An enduring shrine to hope

MALDEN -- Rosary beads and crosses swayed gently in the biting wind and rattled softly like wind chimes against the spiked wrought-iron fence that protects the grave of the Rev. Patrick J. Power.

In November 1929, six decades after Power died, more than 1 million people flocked to Holy Cross Cemetery in Malden after hearing that some who had recently visited his grave had been cured of their ailments or seen improvement. The onslaught forced the cemetery to close to visitors for about three months, and Power's body was moved to a more secluded spot at the cemetery.

Today, they still come: the pilgrims, sufferers, and believers. Dozens each day visit the shrine that Power's resting place has become. They arrive mostly from the Boston area, but also from around the nation and world. They leave crucifixes, flowers, coins, candles, seashells, notes, letters, and even a baseball, left by parents hoping to boost their son's dreams of playing in the major leagues.

The Archdiocese of Boston takes no public position on the pilgrimages; its chief spokesman, Terrence C. Donilon, declined to comment last week on whether it had ever investigated claims of cures that resulted from visits there.

But still they come. Over a four-hour period Thursday, 23 people visited the site, including 17 members of a prayer meeting led by the Rev. Tom DiLorenzo, of the Holy Rosary Church in Winthrop, who conducts a weekly service at the grave.

''Most of them just come and pray," said Rich Bradley, director of operations for the cemeteries of the archdiocese. ''Everybody's just looking for their miracle, really."

While most of the notes at the fence are folded and nearly impossible to read, one letter stands out. Penned on white lined paper and placed in a clear plastic bag attached to the front of the gate with guardian angel clips, it requests prayers for Haleigh Poutre, an 11-year-old Westfield girl who suffered brain damage after a beating. ''Please help Haleigh Poutre," the note reads. ''Let everyone pray for Haleigh and have a Christmas miracle. Let her live and let all her wounds heal and that someone loving will take care of her."

Some of those who make pilgrimages to the spot prefer to keep them quiet. One day last month, a priest passed by when the gate happened to be open and took advantage of the opportunity to step inside and scoop some water from a chalice carved into the six-legged stone tablet above the tomb. The priest, who requested that he not be identified, said he planned to use the water to bless the sick.

Sometimes, people toss flowers onto the tablet. One day in January, a man drove up, got out of his car, and tossed a coin onto the tablet. He walked all the way around the fence, touching the rails purposefully, as though they were the strings of a harp. Then he knelt silently for a moment, head bowed, before driving off.

Joseph Gatta, 61, of Reading, said he visits the grave of his wife every day and pauses in front of Power's tomb to give thanks. Gatta said he must be blessed after surviving quadruple bypass surgery in October 2000 after a fourth heart attack. ''In our lives we figure God is around, but sometimes we have to go through something to really know that," he said.

Some Catholics want the church to officially recognize the site, or at least investigate it.

''I would love to see the Power case reopened," said Irene McGravey of North Andover, who remembers the day in November 1929 when her older cousin, 18-year-old Laura Moody, was said to have been cured of a spinal ailment. ''It's just been a lost case."

Born in Ireland in 1844 and sent to Massachusetts at age 4 to live with a brother after his parents died, Power served as an altar boy at Holy Redeemer Church in East Boston, and attended the seminary at Laval University of Quebec. While there, he made pilgrimages to the shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, and was said to be deeply saddened by the suffering of the children he saw there.

After his ordination in Boston in 1867, Power became ill during his first assignment as a priest in Chicopee and died at his brother John's home in Brookline at age 25, reportedly of pneumonia, on Dec. 8, 1869.

A relative of the priest was quoted in the Boston Herald as saying that family members over the years had noted that the grass on Power's grave was always green, regardless of the condition of the rest of the cemetery. (There appeared to be nothing unusual about the turf at Power's grave last week.)

Thousands converged on the site following reports of some 100 cures attributed to rainwater collected at the priest's grave.

''First by hundreds they came, then by the thousands, on a Sunday and holiday the quarter-million mark was reached and the million mark has been passed," the Globe reported on Nov. 17, 1929. ''From far and near, in ambulances, on stretchers, on crutches, hobbling in braces, blind being led, sick babies being carried."

There were about 100,000 visitors on Nov. 24, the last day that the cemetery was open before the ban went into effect. One headline the next day said thousands had carried away bits of loam and that some brought bottles of water to touch to the ground.

''It all just exploded," Bradley said. ''The lines went all the way into Everett, which would have been a couple of miles."

James Michael Curley, Boston's mayor-elect that year, showed up on at least one occasion, as did boxer Jack Sharkey, who brought his 3-year-old daughter; she was blind in one eye. Time magazine, in its Nov. 25, 1929 edition, noted the arrival of ''quick-lunch vendors, souvenir postcard hawkers, trinket peddlers, trouble-makers."

Cures and partial cures were asserted for conditions such as blindness, deafness, and paralysis.

There was hope and skepticism. Looking back at the surge of interest in Power, one funeral home proprietor grumbled to a reporter for a Melrose newspaper, ''It was all in people's heads."

The Rev. Bernard Shea, 88, was 12 when he and his father set out to visit the grave in 1929. ''All I remember is being there, being with my father, and seeing the crowd of people," he said.

Shea, a resident priest at St. Mary of the Annunciation parish in Melrose, said that 10 or 15 years ago he started thinking again about Power, and decided to make his first return trip to the grave. ''I remembered the cemetery and I went there and found where he was buried," he said. Shea started collecting newspaper clips and learning all he could about Power.

He soon found he was not alone in his admiration of the priest from Ireland.

Some go to great heights to express their adoration, climbing over the fence surrounding the tomb. ''Sometimes, flowers are placed right on the slab, in a way that you know they couldn't have just thrown them in there," Bradley said. ''Unless they're a very good shot."