Abstract

"Miracles" at Malden

Several weeks ago the Boston, Massachusetts, newspapers printed reports of miraculous cures said to have occurred at Malden, Massachusetts, at the grave of Father Patrick J. Power, an obscure Catholic priest, dead sixty years. Since then throngs of pilgrims have beaten down the earth of Holy Cross Cemetery, surging day and night about the grave. The spectacle is repellent beyond words and at the same time stirs feelings of intense pity. The commercialism involved is shocking: the slab over the grave covered with money dropped by the kneelers, the two waste-baskets filled with money and emptied two or three times a day; the mountainous pile of scarcely burned vigil candles in the rear of the cemetery chapel which are removed to make room for other candles by three shifts of boys working day and night just as soon as the people praying by them have left the chapel, the hordes and hordes of crippled children yowling at the treatment forced upon them.