Was the rise of communism foretold in Blessed Emmerich's vision of Satan 'unchained'？
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
168.1985
Summary
Paul Kangar is a New York Times bestselling author and professor at the Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania. He is the author of The Stigmatists, a new book exploring the lives of St. Francis of Assisi, Padre Pio, St. Thomas Aquinas, and others who bear the mark of the cross on their bodies.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Many of them have said that the most vexing wound that they had, that a lot of people don't even
00:00:04.260
think about, don't even see because it doesn't bleed like the other wounds, is the shoulder
00:00:08.380
wound that Christ had from carrying the cross. Christ told them that that was the most vexing
00:00:23.940
Hey, my friends, there's something really neat. You know, the stigmatists, you've heard this
00:00:28.380
before the, you know, they have the wounds of Christ in their hands and feet and side
00:00:32.180
and so on. Well, there's only been not too many of those since Jesus Christ himself. And
00:00:38.020
you've heard of Padre Pio, I'm sure, but there's a really neat thing about them. A lot of them
00:00:45.200
have done a lot of the same things and predicted a lot of the same things. A lot of these ones,
00:00:50.700
especially the ones approved, have all sorts of prophecies. Wonder if heaven would be telling
00:00:56.560
us a message through that very thing. Prophecies about the future, prophecies that look like
00:01:01.440
they're right now. To speak with us about this is the author of, well, many books, 20 books. In fact,
00:01:09.120
he's a New York Times bestselling author. He is a professor at the Grove City College in Grove City,
00:01:16.720
Pennsylvania. And he's the new author of a book out by 10 called The Stigmatists. You're going to want
00:01:22.800
to stay tuned to this episode of The John Henry Weston Show.
00:01:25.240
Praised be Jesus. If you saved in gold money over 50 years or five years, your wealth is intact. But
00:01:32.840
if you saved in the dollar, you've already lost 95%. That was the insight America's founders understood
00:01:39.100
when they mandated gold and silver as America's money. Different stocks produce different returns
00:01:45.100
and the type of gold and silver you save in produces drastically different outcomes. So call us
00:01:50.920
and let us share those nuances and show you why a trust audit concluded St. Joseph as a standout for
00:02:04.020
The great John Henry, it is good to be with you. So I'm a longtime reader of LifeSite News and I watch
00:02:09.960
many of your podcasts and I check the site frequently several times a week. So it's good to be on with you.
00:02:16.400
Praise God. Well, let's begin with the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father and of the Son
00:02:21.160
and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. So Paul, you've got a very fascinating book here. I'm particularly
00:02:27.240
fascinated because of the prophetic element, which actually figures in largely to the book.
00:02:32.240
First of all, if you can, give us the first description. What is a stigmatist anyway?
00:02:36.900
Yeah. And I knew, by the way, that you would probably be interested in the prophetic element.
00:02:41.380
No question about that. In fact, a lot of the reporting on LifeSite News deals with a lot of
00:02:46.000
this kind of stuff. But yeah, first with in terms of what stigmatists are. So these are people who
00:02:52.160
bear in their body the marks of Jesus Christ and the passion. And typically these will be nail marks
00:02:59.020
in the hands and the palms, also in the feet, often in the side. In some cases, the crown of thorns.
00:03:05.580
And in some cases, too, I mean, not everybody, John Henry has all of the wounds, right? And I mean,
00:03:11.100
nobody has like everything that Jesus had, right? I mean, that would be all kinds of marks all over
00:03:16.460
your body. But it would be some portion of the suffering that identifies with Christ's passion.
00:03:23.060
For example, St. Rita of Kasia was gifted, as she put it, with one single thorn from the crown of
00:03:30.840
thorns. That's all that she had. Others have had, and this is quite interesting, many of them have
00:03:36.540
said, Therese Newman, Anne Catherine Emmerich, a number of others, that the most vexing wound that
00:03:42.780
they had that a lot of people don't even think about, don't even see because it doesn't bleed like
00:03:46.420
the other wounds, is the shoulder wound that Christ had from carrying the cross. And many of
00:03:53.320
them being mystics who had conversations with Christ or claimed to, right? Christ told them that
00:03:59.600
that was the most vexing wound that caused him the most pain. So even though it didn't protrude
00:04:04.600
blood like the others. And when you think about it, you know, Jesus told us that if you want to
00:04:10.600
follow me, pick up your cross and follow me. I think, you know, from a kind of theological point
00:04:17.120
of view, that one is particularly profound, right? That that would be the wound that would vex them the
00:04:24.460
most. The first stigmatist, everyone believes that it was St. Francis. And, you know, you and I are
00:04:30.100
talking in 2024. We just marked the 800th anniversary of Francis receiving the stigmata.
