The John-Henry Westen Show - President Trump will ‘lead America back to God,’ according to 1983 prophecy

00:00:00.000 What if I told you that there was someone who prophesied in the early 1980s that Donald Trump would bring America back to God?

00:00:10.940 Well, the other day a close friend of mine came over and mentioned such a prophecy.

00:00:15.320 It was actually contained in a somewhat viral video from a few years ago done by a Catholic priest.

00:00:22.060 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.

00:00:32.140 He called him the Hermit of Loretto.

00:00:35.480 The prophecy about Trump wasn't actually given to the priest directly, but to the priest's friend.

00:00:42.980 And the priest told about it in his video.

00:00:45.180 When I heard this, I remembered the story and actually thought we had already covered it at LifeSite News at the time.

00:00:52.720 But when I looked in our archives, we hadn't.

00:00:56.180 But 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.

00:01:06.380 And as things happen sometimes, the news cycle moved on and we must have dropped it.

00:01:11.800 Well, 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.

00:01:24.340 And 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.

00:01:33.000 You're definitely going to want to stay tuned to watch this.

00:01:41.800 Before 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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00:02:06.520 Also, please remember to like and share this video to click the subscribe button and the bell to be notified of all future episodes as they're released.

00:02:17.480 Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.

00:02:20.160 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

00:02:25.300 There's a man right now who I believe, in the future, is going to lead America back to God.

00:02:33.080 In 2017, a video by a priest, Father Giacomo Capoverde, from Rhode Island, went viral, with over half a million views.

00:02:42.520 He started off talking about his friend, Dr. Claude Curran, a psychiatrist who encouraged him, when he was going on a visit to Rome,

00:02:51.180 to travel to Loretto, Italy, to meet a holy man who spent all his life praying in churches.

00:02:56.820 And in the video, he told the story related to him by Dr. Curran about the holy man's prediction about Donald Trump.

00:03:06.880 Here are some of the highlights of that viral video.

00:03:10.860 There's a story I wanted to share with you, a true story.

00:03:14.660 And it has to do with a friend of mine who's a medical doctor.

00:03:18.960 He's a psychiatrist.

00:03:20.480 His name is Claude Curran.

00:03:22.240 So one day, about 17 years ago, when I was at my first assignment in Bristol, I was talking to him about going to Rome.

00:03:30.420 I told him I was going to be visiting Rome.

00:03:32.420 And he said to me, Father, listen, I really want you to do something when you're in Rome.

00:03:36.820 I want you to get on a train, and I want you to go up to Loretto.

00:03:42.120 And he said, I'll pay for the train ticket, I'll pay for your expenses, but you've got to go to Loretto.

00:03:46.820 There's a guy who's there, his name is Tom Zimmer.

00:03:49.640 I want you to meet Tom Zimmer.

00:03:52.300 And I remember him saying to Dr. Curran, how am I going to find him?

00:03:54.940 I'm just going to go to Loretto.

00:03:56.300 He said, believe me, walk around and you'll find him.

00:03:59.880 Sure enough, there was an elderly man who was very frail, very thin, who was leaning up against a fence that surrounds the house.

00:04:07.800 And I went up to him, and in English, I said to him, are you Thomas?

00:04:12.280 And he looked up at me, and he said, yes, I am, in English.

00:04:16.840 So I said to him, I'm Dr. Claude Curran's friend.

00:04:20.600 He's our mutual friend.

00:04:22.300 And he looked, and he said, yes, I know him very well.

00:04:24.960 Have a seat.

00:04:25.820 So I was in my collar, you know, and he was sitting on the floor.

00:04:29.180 So I sat on the floor, and I sat next to him.

00:04:31.440 Years 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?

00:04:43.120 And I asked, of course, how could I forget what a holy man he was?

00:04:46.780 And Dr. Curran said to me, listen to this about what happened between Tom and I in the 1980s.

00:04:53.540 Dr. Curran said that in the 1980s, he was talking to Tom Zimmer.

00:05:00.020 And 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.

00:05:10.800 And Tom Zimmer said, the man who's going to, in the future, lead our country back to God is Donald J. Trump.

00:05:19.180 And Dr. Curran said, you mean the New York playboy?

00:05:22.620 Like, this is the guy?

00:05:24.040 And Tom Zimmer said, believe me, I have a premonition that this is the man who's going to do it in the future.

