Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #420 In Memory of Dr. Wanda Poltawska, friend of John Paul II, Miracle Cure By Padre Pio, Ravensbruck Survivor. "So many problems can only be solved on one's knees"

Transcript

#420 In Memory of Dr. Wanda Poltawska, friend of John Paul II, Miracle Cure By Padre Pio, Ravensbruck Survivor. "So many problems can only be solved on one's knees" · Claymore: Become Who You Are

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, the production of the John Paul Touring Nul Center.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: I'm Jack Grigert, your host, and I'm glad you're joining me.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Today I'm going to do a special podcast.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you're here.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: I've talked about Dr Wanda Paltrowska in the past, but today I want to do a podcast in memory of her.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: She passed away on October 25th.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Just on November 2nd she would have been 102 years old.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: What a woman.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: She was a great friend of John Paul II.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: She was cured miraculously by Padre Pio.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: She was the survivor of Ravensbrook concentration camp and she said at one point so many problems can only be solved on one's knees.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Incredible, incredible woman.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Give me give you just a little background on her.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Wanda Paltrowska is one of the greatest living testimonials, testimonies of the 20th century.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: She experienced firsthand the atrocities of Nazi and communist totalitarianisms and is the last survivor of the 74 Polish women who were transported to Ravensbrook concentration camp during World War II, who were subjected to pseudo medical experiments.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: It's incredible what we do to each other.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: We're doing these today.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: She had plenty to say about all of that.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: She was a personal friend of John Paul II, who gave her spiritual support during the difficult years following World War II and she influenced him on questions related to the family and marital life.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: She has followed closely church affairs in the recent decades and she has also been a prominent member of various Vatican dichastries and particularly the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Pontifical Council for the Family.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: She was born under the name of Wanda Włotoszek on November 2, 1921 in Lublin, poland, where she, and then later on she, would receive her medical degree at the Hegelian University of Krakow in 1951.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Sorry, even though I have some Polish in me, my Polish isn't very good and so if I butcher dead I apologize to my Polish listeners and earn her doctorate degree in psychology in 1964.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: A few years later, she took part in the establishment of the Institute of the Theology of the Family at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Krakow, which would later become the Pontifical University of John Paul II, an institute which she ran for over 30 years.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: She also worked as a university lecturer in pastoral medicine at the John Paul II Institute of Rome.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: So on the occasion of her 100th birthday, she was interviewed with the register and I also pulled up a little bit older interview and I'm going to put some details together of her life and I want to show the friendship which she had with John Paul II, the healing, the incredible healing that came through John Paul and then was actually done by Padre Pio, talk a little bit about the Ravenswood survivor and finally how she matured in her faith, and I may do a couple of sessions on a couple podcasts on her, because there's just so much there that I don't want to just all cram it in, but buckle up for right now and get ready for the rest of today's episode.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Wanda was asked in this interview what are your memories of your childhood in Poland before World War II broke out?
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: And she said as a young girl, up until the age of 17, I lived in Loveland, a holy city with holy people.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Abortion practically didn't exist.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: I lived almost in a paradise for 17 years, and then everything changed with the war.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: I was in my last year in high school when the war broke out and I couldn't take the high school graduation exam.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: I didn't get a chance to get into college.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't resume my studies again until after I spent time in Ravensbrook.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: What did the school girls of Love and High School dream about way back in 1939?
