00:00:00.000I believe, just from my 40-plus years of medicine, that the last four days of our lives are more important than the last 40 years.
00:00:11.500Hello, my friends. Welcome to the John Henry Weston Show.
00:00:14.040I've got a guest for you whom I know you all know and love.
00:00:18.060Sister Didi Byrne is with us, and there is a book out on her, SisterSoldierSurgeon.com.
00:00:23.800You can go and get that book by Lisa Marie Corazon.
00:00:26.460own. And we want to talk to her about what's going on in the church and in the world. And
00:00:32.020boy, there's lots to talk about. One of the latest ones revolves around what's going on
00:00:37.700in the Archdiocese of Chicago with a new memorial to suicide. It suggests that all people who commit
00:00:46.160suicide go to heaven. We're going to talk to the sister about that and much more. Sister Didi
00:00:51.580Byron, so good to be with you. Thanks, John Henry. Always good to be with you. Let's begin as we
00:00:55.560always do with the sign of the cross in the name of the father and of his son and of the holy ghost
00:01:01.500amen so first of all i think everybody wants to know what have you been up to great to see you
00:01:08.260and uh yeah what tell us what's what's your latest what are you doing now i think uh great to see you
00:01:13.900too and um you know right now we we just um had a very um sad happy sad farewell from my mother
00:01:23.300she lived with us for three years she died at the age of 102 um last november we really miss her
00:01:30.220but she had a beautiful death um and where i know we're going to hit these topics but i'll just
00:01:34.860mention that uh so my mother lived we have in our company we have hospital rooms two rooms that i
00:01:41.420like hospital beds just around the corner from our chapel where we have mass holy mass every day
00:01:48.720And so at any need, any time, anyone who's there and who's sick can get anointed, can get Holy Communion, confession.
00:02:00.020And then we have adoration in our house two or three times a day, a Eucharistic adoration for three hours, broken up in the day.
00:02:09.760Sometimes we do a prayer walk up to the Franciscan monastery.
00:02:14.000We pushed my mother up in a wheelchair, whoever else we have.
00:02:17.920So so we have that beautiful experience. But the day that mom I've been fighting three weeks of a pneumonia or something for her in the morning that I knew as a physician, I knew she was probably going to die that day that happened to be at the USCCB was having a conference in Baltimore.
00:04:46.980She's too busy and having a good time.
00:04:49.360So I just feel, you know, so the Lord gave me that consolation.
00:04:53.580You know, so you can akin it to, I always give this example, then I go like this, but
00:04:58.540President Trump pardoned 20-something pro-lifers when they went against the FACE Act.
00:05:03.260they had many years left to spend in prison and he pardoned them the night before the march for
00:05:10.080life in 2024 which erased all their federal imprisonment including you know john andrew
00:05:15.540bell who had many many years left so i remember i saw her the second after she because the shooting
00:05:21.440she was released she came to the march and i was able to see her right away so amazing yeah she
00:05:26.680and chris came to our place too that morning before the march she was there and if i had
00:05:31.260If I had dentures, they would have flown across the room because Chris had to drive up to Pennsylvania and he picked her up for the march.
00:05:40.000So so but that's the gift that our church gives to each one of us, because our mission here on Earth is to keep ourselves pure as best we can to be the soldiers for Christ and to bring as many as we can with us.
00:05:58.740I know you do that in the great work you do, John Henry, and so we're in this battle together because so many things are happening.
00:06:06.980So that was kind of a long answer to what we've been up to with that.
00:07:26.320And I know that my superior, my dearest friend who died, she told me she was afraid to die.
00:07:33.480Sister Leach, a little Italian sister, because they witnessed the death of her sister, her older sister, who was also a religious sister, Sister Salvatrina, who had died suddenly of a heart attack.
00:07:44.300And she told me, Sister, I'm afraid to die.
00:08:02.800We were having a Eucharistic adoration.
00:08:05.180The priest was lifting the monstrance.
00:08:07.280And then during this time, between that and putting our Lord in the tabernacle,
00:08:11.820she had this experience where she went through the back window of our chapel
00:08:15.800and saw Jesus our Lord as the judge and her whole life came went before her and there were periods
00:08:24.120of time from the little being a little girl in southern Italy in Acri where she would the image
00:08:31.720would freeze when she had to say I'm sorry until the present moment she said that's it I'm going
00:08:37.980to die but she came back through the window and at that moment the priest was just putting our
00:08:43.540lord back in the tabernacle she said after that moment she said i'm not afraid to die because i
00:08:49.880know we're all going to have that opportunity to say i'm sorry and i love you jesus i mean just
00:08:57.700every day wake up with those words i love you jesus i love you so that if we're in the middle
00:09:02.860of a car accident i love you jesus i mean that's he wants us with him and we may not all be able
00:09:09.880to have that apostolic pardoning or have that moment we might have to spend some time in
00:09:14.740purgatory but you know as a priest friend who's now an oratorian father sebastian jones in wales
00:09:22.880used to say from the saddle to the ground mercy is sought and mercy is found so that soldier might
00:09:30.460have that sword piercing his heart and he may have been agnostic or atheist but that moment
00:09:37.400from the saddle to the ground, you seek mercy and you find it because Jesus is there. He will show
00:09:44.960himself to everybody, whether you're, I believe, whether you're baptized or not, because at that
00:09:51.760moment that could be a baptism of spirits going through. But so there's nothing to be afraid of
00:09:58.780except not loving Christ. That's the biggest fear we should have.