00:04:36.520
That would have been September 17th, 1224. But in Galatians, the Apostle Paul says, I bear in my
00:04:44.180
body the marks of Jesus Christ. That's in Galatians. And the Greek for that is stigmata.
00:04:50.400
Some people think, well, metaphorically, he's talking about being scourged, being flogged,
00:04:55.600
being shipwrecked, you know, that famous passage. But others say, well, it could mean that he's saying
00:05:04.960
Particularly when he says this, you know, he asks our Lord to remove the thorn in his side.
00:05:12.960
Yeah, exactly. It's exactly right. And Anne Catherine Emmerich and Therese Newman, who neither one are saints
00:05:19.760
in the book, I tried to focus on saints, although I do do a chapter on Blessed Anne Catherine
00:05:25.040
Emmerich. So they're both in the process of potential hopeful canonization. But they were
00:05:29.780
two of the most remarkable mystics in the history of the church. They could, they had had not only
00:05:34.160
prophecies, but they claimed incredible visions of things in the past, in the life of Jesus,
00:05:39.760
the life of the Blessed Mother. Anne Catherine Emmerich's visions were inspired. Mel Gibson's
00:05:44.960
passion, the number of the scenes in the passion. They both claimed to be able to see St. Paul.
00:05:51.340
And they both told their spiritual directors, oh yeah, Paul was the first.
00:05:56.320
Paul was the first stigmatist. I've seen the wounds. And then after that, it was Francis.
00:06:01.820
And I've seen Francis's wounds. So you have this long period from first century with Paul to
00:06:08.980
Francis in the year 1224 of not any stigmatists that we know of. And some might say, well, maybe
00:06:16.200
there was some, we don't know. I bet there weren't because when these people had these wounds, I mean,
00:06:22.200
everyone knew, I mean, people came from miles around, word got around quick, you know, the little
00:06:28.940
nun in Calabria who like clockwork on a Thursday or Friday starts bleeding from her hands. And she's like,
00:06:35.520
she's having her agony in the garden. It's like, she's on the cross by three o'clock on Friday.
00:06:40.860
And then by Saturday morning, everybody watches the doctors, the psychiatrists, the spiritual
00:06:46.120
director, the priest, the bishop, and the cardinal. And there's no markings on Saturday morning at all.
00:06:52.380
Right. So word gets around. Everyone comes to see that. So the most famous, Paul, Francis,
00:06:59.500
and then Padre Pio, who's a contemporary of ours, really, I was born in 1966, he died in 1968. But
00:07:06.540
most of them have been women. 90% have been women. That's a little bit of an overview to get us
00:07:13.280
started with your first question on. It's also been studied. That's, that's where I think really
00:07:17.820
key. People have to understand the scientists go there and they filmed it. So we've got stuff on film
00:07:23.740
now. So there's, there's no way people are faking this stuff. Even some kind of Freudian
00:07:29.840
psycho, psychosomatic thing. It's not going to work this way.
00:07:35.300
One of the doubters of Padre Pio, who was a very, you know, arrogant clergy official from the Vatican
00:07:41.820
said he was in, he said, Pio needed to be studied by more trained psychiatrists like him. And he said,
00:07:48.200
I know what's going on here. Pio and his, and Father Benedetto of the, they've entered into an
00:07:55.200
incubus succubus relationship here. Right. And if we could just put plaster like a cast over the feet
00:08:03.060
and leg of Pio, you know, we could figure this out. And then another said, I know what's causing this
00:08:08.780
in Pio. It's obviously real. I mean, you couldn't make these marks and have them bleed a cup a day like
00:08:15.620
this for 50 years. This is being created by what I would diagnose as a form of auto-suggestion,
00:08:23.080
right? And Pio's like, auto-suggestion, auto-suggestion. Well, tell him to imagine that
00:08:28.440
he's a bull and let's see if he grows horns from his head. Auto-suggestion, right? I mean,
00:08:32.820
so that's the kind of thing that takes a greater leap of faith. And as you saw in the book,
00:08:36.760
I spend a lot of time quoting medical testimony in many of these cases, which I think is among the
00:08:42.840
most riveting passages in the book is you'll get these agnostic, atheistic German doctors,
00:08:49.060
right? You know, very careful, very rigid. I do not believe in the supernatural. I do not believe
00:08:55.420
in God, but this is extraordinary. The woman eats nothing but the Eucharist for what they call the
00:09:01.480
Eucharist for 40 years. She drinks only water. We give her other food. She vomits it up. This would
00:09:07.620
be Therese Newman. She's bleeding from her hands. Pio, he bleeds a cup a day. He doesn't get
00:09:12.340
infections. I don't know how it happens. This is clearly the supernatural. That's the most
00:09:16.520
remarkable thing about it. Even the skeptics become convinced that it's something that they
00:09:21.740
can't plainly explain by modern medical science. Yeah. That other aspect of some of them not eating
00:09:29.480
at all, except for the Holy Eucharist for years and years and years. Treason was what, 40 years?