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Well, maybe all the girls of their age dream about happiness, evenings at the cinema or at theater, balls, love trips with their friends.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Yet the folly of Nazism stole all the dreams of happiness from them, turning their lives into a nightmare which lasted five years when the German army attacked Poland on September 11, starting the Second World War.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Wanda Wojcik this was Wanda Poltrowska's maiden name was 17 and attended the high school of the Ursuline nuns in Lublin, southeast Poland.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: She was in charge of a scout group at the time.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Small wondered that this brave young girl decided to join the clandestine organization of Polish resistance called the Association for Armed Struggle.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately, in February 1941, she was found out, arrested, detained in the terrible prison of Lublin for many months.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Though beaten while interrogated, she did not reveal her comrades' names.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: In September, she was transferred to Ravensbrook concentration camp.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Behind the gates of that concentration camp, she stopped being a person and became prisoner 7709.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Ravensbrook is a village on a beautiful lake and in this idyllic landscape the Nazis built one of their death factories.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: 130,000 people from 27 countries were imprisoned there during the war.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Among these, there were 40,000 Polish women, out of whom 8,000 survived.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Ill fed, kept in the cold, these women were forced to work in brutal conditions, conditions, tortured and killed.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: They were shot or gassed and then cremated.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Wanda was not shot.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: She became a cannington German for rabbit In Ravensbrook concentration camp.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: This word evoked something frightening.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: A cannington was a prisoner destined for the surgical experiments conducted by the medical staff of the nearby SS clinic, directed by Dr Gerberhardt.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Prisoners were employed to test experimental drugs for the treatment of the wounds received by soldiers fighting on the front line.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: The women were imprisoned, there were deliberately wounded, given fractures, injected.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Pieces of wood or cloth were introduced into some wounds to test the effectiveness of new drugs.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Other experiments were about the process of bone, muscle and nerve regeneration and the feasibility of bone transplants.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Some women suffered amputations, others lost organs.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Organs were taken out, given to other people to try.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: It was amazing stuff.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Others were only wounded and suffered fractures.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: So Wanda, one of the 74 Polish women, became a human guinea pig.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: She was operated on in the legs and that experimental operation caused her excruciating pain, so bad she was about to go insane.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: She contemplated throwing herself on the high tension barbed wire to end it off.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: The cannington were to be eliminated, but the other inmates struggled to save them.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: One time she was thrown out on a pile.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: She was thought she was dead pile of crea bodies getting ready to be sent to the crematory.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: A friend saw her finger move and took her out of the pile and nursed her back to health.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Well, the camp was liberated by Soviet soldiers on April 30th 1945 and Wanda received reached Lublin by foot and short rides.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Can you imagine that?
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Think about this.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: You were being experimented on in for four years.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: The unbelievable tortures were being done to you.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Then it's liberated and she has to walk and and hike and and hitch short rides to get back home.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: It's amazing, isn't it?
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: But you could not stay in her homeland.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Every corner reminded her of friends and acquaintances who had died in the war.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: She decided to move the crack out, but this changed it not to spell the nightmares of her imprisonment.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: When someone asked her who she was, sometimes she would answer number 7709.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Confronted with the tragedy of the shawl, many Jews wondered where God was when they were dying.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: After the experience of the Nazi hell, wanda asked herself who is man?
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: A friend of hers advised her to write a book to work through her inner drama.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Thus she wrote the memoir of her prison days, which she titled and I am afraid of my dreams, published in Italian.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Yet neither medical studies nor philosophy, not even marriage in the family life, set her troubled mind at rest until she met a man, a priest, who was able to understand her.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: The question goes to her how did your intense spiritual relationship with Cardinal Wotewa began?
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Cardinal Wotewa, of course, became Saint John Paul II became the Pope.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Wanda Potrosky answers.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: When I returned to Poland after years of imprisonment, I was haunted by the question who is man?
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Neither my studies, nor my friends, nor my confessors helped me.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: One day I went to St Mary's Basilica.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: I began to pray in front of the large crucifixes I used to do.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: When Father Wotewa, whom I had known since the days of pastoral care for doctors, entered the church, he knelt down and went into the confessional.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: I followed him as though I had been driven by a special force.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: I confessed to him.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: I remember the great relief and sense of peace I found.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: I had finally found someone, somebody who could really understand me.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: After I confessed, he said to me come to Mass tomorrow morning, come every morning.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: I soon realized that he was a saintly priest endowed with a rare aptitude for listening.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: She's asked what did his pastoral method consist of?
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Wanda said it was centered on biblical meditation.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: After celebrating Mass every morning, he gave me a short passage to meditate on.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: During the day, I meditated on that passage and wrote down my reflections.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Father Wotewa read my notes and wrote his comments.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: These documents became an important part of my latest book.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: I'm going to pause here just for a second, just to tell you it's been my practice.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: It's so important to read scripture every day.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: That's exactly what I do when I go to Mass in the morning.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: The night before I read the scripture for that next day and then I take a phrase out of that.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: You read the scripture, you meditate on it.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: It's lecture of Divina.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: This is that method.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: You meditate on a word or a phrase or on the whole theme of the story, and then you pray, you ask God, you talk to God, you tell him what's on your heart and then, finally, complacial, you contemplate.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: And when you contemplate, you're just trying to quiet yourself.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: You're trying to listen to God, speak to you.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: It's amazing what you can find, even in this crazy world today.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: I mean all of these things that happen to Wanda.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: These are happening again today, aren't they?
