Religion: Peasant of Konnersreuth

Whether belief in the Peasant of Konnersreuth should be merely belief in her mystical experiences, or whether it should include her extraordinary five-year fast was a question for lively discussion last week in the Roman Catholic press of Germany.

Therese Neumann was born in 1898. eldest of the ten children of Ferdinand Neumann, a poor peddler and tailor of Konnersreuth in northern Bavaria. Never over-zealous in the practice of her faith, she was blinded and paralyzed in 1918. after helping extinguish a fire in the house where she was employed. On May 17. 1925, the canonization day of St. Therese of Lisieux (”Little Flower”), Fraulein Neumann regained her sight. Eight days later she called for the priest of Konnersreuth. When he arrived she arose and walked. Later in the year she was taken ill with what a doctor diagnosed as purulent appendicitis. Against his protests she went to church, was well the next day.

On Shrove Tuesday, 1926, Therese Neumann’s eyes began to bleed. Stigmata appeared under her heart. On Good Friday stigmata appeared on her feet and hands, later on her head. Doctors were baffled. Then on every Friday, from morning until midafternoon, Therese Neumann re-enacted the Passion of Jesus Christ, bleeding profusely, babbling in aramaic, Hebrew and Latin as well as her own peasant dialect.

Many people accept cures and stigmata t their face value, as mystic phenomena, ‘hat the scars and blood exist is well attested. The late Sir William Osier called stigmata, in general, manifestations of hysteria, probably produced by autosuggestion. The Roman Catholic Church takes no official position at all during the lifetime of a stigmatic, conducts exhaustive inquiries afterwards. Last November steps were taken to discourage pilgrimages to Therese Neumann, as was done with similar European cases (TIME, Nov. 14).

The question interesting the Bavarian church is: is it true, as claimed, that Therese Neumann has taken no substantial food since 1926. and nothing but a daily Holy Communion wafer since 1927? Only once since then has Fraulein Neumann submitted to examination, and then by four nuns and a physician who it is admitted may well have been prejudiced in her favor. It became known last fortnight that the Bavarian Bishops’ Conference had asked Therese Neumann’s father to permit an examination for a month or six weeks. The bishops were interested in the fast alone, not in the stigmata and other mystical phenomena which they felt could never be satisfactorily explained by medical examination. Herr Neumann declined, objecting that his daughter would be exposed to “foreign influences and . . . uncongenial surroundings.” The news of the negotiations between the bishops and Herr Neumann was made public by accident. Embarrassed, the Bishop of Regensburg was obliged to admit that it was so, that he wished an examination of Therese Neumann in a hospital, under scientific auspices.