00:05:30.880 At that time, John Paul II opened the holy doors of the Vatican of St. Peter's Basilica.

00:05:37.620 And when he opened the holy doors for that year, it was for the whole year, when the doors are ready to close,

00:05:44.740 the Vatican allows people to donate bricks that go inside the door.

00:05:51.280 And you could put an inscription on the bricks of any intention you want.

00:05:55.180 And those doors are closed and they're sealed.

00:05:57.540 And they're not open until the next time the Vatican, the Pope decides to open the doors for another holy year.

00:06:04.100 Tom Zimmer, in the 1980s, donated a brick to be put in the holy door of the Vatican that said Donald J. Trump.

00:06:14.800 And he did that because he wanted those masses in the Vatican to be said for him

00:06:20.560 because he knew that in the future, this man was going to be a great leader of America

00:06:26.120 and bring Americans back to God. 0.66

00:06:30.540 The video was posted on February 17th, 2017.

00:06:35.160 And a few weeks later, on March 6th, 2017, there was an intriguing confirmation of some aspects of the story.

00:06:42.840 An 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.

00:06:51.380 So, Brett Thoman, who runs St. Francis Pilgrimages, began an investigation, since he had never heard of Tom Zimmer before.

00:07:01.460 The tour guide, although a devout Catholic, described his reaction to seeing the video as,

00:07:07.380 quote, somewhere between skepticism and suspicion, end quote.

00:07:10.720 But knowing the friars who run the church where Tom Zimmer was said to have spent almost all his time,

00:07:17.300 Thoman spoke to one of the friars who remembered the man as l'Americano, the American.

00:07:27.140 Thoman recounts that the friars found him to be courteous and polite, if not a little particular.

00:07:32.780 Now, they were aware that Tom attended upwards of four or five masses every day,

00:07:40.740 and that he spent the rest of his time praying in and around the Holy House, end quote.

00:07:45.680 Those are quotes, again, from Brett Thoman's blog post when he was asked to check this out.

00:07:51.320 He is a tour guide in Loretto, Italy.

00:07:54.600 Thoman was directed then to another friar, Father Sanatorelli, who had been at Loretto for decades.

00:08:00.940 And as soon as Thoman began describing the American who prayed there,

00:08:05.360 Father Sanatorelli cut him off, saying,

00:08:08.200 Ah, si, Thomas Zimmer. Si, ci amava. Certo ce mi ricordo.

00:08:13.460 Which means, ah, yes, Thomas Zimmer was his name. Of course I remember him.

00:08:18.280 He went on to say that everyone in Loretto knew of him.

00:08:22.780 And while Father Sanatorelli didn't know anything about the Trump prophecy,

00:08:26.740 he could confirm that Tom was in Loretto and all about going to Mass every day and praying most of the day.

00:08:34.880 And before he returned to America in 2008, the friar had actually a photo of Tom Zimmer,

00:08:42.040 which he showed Brett Thoman, who included it in his blog post.

00:08:47.200 Now, Brett Thoman concludes his investigation into Tom Zimmer, dubbed the Hermit of Loretto.

00:08:52.560 So this way, he says, quote, I have no reason to doubt Father Capoverde's statements that Thomas Zimmer communicated to his friend

00:08:59.500 that he received a premonition that Donald Trump would lead America back to God, end quote.

00:09:05.140 However, with regard to the Trump prophecy's accuracy, he said, well, that remains to be seen.

00:09:12.200 And here is where I have a real treat for you.

00:09:14.880 I was able to track down Dr. Claude Curran, the original source of the information for Father Capoverde's video.

00:09:23.280 Dr. Curran is still a practicing psychiatrist in Fall River, Massachusetts, and he is a devout Catholic with five children.

00:09:32.340 Dr. Claude Curran, thank you for joining us on the John Henry Weston Show.

00:09:36.460 Thank you for inviting me.

00:09:38.040 Your story is very fascinating.

00:09:41.880 We already heard a little bit about it through Father Capoverde.

00:09:45.360 And I just wanted to ask you personally, if you could recount for us what you recall of that prophetic,

00:09:52.820 and as you told me earlier before we did this, short even interaction that you had with Tom Zimmer, this great man.

00:10:00.820 And how did that go?

00:10:02.140 How did that go down?

00:10:02.860 What did he tell you?

00:10:03.540 Well, let me just give you a little introduction about how I, you know, how I actually met Tom.