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: We just had the Israeli Hamas thing, the amazing tortures and things you can do.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: We have these trans ideologies where we're experimenting on the bodies of children, you know.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, is it much different or any different, really, than the medical experiments on Dr Wanda Paltroska?
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Huh, so anyways, I just remind you to do that.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: It's just an incredible piece that you're gonna get.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Plus, god is gonna speak to you in scriptures and then in your quiet time and your silence afterwards.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: It's amazing.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: So anyways, goes on to ask your relationship with Carol Wilti was not just spiritual but also, I daresay, professional.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Wanda said that's true.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: At the time I was a young psychiatrist working in the Youth Counseling Center.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Young people and couples in crisis came to me for help.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: I soon realized that I needed the help of a priest, cardinal or father.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Wilti at that time was involved in this type of activity, and so he became my collaborator.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: So again, I'm gonna pause here.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: See what she's saying there.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: She worked as a young psychiatrist.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: People came to her and she needed a priest.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: You know, some things cannot be solved it just in the secular world.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Much of this is spiritual.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Who is man?
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: She was asking what's my purpose?
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: What's the meaning of our lives?
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: You know, all of these things come from God.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Huh, comes from grace.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: So the next question you work for the defense of life and the family.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: How did your concern about these issues originate?
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Wanda said during my prison days at Ravensbrook, I saw the Nazis cast newborn babies into the crematoriums.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Think about this again.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but this is what we're doing, with abortions all over.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: This is what we saw with the Israeli babies just killed.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: But of all those babies and the sick is that was to see those young children in Israel, just as last week or two you think about the millions and millions of babies billions now that have been aborted all over, just thrown into the crematoriums.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: You wonder why this evil is being perpetrated on us today.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: We've seen this movie before.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Only it's gonna be more dangerous today, john Paul said, and so that many other people that saw this all coming because the power of we have with modern technology and modern weapons.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Can you imagine in World War 2?
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Look at, it ended with the bomb right, two bombs in Japan.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: And can you imagine today how many nations have those bombs?
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Much, much, much, much more powerful than that.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: So she goes on.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: After saying she saw the Nazis cast newborn babies in the crematorium, she said I swore that if I survived I would study medicine and be committed to the defense of life.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: In communist Poland, abortion was legalized in 1956.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: See the communists again.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: You guys have heard me talk about this again.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: They're after marriage and the destruction of children.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: You know, it's amazing how they want to twist marriage in the family and then they'll go after the children, first, if they can abort them, and if they can, if their child is lucky enough to make it out of its mother's womb, they're gonna render it sterile with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and actually surgical, manipulate and, just you know, destroy perfectly good body parts.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Mutilate is the word I'm looking for.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: So anyways, you see this under communism, right that abortion was legalized.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: They already did this.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: They made divorce really easy.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: They made abortion very easy.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: I, as a doctor, and Carol Votiva, as a priest, were deeply disturbed by this, so we started to work together to oppose this law.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: It is then that we became involved in the defense of life, a commitment which lasted over 50 years, already in 1967, so this is 11 years before he became Pope.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: You could see how John Paul thought about this all coming.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: So in 1967, cardinal Wiltiva established in Krakow the Theological Institute for the Family, which I directed, one that said for 33 years.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: John Paul II has gone down in history as the pope of the theology of the body.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: When did he become interested in this issue?
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Wanda Paltrowska answered he was always interested in anthropology.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: An aspect which interested him was the love between a man and a woman and the sanctity of the family.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: You see, he saw what was going on in communism.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: He saw what was going on in Nazis.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: He saw what they did, you know, and they continued to do today.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: This is amazing evil.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Coming down and see, because at the end, who's pulling the strings here?
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: It's not just people that are Marxists and Communists, it is them.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: But who's orchestrating this?
