What if I told you that there was someone who prophesied in the early 1980s that Donald Trump would bring America back to God? Well, the other day a close friend of mine came over and mentioned such a prophecy. It was actually contained in a viral video from a few years ago, done by a Catholic priest. That video was viewed over half a million times, and it recounted the story of that priest s visit with a Catholic holy man in Loretto, Italy. He called him the Hermit of Loretto.
00:00:00.000What if I told you that there was someone who prophesied in the early 1980s that Donald Trump would bring America back to God?
00:00:10.940Well, the other day a close friend of mine came over and mentioned such a prophecy.
00:00:15.320It was actually contained in a somewhat viral video from a few years ago done by a Catholic priest.
00:00:22.060That video was viewed over half a million times and it recounted the story of that priest's visit with a Catholic holy man in Loretto, Italy.
00:00:35.480The prophecy about Trump wasn't actually given to the priest directly, but to the priest's friend.
00:00:42.980And the priest told about it in his video.
00:00:45.180When I heard this, I remembered the story and actually thought we had already covered it at LifeSite News at the time.
00:00:52.720But when I looked in our archives, we hadn't.
00:00:56.180But when I reviewed the video, I could see it was true, but it was a secondhand piece of information, not directly from the person who heard it from the prophet himself.
00:01:06.380And as things happen sometimes, the news cycle moved on and we must have dropped it.
00:01:11.800Well, in the wake of the historic letter from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano to President Trump and the president's own recognition of it, that prophecy has taken on new significance.
00:01:24.340And as providence would have it, I was able to get hold of the original source of this story, an MD in Massachusetts, Dr. Claude Curran.
00:01:33.000You're definitely going to want to stay tuned to watch this.
00:01:41.800Before we begin, I wanted to let you know that we just completed our fundraising drive over the weekend at LifeSite News.
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00:02:17.480Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.
00:02:20.160In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
00:02:25.300There's a man right now who I believe, in the future, is going to lead America back to God.
00:02:33.080In 2017, a video by a priest, Father Giacomo Capoverde, from Rhode Island, went viral, with over half a million views.
00:02:42.520He started off talking about his friend, Dr. Claude Curran, a psychiatrist who encouraged him, when he was going on a visit to Rome,
00:02:51.180to travel to Loretto, Italy, to meet a holy man who spent all his life praying in churches.
00:02:56.820And in the video, he told the story related to him by Dr. Curran about the holy man's prediction about Donald Trump.
00:03:06.880Here are some of the highlights of that viral video.
00:03:10.860There's a story I wanted to share with you, a true story.
00:03:14.660And it has to do with a friend of mine who's a medical doctor.
00:04:25.820So I was in my collar, you know, and he was sitting on the floor.
00:04:29.180So I sat on the floor, and I sat next to him.
00:04:31.440Years later, only a few weeks ago, I'm talking to Dr. Curran, and he says to me, you know, Father, remember that guy Tom Zimmer that I told you to go see in Italy many years ago?
00:04:43.120And I asked, of course, how could I forget what a holy man he was?
00:04:46.780And Dr. Curran said to me, listen to this about what happened between Tom and I in the 1980s.
00:04:53.540Dr. Curran said that in the 1980s, he was talking to Tom Zimmer.
00:05:00.020And Tom Zimmer said to him, Claude, there's a man right now who I believe in the future is going to lead America back to God.
00:05:10.800And Tom Zimmer said, the man who's going to, in the future, lead our country back to God is Donald J. Trump.
00:05:19.180And Dr. Curran said, you mean the New York playboy?
00:06:30.540The video was posted on February 17th, 2017.
00:06:35.160And a few weeks later, on March 6th, 2017, there was an intriguing confirmation of some aspects of the story.
00:06:42.840An American living in Loretto and working as a tour guide there was barraged with emails asking him to check out the veracity of the story.
00:06:51.380So, Brett Thoman, who runs St. Francis Pilgrimages, began an investigation, since he had never heard of Tom Zimmer before.
