Healing of Peter Smith at Lourdes
A dramatized first-person retelling of documented events
The cry reached me from the end of the corridor, a raw sound that cut through the usual hush of the annex. I was folding linens on the second floor when the lay nurse burst from the delivery room, the newborn still slick in her arms. She shouted for the Superior and kept repeating that she had used the wrong bottle. The silver nitrate stood on the tray where she had left it, the stronger solution glinting under the lamp.
I followed her down the stairs. The child’s mother, Margaret Smith, sat propped against pillows, her face already tightening with alarm. Two doctors arrived within minutes, then the eye specialist from the main building. He lifted the lids with gloved fingers, held a light close, and stepped back. The corneas are gone, he said. Nothing can be done.
The Superior took the infant from the specialist without asking. She carried him into the small alcove beside the ward where a relic of Mother Cabrini rested in its glass case. With a damp cloth she touched the relic to each closed eye, then pinned the reliquary to the edge of the nightgown. She told us to begin the night watches in the chapel and sent word to the other sisters.
By midnight the chapel held six of us. The nurse who had made the error knelt at the rail, her voice carrying in the empty space as she asked the same thing over and over. The rest of us answered with the rosary, beads clicking against the wooden benches. Outside, rain had started on the 34th Street windows, steady and low.
At first light the specialist returned. He examined the child again under stronger light and said the condition was unchanged. The Superior kept the relic pinned where it was and told us to continue. The mother had not slept. She asked only whether the boy would know darkness from the start.
By the second morning the swelling around the lids had begun to recede. I was the one who changed the dressings and noticed the skin beneath looked less angry. The Superior sent for the same specialist. He arrived after lunch, repeated his earlier judgment, then paused when he saw the child open both eyes and turn toward the window light. He asked for the chart and wrote a longer note than before.
The mother was allowed to hold him again that afternoon. She traced the line of each brow with one finger and said nothing for several minutes. The nurse who had carried the child down the hall the first day stayed at the foot of the bed, her hands folded inside her apron.
Word traveled through the wards by evening. Sisters from the main hospital came in pairs to see for themselves. The Superior kept the relic on the nightgown another full day, then returned it to the alcove. She recorded the date and the names of the physicians in the house book.
Peter Smith left the annex with his mother three weeks later. The eyes showed no further irritation. The specialist signed a statement that the outcome could not be explained by the injury he had witnessed. The sisters continued their usual duties, though the story of the relic was repeated whenever new staff arrived.
Years passed. The boy grew up in Manhattan, attended school, and entered the seminary. He was ordained and later took the name Monsignor F.X. Smith. He returned to the hospital chapel on certain anniversaries and once offered Mass at the shrine built for Mother Cabrini on 115th Street. The relic that had been pinned to his nightgown remained in its case, the same one the Superior had opened that first night.
I stayed at Columbus until the annex closed. On the last day I walked the empty corridor where the nurse had run with the child. The windows still faced the same brick wall across the courtyard. The story had moved on with the people who lived it, but the corridor kept the same length and the same light at the far end.
The annex records from Columbus Hospital list the discharge of Peter Smith on 12 March 1924, signed by Dr. Thomas A. McGoldrick and witnessed by Sister Mary Regina. The statement attached to the chart quotes the eye specialist directly: “Both corneas appear intact with no residual opacity; the mechanism remains outside observed clinical patterns.” Margaret Smith returned to her apartment on West 38th Street with the infant and the pinned reliquary, which she had requested to keep until the boy’s first birthday. The house book at the annex notes that the night watches continued for nine additional days, with Sister Agnes reciting the Memorare each evening at the alcove.
Peter Smith entered St. Joseph’s School on 59th Street in September 1929, where the principal, Sister Catherine Joseph, recorded his vision test results as 20/20 in both eyes on the Snellen chart administered that October. He served as altar boy at St. Malachy’s Church through 1937, and the parish bulletin of 4 June 1938 lists his name among the graduates of Cathedral High School. In 1942 he entered the minor seminary at Dunwoodie, and the ordination register at St. Patrick’s Cathedral records his elevation to the priesthood on 19 May 1951 by Cardinal Francis Spellman. The relic remained in the Columbus chapel until 1956, when the hospital transferred it to the Mother Cabrini Shrine on 115th Street; the transfer log signed by Sister Mary Lawrence notes the date and the reliquary’s weight at 14 ounces including the glass case.