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: It's Satan himself.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: He wants to destroy humanity because we're the Amago Day, the image and likeness of God.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: So she goes on to say this he cared a lot about the family because it is there that the human personality is, or should be, shaped.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: At the same time, he realized that the love within the family stems from the correct understanding of the physical aspect of the man-woman relationship.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: And he's talking about the beauty of our sexuality, who you've heard me talk about so many times.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: And again, don't forget, every Wednesday we're unpacking John Paul's theology of the body.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: I unpacked that with Linda Piper.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Dr Wanda went on.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: She said in Cracow I collaborated with him in the writing of Love and Responsibility and of those of you who remember, love and Responsibility was done earlier, before he became Pope, and that's his philosophical underpinning to theology of the body.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: And then she goes on to say 1979, when he was already Pope, he started the cycle of catechesis on human love and God's plan.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: This is the theology of the body that we unpacked every Wednesday.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: But she said but he wrote the proofs here, he just divided the text into lessons.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: So in other words, when he became Pope he had already had that work done.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: He just divided it in the lessons and then gave 129 short talks when he became Pope, every Wednesday in the general audience.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: It's amazing.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: And she goes on to say and it also must be remembered that he made a major contribution to the preparation of Humane Vite, as Pope Wotia wrote to you.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: This is the interviewer as Pope Wotia wrote to you on December 24, 1978.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: He said you were my consultant in the preparation of Humane Vite.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: You have been my collaborator for more than 20 years.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: I want this to continue.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Therefore, wotia's contribution to the preparation of the encyclical is also your contribution.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: In his letter the Pope asked you to follow and report to him everything happening in this field.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: So she was working in the field again as a doctor and a psychiatrist, and he wanted that feedback, right?
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Dr Paltroska said I continued to do what he had asked me to do and the interviewer goes on your pro-life commitment has gained you a lot of enemies.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: See again who's the enemy?
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Right, the enemy is the enemy.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Satan is the enemy.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: This is the battle between our Lord and Satan.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: The interviewer goes on you have become the enemy of Polish feminists and in some circles they do not forgive you for comparing abortion to the Shoah.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Again, the Shoah is the description of a catastrophe which meant the Holocaust, right?
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Dr Wana comes back.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: How can certain feminists proclaim women's freedom in Parliament while sentencing defenseless unborn babies to death?
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: The number of abortions in the world is enormous, much higher than that of the people killed in the war.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: The interviewer changed and said now let's talk of a particular difficult moment for you.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: You found out you had cancer in 1962.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Paltroska says this I felt unwell when Wojty was in Rome for Vatican II.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: My husband sent him a telegram to inform him that I was in the hospital and he, on the advice of Monsignor Andres Desker, turned to Padre Pio.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: In his letter to Padre Pio Carnal, what Eva at that time asked him to pray for a sick woman, without mentioning my name.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Needless to say, like all poles, I didn't know anything about this Capuchin.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Capuchin is the is the order that Padre Pio belonged to.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: The communist regime kept us apart from the Western world.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: When I recovered, I got to know about these letters the second one was a letter of thanks and shuttered to discover their content.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Actually, my recovery made me rebellious.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Instead of me getting down on my knees to thank God, I was frightened not only of God's power but also of our depending on him.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Isn't that amazing?
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: That's why I started this off, this, this episode, after I said that Wonderful Trouse, who's a friend of John Paul's and cured by Padre Pio, and in Ravensbrook, she said so many problems can only be solved on one's knees.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: So she went from understanding that in her, in her older age right, to getting to being cured of cancer and and being frightened not only of God's power but our depending on him.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Isn't it amazing, isn't what we do?
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: How many of us reject God because of that, we depend on him.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: We don't want to depend on anybody, right?
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: But that's just the reality.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: That's who we're born into.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: This this is.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: This is what John Paul was getting at when he was talking about meditation, meditating on Scripture, to accept that.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: To accept that we came into a story.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Nobody listening here today created the universe.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: We didn't write the big story, right, but the stars up in the sky separate the land from the sea, the light from the darkness.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: We came into a story how this was little, tiny person that came into a story.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: It's too proud to look around, right, but that's the way we are.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: We all like that to a certain extent.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: It takes a while to find out that it's a love story and the God that pursues you, the God that wants a relationship with you, was a lover.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: They created you in love, by love and for love.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: And when you go through everything that wonder went through, can you imagine thinking that this God is a God of love?
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: But of course, this is evil that's been unleashed on the world and so much of this, as we see right today, just like it was in in World War two and World War one, and and all these, all the violence in the streets in Chicago tonight, this weekend, it's all because of evil, right, it's all because of people that have rejected God.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: So now I want to back up just a little bit.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: I Want to talk about Carol.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Carol will T what?