00:07:01.460The tour guide, although a devout Catholic, described his reaction to seeing the video as,
00:07:07.380quote, somewhere between skepticism and suspicion, end quote.
00:07:10.720But knowing the friars who run the church where Tom Zimmer was said to have spent almost all his time,
00:07:17.300Thoman spoke to one of the friars who remembered the man as l'Americano, the American.
00:07:27.140Thoman recounts that the friars found him to be courteous and polite, if not a little particular.
00:07:32.780Now, they were aware that Tom attended upwards of four or five masses every day,
00:07:40.740and that he spent the rest of his time praying in and around the Holy House, end quote.
00:07:45.680Those are quotes, again, from Brett Thoman's blog post when he was asked to check this out.
00:10:03.540Well, let me just give you a little introduction about how I, you know, how I actually met Tom.
00:10:11.660And many, many years ago, 1978, I went to Italy to go to medical school, to study medicine there.
00:10:18.980And so I arrived there sometime in September of 78.
00:10:25.080During that fall, of course, there was the election of the new pope, Pope John Paul II.
00:10:30.100And so I was living up in Perugia at the time, and a friend of mine, Steve D'Alessandro from New York,
00:10:37.320and we hopped on a train and went down to Rome to go to the Vatican City because the conclave was taking place.
00:10:48.560Well, anyway, on the, I think it was October 16th, I'm not sure,
00:10:51.780but the night that John Paul II was elected, I was standing in St. Peter's Square as the white smoke, you know, emanated from the Sistine Chapel.
00:11:02.840And so my friend Steve and I, we waited there for the whole ceremony with Habemus Popham and John Paul coming out on the balcony to greet the crowd.
00:11:13.200And standing to my left was Tom Zimmer, and he was, I overheard a conversation in English that he was having.
00:11:20.280So anyway, I introduced myself and we became friends.
00:11:24.460So Tom was a very, very prayerful, prayerful individual.
00:11:28.700He was a World War II veteran, and sometime in the early 1970s, he moved to Italy to spend his life as a pilgrim,
00:11:39.620essentially just spending the rest of his years praying for humanity.
00:11:43.360And so among his endeavors, he and another friend named, one of his friends, Harry Falhaber,
00:11:53.800they assembled the Pieta Prayer Book while they were in, during their pilgrimage to Italy.
00:12:00.340I believe Harry's wife, Lillian, also helped assemble the book.
00:12:05.180And so most people, or many, many people are familiar with it because it sold millions and millions of copies.
00:12:12.780That wasn't his, the aim of printing the book, but he wanted to assemble a book of prayers that he was afraid may be lost from Catholic tradition.
00:13:01.580this was during the Holy Year that had been declared by Pope John Paul II to celebrate the 1950th anniversary of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection.
00:13:14.760Of course, the Holy Year was coming to an end.
00:13:19.400And the Vatican announced that people were invited to buy memorial bricks because when they seal up the Holy Door,
00:13:31.080they will use those bricks, and all of the intentions inscribed on those bricks will be remembered in all the masses and prayers celebrated in the Vatican.
00:13:39.760And so during that, again, the fall of 1983, one day I went to Tom, to meet up with Tom in the colonnade over at St. Peter's,
00:13:53.120probably around 1 o'clock in the afternoon, a little bit later, again, after the Vatican had closed.
00:14:00.260And so Tom was there doing his usual thing, which was writing prayers, collecting prayers, reading current events,
00:14:10.620and collecting information on social and political problems in the world,
00:14:17.340and marking them down, and then he would bring them into church with him and pray for all of those intentions.
00:14:23.640And so he said to me, he said, Claude, right now in the United States, there's a man who has the hand of God on him.
00:14:33.740He has the IQ of a genius and a first-class education, and everything he approaches, he attacks with a blinding efficiency.
00:14:46.440So I said, you know, I thought that was interesting.
00:14:52.160And he goes, his name is Donald Trump.
