Michigan Knight Cause for Sainthood
- Fri, Feb 17, 2023 1:55 PM
Thanks to PGK, FDD, PFN Jim McCracken of Virginia, for bringing this story to our attention. And thanks to Larry Herman and Paul Kelsey for giving it to me for edit and posting.
Bishop John Doerfler in June 2019, of the Diocese of Marquette announced the official opening of the cause of Irving “Francis” C. Houle, who died in 2009 at the age of 83. While he felt close to Jesus his entire life and experienced a miraculous healing after a childhood accident, it was on Good Friday 1993 that he first began receiving stigmata, reportedly enduring the Passion every night between midnight and 3 a.m. for the rest of his life. He said he heard the voice of Jesus asking him to heal “my children” and spent his remaining 16 years praying over tens of thousands of people — many of whom experienced extraordinary physical and spiritual healing.
By all accounts a loving husband and father he and Gail were married for over sixty years. Houle was a regular communicant and prayed the Stations of the Cross every day after work. He became a fourth-degree Knight of Columbus. His five children left him and Gail with seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Over the decades, Houle had jobs in retail and manufacturing. He became plant manager at Engineered Machine Products, where he was employed for the last fifteen years of his working life. He was a bit of a prankster, a plain-spoken, solid family man with a penchant for jokes and teasing.
According to the website dedicated to Houle’s cause for canonization (www.irvingfrancishoule.org), well before he received the stigmata, “many extraordinary physical and spiritual healings” had been attributed to him. He received the stigmata on Good Friday, 1993, at the age of sixty-seven. He was initially affected in the palms of his hands. “I’m taking away your hands and giving you mine,” Christ allegedly told him.
Afterward, the physical suffering spread throughout his body. He was said to have suffered the Passion every night thereafter between midnight and 3 am, those hours being “times of great sins of the flesh.”
Gail, luckily a sound sleeper, never witnessed these nocturnal sufferings, though others, including his brother Reynold, did. So did Father Robert J. Fox, who in 2005 published a book about Houle entitled A Man Called Francis. The pseudonym “Francis” was used in order to protect Houle’s identity, but the name stuck.
Houle took to wearing bandages on his hands in public and, after retiring, embarked on a series of speaking engagements at churches and elsewhere, talking over the years to tens of thousands of people. Nothing made him happier than to learn of people returning to confession after decades away and then receiving the Eucharist.
Houle avoided the limelight and neither sought nor accepted any financial donations for the myriad healings that were said to have flowed from his suffering and prayer. “Jesus is the one who heals,” he insisted.
Many good articles concerning Sir Francis Houle and his cause may be found at the following links.
Biography (irvingfrancishoule.org)
Bishops affirm diocese’s effort for Michigan stigmatist’s sainthood cause | Crux (cruxnow.com)
Was this Michigan grandfather on a mission from God? | Catholic News Agency
Stigmatic, Healer and Visionary From Michigan| National Catholic Register (ncregister.com)
Irving ‘Francis’ Houle prayed over an... - Detroit Mass Mob | Facebook