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Just a little bit more.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: And so I could bring you up to speed on the story how he knew Padre Pio, because I want to talk about the.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: How Padre Pio cured Dr Wander.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Paltrow Ska is amazing actually.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: So I'm gonna say this about Carol will T.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Well, again, this is John Paul II.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: When he was still the young man, he had lost both of his parents and his brother and had no real family of his own.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: But his loneliness was a salvage, assaged by the deepening of his friendship with the Paltrow scas.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: The couple's own family life had been enriched with children and eventually Wanda and Andre were blessed with four young ones.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Well, t was so close to them that they grew up calling him.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: The children did their uncle.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: As the years progressed, he earned two doctorates, became a university professor and eventually was nominated auxiliary Bishop of Krakow, poland.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Then, while participating in the second Vatican Council in Rome, he received the tragic news from his adopted family that Wanda had been diagnosed with an intestinal tumor.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: The doctors had decided to operate and if the growth was were cancerous, she cancerous.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: She was given only 18 months to live.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: They also told her there was a 95% chance that the tumor was Malignant.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: When the news that his close friend and collaborator had been hospitalized, and when that news reached Bishop of T Wa I called him cardinal earlier.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: He wasn't a cardinal yet he immediately began to ask for prayers from his fellow priests, friends and religious sisters.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Well, t will pray intensely that further tragedy would not strike this woman who had endured five cruel years in the concentration camp.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Dr Petroska was only 40 years old and had four children who still needed her.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: The Polish bishops thought soon turned to a man he had not seen for 15 years, a man who sanctity and prayers he greatly respected, and this is I'll tell you just a little about, about his, his visit when he was a young priest To meet and how he got to know Padre Pio.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: So it was, though, in the long summer of 1947.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: So this is some years after World War two.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Well, t I had been a priest for less than a year.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: He was in Rome in the midst of two year, two year study program, working on his first doctorate.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Extremely interested in Carmelite spirituality and mysticism, he had chosen for his dissertation topic the mythical, the mystical, mystical theology of st John of the cross.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: It was in Rome that he first heard about another Catholic mystic, a Capuchin rather than a Carmelite, whose fame had not yet spread beyond the iron curtain into Poland.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: He was said to bear the wounds of Christ, the only priest ever to do so, and he lived only a half-dazed journey by train and bus from Rome.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: And I'll and I'll just add here it was some years back now I was riding my bicycle with a friend, with some friends, through Tuscany.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: It was just a beautiful experience and At the last minute we said you know what we can take off tomorrow?
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: We could take the day off tomorrow from riding and let's, let's Get a car and let's cross Italy here.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: And we did, and we went to see Padre Pio's place.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: It was amazing, you know.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: It was amazing to see where he, he, he spent all those years in San Giovanni Ritondo, in Petruchina, and it was.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: It was something to see, you know, really something to see.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: So anyways, during a break in the school year, well T were then decided to visit this modern-day mystic, padre Pio of Petruchina.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: He spent almost a week in San Giovanni Ritondo that summer and was able to attend Padre Pio's mass and Made his confession to the saint.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Apparently, this was not just a casual encounter.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: The two spoke together at length during what he was stay, so they got to know each other.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: In fact there was there's a lot of talk about when John Paul had asked him about which one of his wounds were the worst, gave him the most trouble, and he said it was his shoulder.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: He said it was his shoulder was never looked at and never Fully healed, and he said that.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: He said that's the one that gives him the most trouble.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Of course that's from Jesus carrying the cross, isn't amazing, right?