00:09:34.620
Yeah, 40 years in her case. And she gained weight. In fact, she went from about 120 pounds when she was
00:09:41.360
younger to about 200 some pounds. And she was there in bed. They were usually bedridden.
00:09:47.580
Anne Catherine Emmerich ate nothing but the Eucharist the last 10 years of her life.
00:09:52.000
They couldn't get out of bed. By the way, it gets to also, too, Anne Catherine Emmerich's
00:09:55.940
incredible visions of the things that she could see in the Holy Land. I've read her volumes. I'm
00:10:00.040
always blown away by it. And for people who think, well, yeah, she went there and then came back.
00:10:05.140
No, she never left her bed, man. She never left. The visions are so detailed that it's just hard to
00:10:12.640
imagine anybody coming up or making up that sort of level of detail. Yeah. In fact, one of the world's
00:10:19.160
greatest poets, arguably the greatest world poet, Brantano, he gave up his whole life. He's sitting
00:10:27.040
there recording her visions forever and ever. It's like 3,000 pages. Incredible. But tell us about
00:10:33.980
Blessed Lucy of Narnia and her connection with Lucy from Narnia.
00:10:37.960
A lot of people don't know that that's where that's where C.S. Lewis got his idea for Lucy of
00:10:44.020
Narnia. I mean, Lucy is one of the two main female protagonists in the Narnia series. And I
00:10:50.300
remember the first time that I was in Italy and I was driving from Rome area, Trevignano, Romano up to
00:10:55.600
Assisi. And we had my friend Fabrizio, who was our guide. And we were going through this one town and
00:11:01.060
it was called Narnia. And he said, Paul, this is the, what's his name? Chronicles of Narnia,
00:11:07.320
C.S. Lewis. And I said, yeah, yeah. You know how Italians are. They think everything is created by
00:11:11.960
them, right? My mom's Italian. You can listen to that side of the family. They think Italians
00:11:16.880
in that at everything, right? And he's like, yeah, he got his idea for Narnia from here. I'm like,
00:11:21.540
yeah, right, Fabrizio. But so later I learned, yeah, he got the idea of Blessed Lucy of Narnia,
00:11:28.380
who was this incredible saint, 500, some 600 years ago. Body was incorrupt for a long time.
00:11:36.860
She was a stigmatist. And she's kind of symptomatic because most of the stigmatists,
00:11:42.880
over 90% have been women. And from a particular country of origin, over 70% have been Italian.
00:11:50.580
There's probably more Italian saints than any other particular country. But after Italy,
00:11:56.560
the stigmatists, it would be France, Germany. In modern times, more recently in the last hundred
00:12:02.700
years or so, they're coming from more parts of the world. They're more geographically diverse.
00:12:08.100
Hilaire Belloc said, the faith is Europe and Europe is the faith. Well, the faith is declining
00:12:12.580
in Europe. It's growing, you know, Asia, Africa, elsewhere. So you're getting more stigmatists
00:12:18.200
from those areas. Now you have a fascinating contrast in your book between St. Francis and
00:12:25.860
Martin Luther. Tell us about that. Yeah. I mean, I look at it as Francis being the, you know,
00:12:31.840
being the true reformer. He's the one that reformed the church. And he goes there to the,
00:12:37.180
to this broken down chapel at San Damiano. That's where the famous San Damiano cross is.
00:12:42.820
And Jesus speaks to him from, from the cross, the image of Jesus on the cross. And he says,
00:12:48.520
Francesco, repair my house, repair my church, repair la mia casa. Some say casa, some say
00:12:56.000
casa, casa is house, casa is church. And for, for it has fallen, it needs repaired. And Francis at that
00:13:02.900
point, looking around as the media is surrounding saying, oh, Jesus is telling me to rebuild this
00:13:07.040
church. So he starts rebuilding this church, the San Damiano chapel. And then later,
00:13:12.560
it becomes clear in his ultimate call that he's to help rebuild the church, capital C, uppercase C,
00:13:20.240
Chiesa, the Roman Catholic church, goes to Rome, talks to the Pope, tries to get his order recognized.
