The reading
How it began
Alphonsus is in an armchair, nearly paralyzed. On 21 September 1774 he falls into a long ecstasy. When he comes back he says he has been at the bedside of the pope, who has just died. In Rome, members of the household report an unexpected visit of the saint. Clement XIV is indeed dead. The clocks, as hagiography loves to note, can be compared.
Reading
How to read St. Alphonsus Liguori’s Mass in Arienzo
Bilocation, if it occurs, is not a trick of speed. Catholic theologians (even the cautious ones) treat it as a unique divine effect: the person is truly in one place, and a presence is produced in another. It is the opposite of magic. It is the saint being used as a letter.
Alphonsus’s greater miracles are the Moral Theology and the popular missions. This anecdote survives because it is attached to a man already trusted.
Church status
How this sign has been received
Long veneration
Doctor of the Church, patron of confessors and of moralists. The bilocation is in the acts of the cause, as sworn testimony, not as a defined miracle of the universal Church.
Sources
- Process of St. Alphonsus; Tannoia, Life
- Redemptorist archives
For the classroom
St. Alphonsus Liguori’s Mass in Arienzo (21 September 1774, Arienzo / Rome). Grade in this encyclopedia: Long veneration. The founder of the Redemptorists, old and immobilized in Arienzo, is seen in the papal palace at the death of Clement XIV, and returns to his chair. One of the most cited bilocations in a canonization process.