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: So anyways, back, and so we're gonna move up now.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: And he's back in Rome.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: He's there for Vatican II, which the communists had just barely let him out to, to go to the councils and in the early 60s, so back in Rome.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: The news reaching Bishop will tell you about the condition of his dear friend.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Wonderful Trouska continued to be ominous.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: A major operation to stem the growth in her intestine now loomed a few days hence.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: With no time to lose, he took pen in hand and hastily wrote a short urgent letter to Padre Pio in Latin.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: The letter, written on the official station area of the diocese of Cracow, was dated November 17th 1962.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Brief and to the point, the bishop pleaded Venerable father, this is to Padre Pio I ask for your prayers for a certain mother of four young girls who lives in Cracow, poland.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: During the last years of the war she spent.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: During the last war she spent five years in a German concentration camp and now her health and even her life are in great danger due to cancer.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Pray that God, through the intercession of the Most Blessed Virgin, has mercy on her and her family.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Most obligated in Christ, carol Otewa.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Since it was essential that the letter arrive as soon as possible, bishop Otewa acted through intermediaries and enlisted the help of Angelo Battisti in order to have it hand delivered to Padre Pio.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Battisti's position as the Vatican Secretary of State and he was also the administrator for Padre Pio's hospital, so he would go back and forth.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: It guaranteed him virtually unlimited access to the saint at almost any hour.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: He was told that the letter was of utmost importance and was asked to leave it once and deliver it personally to Padre Pio.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: The hastily summoned messenger later remarked I had never received such an urgent assignment.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: I quickly went home to get my car and departed immediately.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Battisti drove to the friary at the San Giovanni Rotondo and had it straight for Padre Pio's room.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: There he found the priest seated with his head bowed over his chest, engrossed in prayer.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: The messenger held out the envelope, explaining that it dealt with a pressing matter.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: Without moving, pio simply replied open it and read it.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: He listened in silence as Angelo Battisti read the letter and remained silent for some time.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: Afterwards, battisti was now surprised that this missive had to be urgently delivered.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: It seemed to be similar to the torrent of grave requests about life and death matters that reached daily to Padre Pio, imploring his prayers.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: Always so, battisti was saying it was just one of so many letters to Padre Pio got every day.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Why did I have to rush?
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Well, finally, the Padre raised his head and, with a serious demeanor, turned toward the messenger.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Angelo, to this one Cuesto.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Cuesto means it's a masculine pronoun, so it's the John Paul.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: It is not possible to say no.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: He said Wow.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: Then he bowed his head as before and resumed praying.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Everybody understood by using the term Cuesto, a masculine pronoun, that Padre Pio was referring to John Paul II, who sent the letter.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: On a drive back to Rome, he thought about the many years he had known Padre Pio and how every single word he spoke or wrote was carefully chosen and had a profound significance.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: He did not use the feminine Cuesta, which would have referred to the request or to the letter itself.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: So this was Cuesto who had sent it.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: That could not be refused.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: I cannot refuse that bishop from Krakow.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: But who was this Polish bishop, he thought.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Though Battisti worked at the secretariat of state, he had never heard of him.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Nor he found out when he arrived at the Vatican.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Had any of his colleagues ever heard of Bishop Otiwa?
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Yet, while Padre Pio considered him?
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Yet why had Padre Pio considered him so important?
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: The question to remove the tumor in Dr Paltroskis' intestine was to take place on a Friday in late November 1962.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: On Saturday, bishop Otiwa telephoned the sick woman's husband, andre, to learn whether or not the tumor had been malignant.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: Andre started to explain that the operation never took place because the doctors had found that there was nothing they could do.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: The bishop immediately began to console his friend, believing that the cancer had been declared inoperable.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Andre interrupted oh no, you do not understand the doctors.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Confronted with the mystery, they could not find anything.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: The growth, which had been previously confirmed as present by the doctors, had now completely disappeared.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: For Bishop Oteua, only one explanation for this cure was possible the prayers the Padre Pio had raised to heaven.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: At the same time, the Paltrowskis knew nothing about their friend's letter to the holy man of the Gargonal, to Padre Pio, and they did not find out until later.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: In fact, the couple had never heard of Padre Pio since Poland was closed off iron-current country, and there was little opportunity for them to learn about events of the free world.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Thus, at first, wanda attributed the results to the one in twenty possibility that was an inflammation which had healed on its own and not a tomburta.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Upon hearing the good news, bishop Oteua composed a second letter to Padre Pio, this time thanking him for interceding before God for this mother of four children.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: In the letter dated November 28th, again in Latin, he clearly attributes the doctor's failure to find any diseased tissue to divine intervention.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: He writes the woman living in Krakow, poland, and a mother of four children, on the 21st of November, prior to the surgical operation, was suddenly cured.