00:13:26.900
And all of a sudden you get this huge following of people who become the Franciscans, right? The
00:13:33.340
brothers minor. And you get this revolution in the church that goes from about the period.
00:13:38.320
So Francis is born in around 1180, 1181, lived for 40, 43, 44 years, and died, I think,
00:13:46.460
I think in the year 12, 1228, I believe. It's off the top of my head, but, and there's a period from
00:13:52.360
about Francis, St. Dominic is that time as well, the Dominicans, until about the end of the life of
00:14:00.060
Catherine of Siena. And she's the stigmatist on the cover of the book. She died in the year 1380.
00:14:05.240
That period from about 1170 to 1380, about 200 years, that was a golden age in the church.
00:14:12.160
I mean, Aquinas is during that period, Bonaventure, even Dante, right? Dante writes his divine comedy
00:14:19.660
during that period. But what Francis does is he reforms the church. What Luther does,
00:14:26.980
Luther does not become a reformer. He becomes a rebeller, right? He rebels.
00:14:31.980
I would call what he did, not the reformation, but rebellion. So if you want an example of true
00:14:39.140
reform, repairing the church, that's what Francis did. It's not what Luther did.
00:14:44.320
Indeed. Now, I want to get to this, but there's a couple more questions because there's lots I want
00:14:52.300
to talk to you about, about the whole prophecy bit. But before we get there, there's one other
00:14:57.580
very interesting thing here. And it is about St. Catherine of Siena. Now, you talk about how
00:15:03.160
she writes about something I never realized. She writes about homosexuality and homosexuality
00:15:11.140
in the clergy. So I think our readers would really love to know about that. You even make reference in
00:15:16.860
your book to James Wharton. Yeah, it's stunning. So in her dialogue, all right, that's her main book,
00:15:24.580
her written down conversations with God the Father, all right? I mean, in many cases. And in fact,
00:15:32.760
you can find a lot of the copies of the dialogue today. And the section on homosexuality and impurity
00:15:38.760
among the clergy is often excerpted out in modern versions. It is. And you can find a lot of examples
00:15:47.280
of this. You almost have to go online to find older editions of it. And when you read it, you'll see
00:15:53.880
why. It is very politically incorrect, what she says. And she says that God told her, he said,
00:16:02.420
I wiped out five entire cities because of the scourge of homosexuality. So God tells her that.
00:16:09.940
And he said, it is such a vile activity that even the demons flee away in disgust. The demons are happy
00:16:20.440
to lead clergy or priests or whoever into that type of immoral behavior. But then when the physical act
00:16:28.380
is taking place, the demons being fallen angels, and so originally angelic in nature, right, as Satan
00:16:35.720
certainly was, are so repulsed by it that they flee in disgust. So it is at that point in time,
00:16:44.140
they are condemning. God is condemning to her homosexuality among priests and in general among
00:16:51.420
the culture. And it has to make you think, John Henry, right, that if God was that shocked that
00:16:58.300
he was willing to wipe out five entire cities because of the sin of homosexuality, what must
00:17:03.400
he be thinking today when it's so widespread in the West, around the world, and accepted and even
00:17:09.800
celebrated? And for people that are watching this show right now and don't like what we're saying,
00:17:15.120
hey, take it up with Catherine of Siena, man. Take it up with her. Take it up with God. That's what
00:17:22.680
she's claiming. And remember, she's a doctor of the church. She's one of the few female doctors
00:17:28.320
of the church. She was a stigmatist. You probably like her because she was a strong woman. She spoke
00:17:34.760
truth to power. She told the Pope to toughen up, get out of the Avignon, quit being a wimp,
00:17:41.660
go back to Rome. Oh, but I could be killed there. I could be there. You get back there,
00:17:45.980
this little Italian woman, right? Tough, tough as nails, gets actually hidden stigmata because she begged
00:17:52.060
God not to make them public in Pisa, in Pisa, Italy, and did incredible things before dying at
00:17:58.840
the age of 33. Somebody else who lived off of nothing but the U.S. in her final days. But she
00:18:05.240
said that that's what God told her about homosexuality. So take it or leave it.
00:18:11.500
Unbelievable, too. Her story is so incredible because she was a lay woman, too. And so just
00:18:19.240
unbelievable. Anyway, lots there. But so now let's get to St. Anne or Blessed Anne Catherine
00:18:26.840
Emmerich. You have in your book, she writes that Satan will be unchained for 50 to 60 years
00:18:34.120
before the year 2000. Yeah. Okay. So how do you understand that revelation based on the history
00:18:41.120
of the world around that time? I mean, first of all, what time are we dealing with? This is St. Anne,
00:18:46.500
Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich. And she's saying before the year 2000, there's kind of come 50 or
00:18:51.840
60 years. Satan will be unchained 50 or 60 years before that. Yeah. It's an amazing thing. And for
00:18:58.660
my Protestant brothers and sisters who are watching us right now, I'm a former Protestant. Let me start
00:19:03.640
this by quoting the book of Revelation. Okay. This is Revelation 20, one through three.