00:14:55.180And I said, I said, Tom, I said, yeah, I've heard of Donald Trump.
00:14:59.060I said, but Thomas, he's kind of like this jet-setting playboy millionaire.
00:15:03.740I said, you know, he dates Hollywood starlets, and he's always in the news with the, you know, with the glitterati.
00:15:10.780And he said, no, Claude, he said, I'm telling you, the hand of God is on him, and God is going to use him in the future.
00:15:19.820So I said, you know, okay, that's fine, you know, okay, because Tom would always, Tom very frequently encouraged me to look at things a little bit outside of the box.
00:15:32.860And so Thomas said to me, he says, Claude, I'm so convinced about what I'm telling you that I have bought a memorial brick for Donald J. Trump.
00:15:45.220I've put his name on it, and he will now benefit from all of the masses and prayers in the Vatican until, you know, for as long as that brick remains in the holy door.
00:16:00.760And, of course, now Donald Trump became president, and I am certain, look at if you, you know, he's pro-life, he promotes Christian values, he's trying to make America great again.
00:16:20.840And America was greatest when, any country is great when it embraces Christian values.
00:16:27.200But he's been recognized as such by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a great hero in the Church today.
00:16:38.480We're going to talk about that in a little while on the show, but I wanted to talk to you about Tom Zimmer personally for you, for your family.
00:16:46.580You know, you were in personal relationship with him, so you probably knew him better than others.
00:16:52.640When this video first went viral, people did some research into Tom Zimmer because nobody could believe that this existed.
00:17:00.680Of course, it checked it out already, it checked out as we showed already.
00:17:04.600But I wanted you to give us a bit more of, you know, what Tom meant to you personally, what he meant to your family.
00:17:11.100Well, Thomas, he showed me how to understand things in a spiritual way, particularly the value, you know, this is a strange thing, but I'm a physician, and physicians and everyone in healthcare, nurses, therapists, I mean, all of us who deal in healthcare.
00:17:38.620We deal in human suffering, and it's very, very difficult to witness that all day long, you know, every day.
00:17:49.120And, you know, human suffering, it's, if you, you know, we're helpless in front of human suffering.
00:17:59.060But also, to perfect ourselves, okay, to develop ourselves, we have to suffer, we have to go to school, we have to sit in libraries when we don't want to.
00:18:11.000And if we don't make ourselves suffer, we will make everyone who has anything to do with us suffer, because, you know, the parent who has the incorrigible kid who won't go to school, won't do his homework, won't find a job, you know, that person suffers because the child won't discipline himself and literally make himself suffer.
00:18:32.820But Thomas said Jesus, through his suffering, Jesus transformed human suffering into a divine currency, and that's why we can all participate in Jesus' suffering, and that's basically what we do.
00:18:49.620We just don't, but people who are not Christian and don't see the spiritual dimension to life, they don't understand the value of human suffering, and they try to avoid it.
00:18:59.620Mm-hmm. And so, you know, you've spent this long amount of time with him, you hear this one prophecy, it really wasn't all that much. Did he tell you any other prophecies, or was that, like, the only time?
00:19:14.520Well, when I would, I would go to Mass with Thomas in the afternoons, in the evenings, when I could, and there was sometimes, because of my studies, I just couldn't go to as many Masses as he would encourage me to go to.
00:19:30.280But Rome, I don't know if the Mass schedule is still active there, but anyway, I'll get back to your question.
00:19:43.520But, yeah, at 4.30 in the afternoon, there was a Mass at the Church of St. Jerome, then right behind St. Jerome, there was the Church of St. Charles Borromeo, and then following the Mass at St. Charles Borromeo, there was a Mass at San Lorenzo in Lucina.
00:20:02.400Then there was a Mass at the Holy Trinity Church on Via Condotti, and then up the street, there was a Mass following that at Piazza San Silvestro, either at the Church of San Silvestro, the Church of San Claudio, or the Church of Our Lady of the Well, La Madonna del Pozzo.