00:10:11.660 And many, many years ago, 1978, I went to Italy to go to medical school, to study medicine there.

00:10:18.980 And so I arrived there sometime in September of 78.

00:10:25.080 During that fall, of course, there was the election of the new pope, Pope John Paul II.

00:10:30.100 And so I was living up in Perugia at the time, and a friend of mine, Steve D'Alessandro from New York,

00:10:37.320 and we hopped on a train and went down to Rome to go to the Vatican City because the conclave was taking place.

00:10:48.560 Well, anyway, on the, I think it was October 16th, I'm not sure,

00:10:51.780 but 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.

00:11:02.840 And 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.

00:11:13.200 And standing to my left was Tom Zimmer, and he was, I overheard a conversation in English that he was having.

00:11:20.280 So anyway, I introduced myself and we became friends.

00:11:24.460 So Tom was a very, very prayerful, prayerful individual.

00:11:28.700 He was a World War II veteran, and sometime in the early 1970s, he moved to Italy to spend his life as a pilgrim,

00:11:39.620 essentially just spending the rest of his years praying for humanity.

00:11:43.360 And so among his endeavors, he and another friend named, one of his friends, Harry Falhaber,

00:11:53.800 they assembled the Pieta Prayer Book while they were in, during their pilgrimage to Italy.

00:12:00.340 I believe Harry's wife, Lillian, also helped assemble the book.

00:12:05.180 And so most people, or many, many people are familiar with it because it sold millions and millions of copies.

00:12:10.980 Tom never made any money from it.

00:12:12.780 That 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.

00:12:25.060 So anyway.

00:12:26.080 It's actually, that's actually very interesting because if you go to the page that is about the iPieta book,

00:12:32.040 you'll notice that Harry's name is there in Lillian, and then it adds,

00:12:36.160 and a friend from San Damiano, Italy.

00:12:38.800 Right, right, yeah.

00:12:40.940 Tom spent many, spent a considerable amount of time at San Damiano before he moved down to Rome.

00:12:48.360 With regard to the story of the video that Father Capoverdi's described on YouTube,

00:12:58.860 in roughly the fall of 1983,

00:13:01.580 this 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.

00:13:14.760 Of course, the Holy Year was coming to an end.

00:13:19.400 And the Vatican announced that people were invited to buy memorial bricks because when they seal up the Holy Door,

00:13:31.080 they 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.

00:13:39.760 And 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,

00:13:53.120 probably around 1 o'clock in the afternoon, a little bit later, again, after the Vatican had closed.

00:14:00.260 And so Tom was there doing his usual thing, which was writing prayers, collecting prayers, reading current events,

00:14:10.620 and collecting information on social and political problems in the world,

00:14:17.340 and marking them down, and then he would bring them into church with him and pray for all of those intentions.

00:14:23.640 And 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.

00:14:33.740 He has the IQ of a genius and a first-class education, and everything he approaches, he attacks with a blinding efficiency.

00:14:46.440 So I said, you know, I thought that was interesting.

00:14:50.820 I said, well, Tom, who is it?

00:14:52.160 And he goes, his name is Donald Trump.

00:14:55.180 And I said, I said, Tom, I said, yeah, I've heard of Donald Trump.

00:14:59.060 I said, but Thomas, he's kind of like this jet-setting playboy millionaire.

00:15:03.740 I said, you know, he dates Hollywood starlets, and he's always in the news with the, you know, with the glitterati.

00:15:10.780 And 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.

00:15:19.820 So 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.

00:15:32.860 And 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.

00:15:45.220 I'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.

00:15:54.840 And so that was it.

00:15:58.500 I mean, that's the story.

00:16:00.760 And, 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.

00:16:20.840 And America was greatest when, any country is great when it embraces Christian values.

00:16:27.200 But he's been recognized as such by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a great hero in the Church today.

00:16:37.200 And that was fantastic.

00:16:38.480 We'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.

00:16:46.580 You know, you were in personal relationship with him, so you probably knew him better than others.

00:16:52.640 When this video first went viral, people did some research into Tom Zimmer because nobody could believe that this existed.

00:17:00.680 Of course, it checked it out already, it checked out as we showed already.

00:17:04.600 But I wanted you to give us a bit more of, you know, what Tom meant to you personally, what he meant to your family.

00:17:11.100 Well, 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.

00:17:38.620 We deal in human suffering, and it's very, very difficult to witness that all day long, you know, every day.

