christ, Jim Hartnett prayed for healing or dignity in death.

"When Jim asked this, he noticed that Padre Pio became pure light, the host and Padre Pio," Hartnett-Beasley said. "He knew he was healed. He said to me, 'Did you see that?' I said, 'No.' He knew it was for his eyes only."

The 27-year-old Hartnett didn't immediately feel better. But in later checkups his doctors found all signs of the cancer had vanished.

He lived another 38 years, cancer-free for the majority of them, until he died in October 2002 of prostate cancer that spread to his brain and lungs. He was 66. Before that, he was able to attend Saint Pio's canonization in June 2002.

"It was a miracle," Hartnett-Beasley said. "And I feel very blessed to have been part of that."

Many miracles have been attributed to Saint Padre Pio, who church leaders say had the ability to bilocate, or literally be in two places at once, and who bore the crucifixion wounds of Jesus Christ, meaning he bled from the same spots into which the nails had been pounded into the cross through Christ's body.

Hartnett-Beasley said she was happy to help at the event in memory of her husband.

"Along with his healing, Jim received a great gift of faith that was so strong," she said, "unlike anyone else I know."

The couple's four children and seven grandchildren all have the middle name Pio or Pia.