00:10:04.120I want to talk to you about what's going on in the church a little bit, because just recently, the Archdiocese of Chicago, under Cardinal Blaise Cupich, opened up a memorial to suicide. And it's a little bit strange. Let me read you from their press release.
00:10:23.000it was a memorial to honor lives lost to suicide and offer a sacred space for prayer and
00:10:29.940remembrance and they tell people that the people who die by suicide are not condemned
00:10:36.640and it says that historically the church denied catholic funerals and churches and burials
00:10:42.980in consecrated ground for individuals who died by suicide the church has undergone a significant
00:10:48.520transformation, its understanding of suicide. And then they say the church now embraces these
00:10:54.580individuals and affirms they are with God, not condemned. And of course, there's a lot of
00:11:00.520strangeness in that because the, well, Judas, probably the best example, is someone who a lot
00:11:09.420of people say, well, he seemed to repent because he was like, he threw the money back and everything.
00:11:13.540but the church's teaching was that he committed suicide despairing of god's love or ability even
00:11:19.940to forgive him but i'd love to hear your take well just again what i was talking about earlier
00:11:25.700um we really don't know someone's soul many people who have committed suicide are people who have
00:11:32.900who are emotionally or psychiatrically not them and or maybe they've got some kind of demonic
00:11:41.720possession or something but for the most part I think most people who have done it felt recently
00:11:49.040I just had a friend's son who 29 year old who had bipolar disorder who is has died and so I don't
00:12:00.500think we really can judge I cannot I don't think anyone can judge anyone's state of the soul at the
00:12:07.940time that they take their last breath and when they take their last breath that's the body may
00:12:13.120be dying or may appear dead the heart is still probably fibrillating a bit but that period of
00:12:19.840time that the soul that love relationship with our soul and our lord he's there trying to
00:12:27.340bring us to him again from the saddle to the ground mercy is sought and mercy is found
00:12:32.720whatever the state of the mind of that person was when they see total love the love that none of us
00:12:41.100can even fathom you're married you've got a big family you can't imagine loving anyone more than
00:12:46.940your wife and your kids but that's just a drop in the bucket to how much Christ loves us and I know
00:12:53.080that's hard to fathom but so that love relationship it can be rejected and I think that that rejection
00:13:00.120you know you're destined for hell i do listen to because i'm a bit of a purgatorial souls and
00:13:07.780purgatory fanatic i pray the saint gertrude we pray the chaplet every day and i've had some
00:13:14.340experiences where i feel like the the souls are thanking me for their prayers um and so i i and
00:13:22.520i heard with um you know one one of the talks from someone who claims they have visits from
00:13:29.080the souls in purgatory from ireland that the souls there are souls that are that are in purgatory
00:13:35.700but there's levels of purgatory and they possibly may be at the lowest level because they
00:13:41.040they didn't have the faith in christ during the lifetime but they they're not destined for hell
00:13:48.220but it will take time souls cannot pray for themselves we have to pray for them the souls
00:13:55.540in purgatory that's why you know we have mass for our faithful departed um to pray them up to heaven
00:14:03.660we have to pray them up and if you had a child who committed suicide don't despair i believe
00:14:11.960if that child has an inkling of what they did when you raised them which is to love christ
00:14:17.840i'm sure they had that and there's a sorrow to that loss i don't think they go straight to heaven
00:14:23.800unless they you know but i don't believe that i don't i definitely i'm not going straight to
00:14:31.520heaven i'm gonna i'm sure i'm gonna spend a little time or a lot of time in purgatory
00:14:35.580but but i rejoice if i go get into purgatory it's heading north at least so that's my take
00:14:43.120and also father chris alar wrote a very good book on that and he brings that up
00:14:48.500the souls and you know you wrote a book on suicide yeah i think the church's understanding
00:14:54.080uh of it's never taught that all people commit suicide are going to hell uh because of the issue
00:15:01.000of mental illness but one of the things when when you have a situation of the um basically saying
00:15:09.040everybody who commits suicide is is going to heaven that's uh it also could encourage that
00:15:15.540the very thing, you know, especially here in Canada, where it's offered and recommended and
00:15:21.880you're coaxed and pushed and encouraged and everything else to it. It is rather nightmarish.
00:15:30.180I wanted to get your take on that too, because the beauty you described about dying, about the
00:15:37.780process, tell us a little bit more on that, about the value that that has. I remember a story of
00:15:45.220Padre Pio, was taking someone around his monastery
00:15:50.120and wanting to show where the real power center was,
00:15:54.900in other words, where the real work was done.