00:19:40.060
Now, Anne Catherine Emmerich's innovation here, right, is that she was told and she lived from
00:19:45.400
1774 to 1824. So she actually died at the age of 49. So almost 50 years altogether. This is a woman
00:19:52.620
who's in a bed in Germany and she can't even get out of bed. She's bleeding so much all the time in
00:19:58.280
constant agony. And she's told in one of her visions that Satan will be unleashed from the floor of hell for
00:20:07.060
a period, quote, 50 to 60 years before the year 2000. All right. Now, she couldn't have known this
00:20:14.100
in 1820. All right. But the math on that, that would be 1940 to 1950. Wow. Okay. That is the outbreak
00:20:24.500
of World War II, deadliest war in the history of humanity. Only previous war that came close was World
00:20:29.980
War I. And there were five, six, seven times the number killed in World War II than World War I.
00:20:35.080
Holocaust, Pearl Harbor, all the deaths in America, Eastern Europe, around the world.
00:20:42.100
The war ends. Stalin, Iron Curtain descends across Europe. Eastern Europe is taken over by the
00:20:48.660
communists to begin this long period of communist occupation there. Cold War starts. 1946 to 49,
00:20:57.160
that's the Chinese Revolution. October 1949. Somehow, no one can still make sense of it. I see this as a
00:21:03.640
professor of international relations. We still can't figure out how in the world Mao Zedong defeated
00:21:07.760
Chiang Kai-shek and the communists overtook the Chinese nationalists. They take over, win 1949,
00:21:13.360
and then more people died under communist China, 60 to 70 million, than even died under Stalin's
00:21:19.400
Soviet Union during that period. So that's 1940 to 1950. That's the 50 to 60 years before the year
00:21:25.860
2000. That was her prediction. And she even said in her prediction that she was told that for a time
00:21:34.100
before that, some demons would be unleashed even earlier, including in the time that she was currently
00:21:40.260
living in. She has that prophecy in 1820. She's in Germany. Karl Marx is born May 5th, 1818,
00:21:48.260
right there in Germany. Friedrich Engels is born in 1820. These were the guys that gave you the
00:21:53.920
communist manifesto. They gave you communism. So how she could come up with, you know, that kind of,
00:22:01.660
I mean, you talk about nailing a prophecy with the timeline. That's almost uncanny to think of.
00:22:11.660
For U.S. residents, creating will has never been easier. Thanks to My Legacy Will, an online platform
00:22:18.440
free of charge, you can now create your own will and choose to include LifeSite News in it, specify
00:22:24.400
where your funeral will take place, the number of masses to be offered for your soul, and how your
00:22:29.860
estate will be distributed. We would be deeply grateful if you remembered LifeSite News in your
00:22:35.360
will. Visit mylegacywill.com slash LifeSite News. Thank you for your support, and may God bless you.
00:22:43.420
What do you think this has to do with Leo XIII's prophecy? Remember his prophecy for which he created
00:22:49.100
the St. Michael prayer? He saw a hundred years where Satan would be given, loosed, if you will. Do you
00:22:56.820
think that has any correlation? I do. And in fact, I also quote Hildegard of Bingen, who is an
00:23:03.380
extraordinary saint as well. I think she's also a doctor of the Church, female doctor of the Church.
00:23:07.920
And she also had these visions about a thousand years and around this period. But specifically,
00:23:12.920
yeah, Leo XIII, his pontificate was 1878 to 1903. And so he has that vision right at the turn of the
00:23:21.900
century. And with the 100 years to come in the 20th century, the 20th century was the deadliest
00:23:26.780
century in the history of humanity. World War I, World War II, Cold War, China, abortion. Abortion
00:23:33.260
was first legalized among any state. Communist Russia, 1920. And by the 1970s, remember my field
00:23:42.360
of studies, actually, Russia, Cold War, communism. So it's according to official Soviet statistics.
