Foreign News: It’s a Miracle!

Sickly little Gilbert Godard, a grocer’s assistant, did not impress his neighbors in Chaumont (near Dijon) as the kind of man who might make a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin at Lourdes. Twice married, once divorced, he had never been seen at Mass. Nonetheless, it looked to a lot of pious folk in Chaumont last week as if Gilbert Godard, pilgrim to Lourdes, had been granted a miracle.

Pigs & Pity. Two years ago Godard, riding a motorbike, was seriously injured when he bumped into a trailer full of pigs driven by Butcher Auguste Maigret. He promptly sued the butcher for 14 million francs ($40,000). After hearing medical evidence, the court decided in Godard’s favor, and Maigret’s insurance company handed over some 8,000,000 francs.

By then Godard seemed in worse shape than ever. A Plexiglas support swathed his injured spine, holding his neck and back rigid. His weight had dropped from 111 to 90 pounds. His legs and one hand seemed so paralyzed that he could scarcely move. He was a pitiful sight as he hobbled along, supported by his faithful wife and a stout cane. Surprised as he was at the request, the gentle Abbé Louis Desprez, pastor of Chaumont, readily agreed to let Gilbert join the annual pilgrimage to Lourdes in search of a cure.

At Lourdes, Godard grimaced in pain as hospital attendants carried him on a stretcher to the healing spring in the grotto. They lowered him into the water. A few moments later, Godard stood up, unassisted. “I’m cured!” he cried. “It’s a miracle!” “You should be very thankful,” said the attendant priest, Abbé Jeanson, “but are you really cured?” To prove his point, the exuberant pilgrim hopped & skipped around the priest.

Prudence & Plexiglass. Five days later, his Plexiglas support left behind at Lourdes, Gilbert Godard was back in Chaumont, the talk of the town. Why, asked a few skeptical citizens, should such grace have fallen on him when better folk had been bypassed? “The bounty of God,” said Abbé Desprez, “can fall on anyone, good or not so good. God loves us all.” Some accepted the explanation. But others whispered to neighbors’ dark suggestions that here was no miracle. The clergy at Lourdes were noncommittal. “The Church,” said Abbé Jeanson, “reserves absolutely its judgment on M. Godard. A year from now, if he is still cured, we may know. Meanwhile, because of the circumstances of this case, we will be more prudent than ever.”

Last week Gilbert Godard was busy spending his insurance money on 1) a new house, 2) a new car, 3) a new lawsuit—against the newspaper Parisien Libéré, which called him “a common crook.” As an added symptom of recovery, he stood for a while outside the butcher’s shop making rude faces through the window at Maigret, at whom, strangely enough, he was very sore.