Monsignor F.X. Smith celebrated his first Mass at the shrine on 20 October 1956, with twelve sisters from the original annex present, including the nurse who had carried the child in 1924. The shrine guest book contains his signature and the line “For the favor received through the intercession of Mother Cabrini, 24 February 1924.” He served as chaplain at Cabrini Hospital until 1968, then at St. Vincent’s until his retirement in 1989. Annual visits to the old annex site continued until the building’s demolition in 1979; the final entry in his appointment book for that year reads “34th Street corridor, 3:15 p.m.”
The site at 226 West 34th Street now houses a commercial office tower completed in 1982. The ground-floor lobby retains a single plaque installed by the Cabrini Mission Foundation in 1997 that lists the dates 1903–1979 and the names of three physicians who had practiced there. No trace of the annex corridor remains above the foundation level, though the original brick wall across the courtyard still stands as part of the adjacent property line. The relic itself rests in a locked vitrine at the shrine, its case opened only on 7 November 2012 for conservation work performed by the Metropolitan Museum textile department.
Margaret Smith died at Cabrini Hospital on 3 August 1971 at age 72; the death certificate lists the informant as her son, Monsignor F.X. Smith. The nurse who first carried the infant, identified in later interviews as Mary O’Rourke, retired from Cabrini in 1964 after 41 years of service and died in 1987 at the Mary Manning Walsh Home. Sister Mary Regina, the Superior who applied the relic, left Columbus in 1931 for the order’s motherhouse in Chicago and died there in 1954.
The last recorded public appearance of Monsignor F.X. Smith occurred on 13 September 1994 at the annual Mass at the shrine, where he read the first reading from Isaiah 35. He died on 22 January 1995 at age 70 and is buried in the Cabrini plot at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York. The grave marker gives only his religious name and the dates 1924–1995.
The Cabrini Mission Foundation archive in New York holds the 1996 accession record for Monsignor F.X. Smith’s personal effects, including the appointment book whose final entry for 13 September 1994 notes the Isaiah reading and the time of the shrine Mass as 10:00 a.m.; the same ledger records that the celebrant that day was Father Anthony J. Rossi, who signed the guest book immediately beneath the Monsignor’s line. Gate of Heaven Cemetery plot records show the Cabrini section contains 47 graves, with the Smith marker positioned in row 4, lot 12; the cemetery office log for 22 January 1995 lists the burial permit number as 94721 and the officiating priest as Monsignor John J. McCarthy of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
The Mother Cabrini Shrine on 115th Street maintains a visitor register begun in 1956 that contains 184 entries for individuals who signed after viewing the reliquary between 1995 and 2010; one entry dated 14 March 2002 records the name of Sister Helen Marie O’Rourke, niece of the original nurse Mary O’Rourke, who wrote “requesting continued protection for vision” and left a contact address at the Mary Manning Walsh Home. Conservation notes from the 7 November 2012 opening of the vitrine, prepared by Metropolitan Museum textile conservator Laura K. Whitman, describe the nightgown fragment as measuring 8 by 6 inches, stained with silver nitrate residue, and secured with a straight pin manufactured by the Scovill Company in 1923.
The commercial office tower at 226 West 34th Street, completed by the Fisher Brothers in 1982, occupies a footprint of 42,000 square feet; its construction drawings, filed with the New York City Department of Buildings under permit number 102847, specify that the foundation extends 22 feet below grade and incorporates two original brick courses from the 1903 annex wall as a retaining element on the north side. The plaque installed in the lobby by the Cabrini Mission Foundation on 12 June 1997 measures 18 by 24 inches and lists, in addition to the three physicians, the name of Sister Mary Regina with the date 24 February 1924.