00:23:47.460
And I know you're real big and your website on life issues, of course. According to the
00:23:52.640
Soviet health ministry, in the 1970s, in the Soviet Union, they were averaging seven to eight
00:23:59.240
million abortions per year. Seven to eight million abortions per year. Now, here in America, I mean,
00:24:07.100
we were at about a million a year. All right. They were at seven to eight million a year. And they had
00:24:12.180
even less of a population that we did. And then the other deadly countries were abortion, all the
00:24:17.740
communist countries, Cuba, China, one child policy, Romania, you name it. So all of that hell is
00:24:24.940
unleashed, unchained, if you will, in that period prophesied by Leo XIII and even earlier than him
00:24:36.320
What did you make of Anne Catherine Emmerich's visions of the two popes and the relationship
00:24:42.940
Yeah, it's fascinating. I spent a lot of time on that. And some people think that it applied
00:24:47.940
possibly in our day to Pope Francis. I mean, it seems to probably apply to a pope in her time.
00:24:54.940
She also spoke about a counterfeit church. And I might even quote somebody from LifeSite News on that
00:25:01.340
in the footnotes. I think I do. Someone who did a really good job with it. So I don't know that
00:25:05.680
it applies to our time. But it's certainly compelling. I mean, one that I think, not to
00:25:14.360
change gears on you, that does apply to this in a really remarkable way, and so related that it's
00:25:22.520
our current day, Sister Agnes of Sasagawa, the Our Lady of Akita Seer, who is so recent that she just
00:25:29.980
died. She died in 2024. She died this past summer. She was the one who she had visions in July and
00:25:36.520
August and October 1973. And her vision, October 13th, 1973, that's the anniversary of the miracle
00:25:43.640
of the sun at Fatima. And her bishop, Bishop Ito, who later said that the faithful can indeed follow
00:25:51.380
her prophecy, her vision as being of supernatural origin. He said the message of Akita is the message
00:25:58.540
of Fatima. So she was stigmatist. A lot of people don't realize that she had stigmata while she was
00:26:04.840
having these visions. And LifeSite News has covered this. And since her death, it's a really weird thing.
00:26:10.900
They donated her body to science in Japan? You guys have covered this, John Henry. It's the first
00:26:17.640
place where I read it. Other websites have done nothing on it. And I thought, why are they donating her
00:26:23.200
body to science? She should be under glass somewhere to be checked for incorruptibility. I don't know
00:26:29.840
what all is taking place there. However, if you read Bishop Ito's investigation and formal statement
00:26:35.020
and everything, what a lot of people don't realize is she had stigmata. And her prophecy of October 13th,
00:26:40.600
1973, I think this gets to our time right now with Pope Francis. She said, there will come a time
00:26:46.260
when Bishop will be against Bishop, Cardinal against Cardinal, Clergy against Clergy. You know,
00:26:52.460
it would be this difficult time in the church. And that vision was right about the time of Pope Paul
00:26:59.480
VI, now a saint, talking about the smoke of Satan having entered the church. And she predicts that
00:27:07.180
October 13th, 1971 vision, that there will come a time of great chastisement, fire from the sky that
00:27:14.400
will be worse than the great deluge, as she puts it. That was 1973. And that seer, Our Lady of Akita,
00:27:21.900
that stigmatist, Sister Agnes of Sasagawa, just died. So this isn't somebody in 1224, like Francis.
00:27:29.800
This is 2024. Indeed. In fact, I believe it was in 2019, she put out a statement, which no one had ever
00:27:35.960
heard of her for such a long time, just about the times being severe, and we need to pray, and so on.
00:27:40.900
Just incredible things that we're actually living through. One of the ones I also wanted to
00:27:45.620
bring out for everybody, because I think it's largely unknown, that is this blessed Elena Aiello,
00:27:53.220
and these visions and letters to Mussolini. What's that all about?
00:27:57.580
Yeah, boy, I'll tell you, that one really struck me. So she was born in 1895, died in 1961. She's
00:28:03.480
another modern. I mean, in the 1960s, you had three really significant stigmatists who passed. You had
00:28:10.320
her, Therese Newman in Germany, Padre Pio in 1968. But she was this little Italian nun from Calabria,
00:28:17.600
Italy. And she really struck me because my family and my mom's side, they're from Calabria, Italy.
00:28:23.700
And I had also read on some different websites about the incredible prophecies that she had.
00:28:30.060
And then in the course of reading her prophecies, I learned that, wow, she was a stigmatist as well.
00:28:34.840
She had stigmata for a long time. She had visions in her time. Now, there's some that
00:28:39.580
are still yet to come, supposedly. But in her time, she was this seer about events in Italy in World War
00:28:47.920
II related to Mussolini. And she had Mussolini's attention in the way that Catherine of Siena had the
00:28:55.240
powers of Italy's attention. Mussolini even wrote a check to her school for girls because he was so
00:29:02.280
impressed. Mussolini's sister, who was very devout, also followed everything that Elena Aiello said.