00:15:59.460And he brought them to the infirmary where the brothers were dying.
00:24:13.700There's 10, 15 maybe cardinals, bishops underground and many, many Catholics that are underground.
00:24:22.720Yet we have these bishops that are really anti-Catholic because they're communist.
00:24:30.660So, so basically we have to fight this battle on our knees because there's a lot of, I'm a, I consider myself a little, like a, a grunt, a little soldier on the ground.
00:24:41.880I hear the, the, the, the cries of the faithful, the laity, and they're not, they're all confused.
00:24:49.820And I am too, actually, I don't understand.
00:25:59.640Hey, my friends, I just heard about a great Catholic mobile phone company that gives 100% of its profits to traditional Catholic religious orders, monasteries and Catholic media.
00:26:10.760And no, I'm not joking. They support traditional Catholic priests and religious. Do you even know
00:26:17.620that every time you make a call, send a text, or use mobile data, your provider earns revenue?
00:26:24.880Have you ever thought about where that money goes? Many companies support causes that conflict
00:26:30.420with traditional Catholic values. But now there's a traditional Catholic alternative.
00:27:06.520lastly sister i want to remind you of something you did in 2023 with a whole bunch of catholic
00:27:14.020women you made a statement when uh they were doing the preparations for the synod on synodality
00:27:20.760which we're now living through and living out and it's become central to the papacy of leo
00:27:25.860and you had some rather stark warnings you said that the preparatory documents themselves
00:27:31.720poisonous errors insinuated into the effect to the effect that unrepentant notorious public
00:27:38.360sinners should be welcomed into the church without repentance talked about such a welcome would only
00:27:43.740ensure more terrible torments for these individuals in the world to come as anyone who professed the
00:27:50.340Catholic faith would know. We're doing this today. We have Pope Leo just made a bishop of a German
00:28:04.360monsignor who rejects the church's teaching on homosexuality. And unbelievably,
00:28:13.640Uh, Cardinal Radcliffe, whom, uh, Pope Leo actually made the, uh, I think he was the one to give the reflection to the consistory of bishops or of cardinals when he had it, um, actually participated in a 50th anniversary mass for a homosexual couple.
00:28:32.800um and uh there was a couple bishops celebrating that mass and a priest as well um and they gave
00:28:41.340this really strange blessing to the homosexual couple um asking god to what was it where the
00:28:49.140words here uh yeah so that oh god of love that your grace may come down upon julian and martin
00:28:56.800as they mark the 50th anniversary of their relationship father charles murray on my show
00:29:01.780called faith and reason um that we do every week talked about how another bishop talked to him about
00:29:09.480the gayification of the church it sounds so insane but it is actually you were present back in 2023
00:29:20.220you and the group of women as actually a lot of women who signed it like i think over 2000 but
00:29:25.360how did you see this back then and did you imagine that it would just continue and just
00:29:30.480we'd be where we're at right now well i was i was uh supporting the this mission that i think
00:29:38.220really needs to be brought out to the light the only way that we can heal an infection is to open
00:29:46.240up the abscess to open up the wound and there's a you know our lord's heart is wounded so much this
00:31:43.500that way we can be best be better warriors for him in christ and love amen to that and finally
00:31:51.500sister um our lady's role um in i know the church will turn around uh the lord promised the gates
00:32:00.760of hell will not prevail it seems like a dark time right now our lady promised in the end my
00:32:06.500immaculate heart will triumph and a time of peace will be given to the world um i've often thought
00:32:12.440that time of peace would be a peace that we don't understand that, you know, it's not going to be
00:32:20.440a legal abortion. Of course, there'll be still be sins in the world and people might commit an
00:32:24.500abortion, whatever, but it's going to be a real time of peace, not like a peace that we'd say,
00:32:30.160but that our lady says peace to me, that means a lot. Um, I don't know what you've ever thought
00:32:35.880about our lady's promise of peace. And if you have a feeling that might be on the horizon soon.
00:32:41.380Oh, well, I don't know about soon, but, you know, I guess my favorite, you know, the Fatima is just powerful.
00:32:50.040And she wants us to, that message is still new today, you know, the pray, pray, pray, repent, pray.
00:32:58.540And so we can only, as Mother Teresa would say, when she was trying to free, save the paralytics or the children who were in Blitz in Lebanon, Beirut.
00:33:13.100And the American ambassador said, Mother, we're in the middle of a war.
00:33:18.520And she said, but tomorrow is Our Lady's feast day and she'll give us a ceasefire.
00:33:23.660And he said, if she gives us a ceasefire, I'll personally drive you.
00:33:27.880and the next day there were crickets playing all they could hear were crickets and she went in and
00:33:33.140they just took one child out at a time that's all we can do is our blessed mother is going to
00:33:39.420give us that ceasefire and that opportunity so that we can do the work that our lord has called
00:33:45.560us to do um and so that's all i can say is that that i agree with you our lord is the door