00:20:22.680And then, after that, there was a Mass at Maria in Via, and sometimes there would be a Mass after that across the street at the Church of San Marcello.
00:20:36.740And so, yeah, you can see I had a pretty—
00:20:42.520Yeah, yeah, but this was only in the evening. These were the evening Masses.
00:20:45.740I didn't really get too familiar with the morning schedule.
00:20:49.680So, with Thomas, he would tell me different things, like, this is the saint of—
00:20:56.200Yeah, one day, he would follow the feast days of patron saints, of the saints, and we would see unusual patterns in things that people would say to him, things that people would give him.
00:21:14.120One day, one night we were walking down Via Del Corso, and it was Thomas' birthday, which was May 29th.
00:21:24.080And as we're walking down up the street, a man comes up to him and hands him a pineapple.
00:21:31.860And I said, geez, I said, Tom, that's great. That's for your birthday.
00:21:35.500He goes, yeah, but it's not only my birthday.
00:21:37.080He said, today is the statehood day of the Philippines, and he said, and their national symbol is the pineapple.
00:21:44.680And so little things like that, little—I don't know if you—signal graces or—but, I mean, very, very interesting that I would see—
00:21:56.080When I asked Thomas, initially when I met him, I said, Thomas, have you ever seen Miracles?
00:22:01.160He said, Claude, if you spend time with me, you will become tired of counting them.
00:22:05.540And so—but again, listen, it was the mass.
00:22:10.880Thomas told me, I guess in 2008 when he came back, that he estimated that he had been present at approximately 325,000 consecrations during his life.
00:22:29.860And he thought that the—he held that the concelebrated mass was the most important invention of humanity since the beginning of time, because you have—at a concelebrated mass, you have—you can have 300, 400 priests offering the mass.
00:22:52.560And so you're present literally at 300 to 400 consecrations.
00:22:57.140And he said, people don't—he said, even priests don't understand the value of the mass.
00:23:21.180And while Father Capo Verde in 2017 already believed that the prophecy of Tom Zimmer was fulfilled in President Trump because Melania Trump led a huge public meeting by praying the Lord's Prayer,
00:23:35.800think how much more we've seen Trump bringing America back to God now.
00:23:41.320And there's no one better to describe that than the former Apostolic Nuncio, that is, Papal Representative to the United States of America, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano.
00:23:54.720At LifeSite, we were privileged to be asked by Archbishop Vigano to publish his open letter to President Trump.
00:24:01.680And when the President himself retweeted it and spoke of his thanks and admiration for Archbishop Vigano, it was tremendous.
00:24:10.120It is, in fact, inside Archbishop Vigano's letter to the President that the fulfillment of that 1983 prophecy of Tom Zimmer can be seen even more clearly.
00:24:22.120Archbishop Vigano wrote these words, and I quote,
00:24:25.600For the first time, the United States has in you a President who courageously defends the right to life,
00:24:35.480who is not ashamed to denounce the persecution of Christians throughout the world,
00:24:40.000who speaks of Jesus Christ and the right of citizens to freedom of worship.
00:24:45.640Your participation in the March for Life and, more recently, your proclamation of the month of April as National Child Abuse Prevention Month
00:24:54.080are actions that confirm which side you wish to fight on.
00:24:58.320And I dare to believe that both of us are on the same side in this battle, albeit with different weapons.
00:25:05.860Words again from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former nuncio to the United States of America, to President Trump.
00:25:17.660And Archbishop Vigano concluded his letter this way, saying, and I quote,
00:25:21.840Mr. President, my prayer is constantly turned to the beloved American nation where I had the privilege and honor of being sent by Pope Benedict XVI as Apostolic Nuncio.
00:25:33.660In this dramatic and decisive hour for all of humanity, I am praying for you and also for all those who are at your side in the government of the United States.
00:25:45.820I trust that the American people are united with me and you in prayer to Almighty God.