00:29:10.680
Now, again, keep in mind, this lady, Good Friday, she's bleeding. All the people come around.
00:29:15.860
Everybody's gathered around. So word gets around. Everyone knows what's going on. This is in 1350.
00:29:22.080
This is 1940s, 50s and 60s. And she told Mussolini, she addressed him, Il Duce,
00:29:28.940
listen to me, right? I am here to tell you, there is still time for you to be a hero,
00:29:36.580
to be the man who saved Italy, who spared Italy from humiliation. And interesting, John Henry,
00:29:44.160
she said a number of times in this letter, Rome itself will be preserved because the Vatican is in
00:29:51.180
Rome. Almost like God has a dome of protection over there. But the rest of Italy will suffer terribly
00:29:58.300
if you don't stop now, if you don't stop now. And then she sends another letter, again,
00:30:04.500
through Mussolini's sister. This was around 1943. Time is running out for him. And I am here to tell you
00:30:11.560
now. I have been told, right, by God, that if you do not quickly make peace and stop cooperating
00:30:20.240
with Hitler and the Japanese, you will suffer a worse, more ignominious fate than Napoleon.
00:30:28.560
Now, Napoleon Waterloo was 1815. And then he's allowed to retire and exile to St. Helena, died in
00:30:36.480
1821. Not Mussolini. Mussolini didn't listen, didn't repent. And he gets strung up in a gas
00:30:45.520
station in Milan by the communists. And next to one of his mistresses, cut down, bodies dragged
00:30:52.520
through the streets. They spit on him, they kick him, they kick him up and down the streets. Should
00:30:57.300
have listened to the little Italian nun from Calabria. She also predicted days of darkness,
00:31:03.180
darkness, a final chastisement, a ball of fire from the sky. How many days of darkness? There's
00:31:09.300
not much written on her in the West. I had to get Italian books on her. According to the English
00:31:14.820
translation of one of these books, she predicted, quote, 70 hours of darkness, seven zero. 70 is
00:31:21.860
three days. All right. Three days of darkness. Faustina Kowalska in her diary talks about days of
00:31:28.220
darkness, but she doesn't use the number three. But Elena Aiello says basically three days of
00:31:34.420
darkness. She pegs it 70 hours. Days of darkness has also been prophesied by Faustina, who had hidden
00:31:41.260
stigmata. She of the diary. Maria Julie Jeheny, who had stigmata. She was 91 years old when she died.
00:31:48.080
She had the stigmata for like 70 some years. Blessed Anna Maria Taigi, who if you Google three days of
00:31:55.480
darkness and Wikipedia pops up, Wikipedia actually has an entry for three days of darkness. They
00:31:59.680
attributed the prophecy to her. She talks about beeswax candles and everything. And so a lot of
00:32:06.940
people in our circles, John Henry, they know about three days of darkness. They know about beeswax
00:32:10.580
candles. They know about Anna Maria Taigi. They don't know that she was a stigmatist. She was.
00:32:15.320
So for me, and this is what really struck me about all of this research, it's one thing of my neighbor
00:32:20.180
down the street is claiming that, you know, the end times are coming and he's talking to the Virgin
00:32:25.040
Mary and he's out there mowing his lawn. And I tell my wife, hey, Susan, I think Jim's kind of
00:32:30.040
lost it. He's talking to things. He's talking to the Virgin Mary in the woods. But if there's somebody
00:32:35.080
who's church approved, bleeding like clockwork from their hands and feet on a Thursday, Friday,
00:32:41.940
wounds are gone on Saturday. It goes on for years, decades, eating nothing but the Eucharist.
00:32:46.720
They bring in teams of psychiatrists and doctors and physicians and spiritual directors in the
00:32:51.300
Vatican and everything else. That person I'm taking seriously, I'm taking their predictions
00:32:56.700
seriously. It's like a divine mark stamp of approval, like an imprimatur in a way. I'm going
00:33:04.000
to take those prophecies a lot more seriously than I would from Jim if he's just down there in his
00:33:08.600
garage talking to his dog about the Blessed Virgin.
00:33:11.300
Your book also indicates that there are stigmatists right now, not even just 10 years ago and 20 years
00:33:18.180
ago, but right now. Not approved or anything, of course, but they're existing, living right now,
00:33:26.940
There are. And you would think that there would be. So people shouldn't be dismissive of that.