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: Thanks be to God, and also to you, venerable father.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: I offer the greatest possible gratitude in the name of the woman, of her husband and all her family In Christ.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Kuro Oteua, bishop of Krakow.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: Once again, the bishop's letter was consigned to Angelo Batiste, with instructions from Vatican officials to carry it to San Giovanni of Rotondo.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: He departed once upon reaching Our Lady of Grace Friary, the messenger approached Padre Pio in the cell, as before, padre spoke the simple command open and read.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: This time Batiste himself was extremely curious and upon reading aloud the truly extraordinary, incredible news, he turned to Padre Pio in order to congratulate him.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: But the fire was immersed in prayer.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: It seemed I said Batiste, that it seemed that he had not even heard my voice as I was reading the letter.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: The minutes passed by in silence and finally the Padre asked Angelo to keep these letters from Bishop Oteua.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Don't lose them because someday they would become very important, he said.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: Returning to Rome, batiste secured the letters in a safe place and as the years passed, he had almost completely forgotten about them.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: Then, about 16 years, after 16 years, the evening of October 16, 1978, arrived, gathered with the crowds in front of St Peter's Basilica.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: He waited anxiously for the announcement of the name of the new pope when he heard the words Kuro Oteua, batiste was stunned.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: His first thoughts were the words of Padre Pio from long ago Angelo, to this one it is not possible to say no.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: And then the tears came to Batiste's eyes and a confirmation of the miracle.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: As I wind up here, I want to tell you about the confirmation of the miracle with Dr Wanda.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: Five years after her sudden 1962 cure, wanda Poltrowska had a rare opportunity to travel from communist-controlled Poland to Rome.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: So still in the 60s, don't forget, was still controlled by the communists.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: By then, information on Padre Pio had begun to reach her from various sources and she learned of the letters sent to him by Woteua asking for his prayers, subsequently thanking him for her healing.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: But as a medical doctor herself, she was still inclined to believe that the absence of any tumor at the time of the scheduled surgery was due to a mistaken diagnosis.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: She said it seemed too difficult to comprehend a supernatural intervention.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Hoping to learn more about Padre Pio, she wanted to attend this mass, perhaps meet him in person.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: She journeyed from Rome to San Giovanni Rotondo in May of 1967.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: Thanks to a friar she had spoken to on the day of her arrival, on the next morning she was led to the sacristy to a seat near the altar for Padre Pio's five o'clock AM Mass.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: She could thus closely observe the cappuccino as he celebrated with incredible intensity and with an expression of suffering on his face.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: She said To her Padre Pio's mass meant much more than the experience of God's presence during the consecration of the Holy Eucharist.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: She was able to perceive Christ's passion itself as it was reflected in the sufferings of Padre Pio.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: As the mass progressed, the stigmatized friar's own agony, the blood stains from his wounds, the perspiration running down from his forehead, all invoke the sense of Christ's own Calvary.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: The sacrifice of the altar was truly the representation of the passion of Christ.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: And I pause here just for a second.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: Again, for those of you who have friends that are Protestant or questioning this, what happens is you know, this is we enter into and make present that one time historical event.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: What's happening on that altar is Christ is offering himself up to the Father, who sent him to take on sin and death.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: He joins with all her humanity, offers us all back to the Father that's a sacrament of the mass and then he pours this out to us huh and baptism in the Eucharist.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Right, this is amazing, what's going on here.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: So, padre Pio, because his wounds started bleeding in the pain, you could see this reenactment of the passion of the Christ.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Huh, amazing.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: So afterwards, wanda gathered with many others in the sacristy waiting to greet the Holy Padre.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: He passed by quite close to her, walking slowly on his pierced feet, painful right the pierced feet, looking around at people, he stopped and then he gazed directly at her.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: A smile then beamed on his face as he approached near her, padded her on the head and said Adesso van Benny, how are you?
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Are you all right?
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: She was speechless.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: The other woman around, dr Piotrosko, wondered who she was, since she had been conspicuously singled out by their beloved Padre.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: All she could say to them was I am from Poland.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: The moment Padre Pio's eyes met hers, she understood that he recognized her and she now knew for certain why she had not needed an operation several years earlier.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: It was not because of a wrong diagnosis, but because this monk had come into my life, she said, in such an extraordinary way, because the archbishop of Krakow had asked for it and Padre Pio had known at the time when he received the urgent request from Cardinal Wotiewa that this one could not be refused.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Wow, glory be to God.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Huh, I'm going to stop there.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: It's just so beautiful, ponder that.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: Meditate on this and then, when you get a chance, read some scripture from today and just meditate on that.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: Let God take over your heart.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: Huh, remember these stories.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: God is here all the time, always, always, always wants to really come into you at a very deep, deep, deep, deep level.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: Huh, we have to be in these crazy times.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: We have to be in a deep relationship with God.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: Allow Him to come in, allow Him to do the work, but you have to say yes, hey, god bless you.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: Thanks for being with me today.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: Talk to you soon, everybody.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: Bye-bye.