00:17:49.120 And, you know, human suffering, it's, if you, you know, we're helpless in front of human suffering.

00:17:59.060 But 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.

00:18:11.000 And 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.

00:18:32.820 But 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.

00:18:49.620 We 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. 1.00

00:18:59.620 Mm-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?

00:19:14.520 Well, 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.

00:19:30.280 But Rome, I don't know if the Mass schedule is still active there, but anyway, I'll get back to your question.

00:19:43.520 But, 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.

00:20:02.400 Then 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.

00:20:22.680 And 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.

00:20:36.740 And so, yeah, you can see I had a pretty—

00:20:40.240 He would Mass hop all day long. 0.82

00:20:42.520 Yeah, yeah, but this was only in the evening. These were the evening Masses.

00:20:45.740 I didn't really get too familiar with the morning schedule.

00:20:49.680 So, with Thomas, he would tell me different things, like, this is the saint of—

00:20:56.200 Yeah, 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.

00:21:14.120 One day, one night we were walking down Via Del Corso, and it was Thomas' birthday, which was May 29th.

00:21:24.080 And as we're walking down up the street, a man comes up to him and hands him a pineapple.

00:21:31.860 And I said, geez, I said, Tom, that's great. That's for your birthday.

00:21:35.500 He goes, yeah, but it's not only my birthday.

00:21:37.080 He said, today is the statehood day of the Philippines, and he said, and their national symbol is the pineapple.

00:21:44.680 And 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—

00:21:56.080 When I asked Thomas, initially when I met him, I said, Thomas, have you ever seen Miracles?

00:22:01.160 He said, Claude, if you spend time with me, you will become tired of counting them.

00:22:05.540 And so—but again, listen, it was the mass.

00:22:10.440 The mass.

00:22:10.880 Thomas 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.

00:22:29.860 And 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.

00:22:52.560 And so you're present literally at 300 to 400 consecrations.

00:22:57.140 And he said, people don't—he said, even priests don't understand the value of the mass.

00:23:01.840 He said, but people don't.

00:23:03.440 He said, and it is demonstrated in the ease at which you can find a priest to offer a mass for you.

00:23:12.000 He said, if people knew the value of the mass, priests would be booked for years and years and years.

00:23:20.100 Absolutely amazing.

00:23:21.180 And 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,

00:23:35.800 think how much more we've seen Trump bringing America back to God now.

00:23:41.320 And 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.

00:23:54.720 At LifeSite, we were privileged to be asked by Archbishop Vigano to publish his open letter to President Trump.

00:24:01.680 And when the President himself retweeted it and spoke of his thanks and admiration for Archbishop Vigano, it was tremendous.

00:24:10.120 It 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.

00:24:22.120 Archbishop Vigano wrote these words, and I quote,

00:24:25.600 For the first time, the United States has in you a President who courageously defends the right to life,

00:24:35.480 who is not ashamed to denounce the persecution of Christians throughout the world,

00:24:40.000 who speaks of Jesus Christ and the right of citizens to freedom of worship.

00:24:45.640 Your participation in the March for Life and, more recently, your proclamation of the month of April as National Child Abuse Prevention Month

00:24:54.080 are actions that confirm which side you wish to fight on.

00:24:58.320 And I dare to believe that both of us are on the same side in this battle, albeit with different weapons.

00:25:05.420 End quote.

00:25:05.860 Words again from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former nuncio to the United States of America, to President Trump.

00:25:17.660 And Archbishop Vigano concluded his letter this way, saying, and I quote,

00:25:21.840 Mr. 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.

00:25:33.660 In 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.

00:25:45.820 I trust that the American people are united with me and you in prayer to Almighty God.

00:25:54.120 End quote.

00:25:55.940 Tom Zimmer was real and saintly, and he did make that prophecy about President Trump.

00:26:02.300 And if it has at least in part been fulfilled already, maybe there's more to come.

00:26:10.740 Maybe with Tom's intercession for America, his homeland, and for President Trump,

00:26:15.840 we'll see the President do even more to bring America back to God.

00:26:21.300 For LifeSite News, this is John Henry Weston.

00:26:24.220 May God bless you.

00:26:25.320 For LifeSite News, this is John Henry Weston.

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The John-Henry Westen Show - June 30, 2020

President Trump will ‘lead America back to God,’ according to 1983 prophecy

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