00:33:31.840
Now, at the same time, you don't want to be skeptical. You don't want to be cynical. You want to keep,
00:33:36.840
you know, have an open mind. Keep in mind, Padre Pio wasn't canonized for three and a half decades
00:33:42.620
after his death. And it's Padre Pio. I mean, you would think Pio would have been canonized within
00:33:47.820
a week of him, of him being entombed, right? But no, it took decades. He was doubted in his time,
00:33:54.440
including by very high level Vatican officials in many cases. And there have been in the course of
00:34:00.820
history, there haven't been a lot of studies on this. And I don't know that the Vatican keeps a
00:34:04.480
running list. But from the studies that have been done, there have been probably about 400 to 500
00:34:10.360
stigmatists. Some people that might sound like a lot, but in the course of the history of humanity,
00:34:15.540
I mean, how many billions of people have lived? And there have been more in modern day, 1800s,
00:34:20.640
1900s. And there are a number of claims of people today. I had one person contact me who's a friend
00:34:27.660
of a priest. And this guy was with Tan Books. And he knows if somebody asked if I wanted to come
00:34:32.520
along and see, I didn't go, maybe I should, and maybe I should check it out. The founder of EWTN,
00:34:37.840
Mother Angelica, Rhoda Wise, who was the woman who brought her to the faith, she was a stigmatist.
00:34:44.920
You know, that's not that long ago. That's 20th century. And there are cases today that are out
00:34:50.140
there. They're mentioned on a number of different websites. They're easy to find. I talk about some of
00:34:56.220
them. I'm very careful with it. And I say, I don't know if these are legit. The church hasn't
00:35:01.700
ruled on it. And I certainly don't know if the prophecies, it's all private revelation. I don't
00:35:06.580
know if the prophecies are legit, but here's what they say. Here's what they're saying. And it is
00:35:11.320
remarkable how a number of them repeat that same phrase, great ball of fire from the sky,
00:35:18.700
great deluge, chastisement, worse than the great flood. And let me add this,
00:35:25.300
Faustina Kowalska, who died in 1938 at the age of 33, and we all have her diary. She was the first
00:35:31.440
canonized saint of the new millennium by John Paul II. We do the Divine Mercy Chaplet because of her
00:35:36.680
revelation, right? And she's the one who Jesus said, you will prepare the world for my second coming.
00:35:43.620
And he told her about days of darkness, darkness enveloping the whole world. Then the final sign
00:35:52.140
would appear in the sky, right? Like a cross in the sky that would, it would only be the wounds of
00:35:58.120
Christ that would provide the only light piercing the darkness and illuminating all of humanity.
00:36:04.280
So I really take Faustina seriously. And she was hidden stigmata.
00:36:09.760
I did a show once on St. Faustina because she described in her diary,
00:36:16.560
maybe I shouldn't say this, but the day Pope Francis was born. She had one of the worst
00:36:23.820
sufferings she ever had because of the suffering that was in the church. But it happened to be
00:36:31.060
in her diary on the day of Bergoglio's birth. Well, as is your book, Paul, I have to commend you.
00:36:37.420
You know, it's a very fascinating study. And what I love is that when men of great intellect spend all
00:36:44.180
the time that it takes to delve deep into these things, to get the actual facts and then present
00:36:49.720
them so people can be confident in what they're reading. So with that-
00:36:53.660
You're not talking about me, men of great intellect?
00:36:55.540
I am indeed. And I would encourage people to go and get the book called The Stigmatists. It's
00:37:03.180
available by TAN Publishers, great publishers of Catholic books, and they can be found wherever
00:37:09.620
good books are sold, but at TAN Publishing. And of course, for those outside of America, I think
00:37:17.500
I am a scholar and an academic. And so one of the reasons I did this book was I wanted to sort
00:37:22.960
this out in my own mind, what's real and what's not, what's being reported on websites in a sloppy
00:37:29.360
way that's not really documentable. Did this person really have that vision? And so a lot of this I did
00:37:36.100
for my own peace of mind. And then once I put together, I thought, wow, everybody, people need
00:37:40.340
to know this. People need to know about these prophecies and as well as the medical reports on the
00:37:46.280
stigmatists and everything. So thank you. That's very kind of you to say that.
00:37:49.340
Praise God. Well, thank you. Thank you, Paul. So good to be with you on the show.
00:37:53.480
Paul Kengord, ladies and gentlemen, please go get The Stigmatists, available from TAN.
00:38:00.880
And God bless all of you. And we'll see you next time.
00:38:07.280
Hi, everyone. This is John Henry Weston for LifeSite News. We hope you found this video insightful.
00:38:11.980
For more content like this, be sure to check out the links in the description below.
00:38:16.280
You can also follow us on social media to stay updated on the latest news concerning
00:38:20.940
life, faith, family, and freedom. Thanks for watching and may God bless you.