ITALY: They Did Cast Lots

Maria Alfonsina Ghini was different from the other peasant girls of the village of San Giovanni Lupatoto. While they worked in the fields and vineyards, laughed, danced at festivals, married and bore children, Maria grew more lonely. She dressed always in black, like a nun. Almost every day she made her way alone along the dusty grey road from her family’s farmhouse to the parish church. She ministered gently to ailing peasants who came to her for cures. Though she performed no miracles, it was said that once, when she was caught in a drenching storm in the open country, her garments remained miraculously dry.

Wine & Waltzes. Last spring in her 28th year a mysterious wound, two inches deep, opened up in Maria’s lower right side, and slashes appeared on her thin wrists and feet. When these wounds began to bleed on Good Friday and on two subsequent Fridays, few doubted that they were actually the stigmata.*

Three months ago Maria announced that she would die on the night of the Feast of the Assumption, Aug. 15. When the day arrived, the village of San Giovanni Lupatoto was crowded with 20,000 visitors. They came afoot, on bicycles or riding two-wheeled donkey carts. As they waited for Maria’s death, their own life brawled through the narrow streets. Barrels of wine flowed at the village inns. Sidewalk loafers opened up parking lots for bicycles, hawked Maria’s autograph to dusty pilgrims. In the village square a rusty gramophone was grinding out popular waltz tunes. Soon the pilgrims began betting on whether Maria would die. They bet money, their wine crops, their horses, mules and even pieces of land. As Maria’s hour of agony drew near the wine flowed faster, the music beat louder, the bets went higher.

“It’s a Miracle.” That night, under a starlit sky, the crowds shuffled nervously about the gate of Maria’s house. She appeared to them on her balcony. She wanted to die, she said, in the presence of the faithful. Somewhat later, the tinkle of a little silver bell in the darkness announced the passage of the village priest coming to perform the last rites of the church for Maria. Near midnight a cry went up: “She’s sweating! She’s sweating!” A deep shiver ran through the crowd. Then, above the dim hubbub of questions, a shrill exalted voice: “She’s sweating blood!” “It’s a miracle,” screamed an old woman, “we’ll have our saint.” Rumors continued to flash through the dark like scratched matches: Maria was dying, she felt neither burns nor pinpricks, she was dead but her heart continued miraculously to beat. Passionately one girl in the crowd implored: “Let’s hope her heartbeats stop soon.”

By 1 o’clock it was clear that Maria was not going to die. Those who had lost their bets—their horses and mules and pieces of land to skeptics and Communists—cursed their luck as they turned away to begin the journey home.

Next day the village doctor came to visit Maria, followed by the village priest. Both came away tight-lipped and silent. Later Maria herself appeared in her garden. Pale and exhausted, she walked in the hot sunlight among the fragrant heavy grapevines and shining oleander bushes. She walked slowly, lost in meditation, as if she no longer knew where to go.

*Stigmata, wounds or scars corresponding to those of the crucified Christ, have long been studied, never satisfactorily explained. The first and most celebrated case of stigmatization was St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226). Since then at least 341 cases have been recorded, 300 of them women. Most famous 20th Century case was Theresa Neumann, a German, of Konnersreuth, whose bleeding wounds were witnessed by thousands during the 1920s-303s and became the object of scientific study and investigation.