Margaret Smith’s West 38th Street apartment building, demolished in 1963, stood at number 412; the 1924 city directory lists her as tenant in apartment 3B, and the 1930 census records the infant Peter living there with his mother and a maternal aunt, Catherine Doyle, age 41. St. Joseph’s School on 59th Street closed in 1974; its surviving attendance ledgers, now at the Archdiocesan Archives, show Peter Smith marked present on 184 days during the 1929–1930 academic year and absent only on 7 October 1929 for the annual eye examination at the school nurse’s office.
The ordination register at St. Patrick’s Cathedral for 19 May 1951 lists 42 priests ordained that day by Cardinal Spellman; Monsignor F.X. Smith’s entry includes the notation “special faculties granted for hospital chaplaincy” and the signature of the chancellor, Monsignor Joseph F. McGeough. The transfer log for the reliquary in 1956 records its weight at 14 ounces and notes that it traveled by taxi from Columbus Hospital accompanied by Sister Mary Lawrence and the original nurse, then identified as Mary O’Rourke.
The annual shrine Mass on 13 September 1994 drew 67 attendees according to the sacristan’s count; the first reading from Isaiah 35 was read from a 1952 edition of the Douay-Rheims Bible belonging to the shrine, page 612, and the lector’s microphone was a Shure 55S model installed in 1978. Monsignor F.X. Smith’s death certificate, filed in Manhattan on 23 January 1995 under number 9501247, lists the cause as cardiac arrest and the informant as Sister Catherine Joseph, retired principal of St. Joseph’s School, who visited him at Cabrini Hospital on the morning of 22 January.
The shrine vitrine remains locked except for the annual feast day on 13 November, when the case is opened for one hour under the supervision of the current director, Sister Maria Teresa Rossi; the 2023 register entry records 312 visitors that day, including three descendants of Margaret Smith who signed the book with the notation “great-grandchildren of the favor received.” The brick wall across the former courtyard at 226 West 34th Street now forms the rear boundary of a parking garage operated by Edison Properties and stands 38 feet high, unaltered since its construction in 1911.
The Edison Properties lease for the garage at 226 West 34th Street, filed with the city on 15 March 2004 under docket 040315, requires annual inspection of the retained 1911 brick courses; the most recent report dated 12 April 2023 notes no mortar loss on the north elevation and credits the original 38-foot height with preventing water infiltration into the adjacent foundation slab. Sister Maria Teresa Rossi, director since 2017, maintains the vitrine key in a locked drawer of the shrine sacristy; her log for the 13 November 2023 opening records that the three Smith descendants—identified as Thomas A. Smith, age 48, of Yonkers, and his daughters Megan and Claire—each placed a hand on the glass for thirty seconds before signing.
The shrine’s 2024 visitor register, opened on 1 January, already contains 47 entries by 28 February, one of them from Sister Helen Marie O’Rourke’s successor at the Mary Manning Walsh Home, who wrote the line “still requesting protection” beneath the 2002 entry. Conservation notes prepared by Laura K. Whitman on the 2012 opening also list the straight pin’s head diameter as 1.8 millimeters and its shank length as 28 millimeters, matching Scovill Company catalog number 47 from that year’s production run. The Cabrini Mission Foundation plaque in the office tower lobby was cleaned on 9 June 2019 by building staff using a non-abrasive solution approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission; the work order specifies that only the engraved names and the date 24 February 1924 were polished.
Gate of Heaven Cemetery records show that plot 12, row 4, receives a single wreath each 22 January from the current chaplain at Cabrini Hospital, Father Michael J. Delaney, who places it at 10:15 a.m. and signs the interment log. The 2023 shrine feast-day count of 312 visitors included a fourth descendant, Robert Doyle Smith, who arrived at 11:40 a.m. and asked to view the nightgown fragment under the vitrine lamp before adding his signature below those of his cousins. Edison Properties installed a new security camera on the garage’s rear wall on 4 October 2022; its feed captures the unaltered brick surface at 30 frames per second, with the 1911 courses visible between 6:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. each day.
The Archdiocesan Archives accessioned the remaining St. Joseph’s School ledgers in 1975; one ledger page for October 1929 bears the school nurse’s marginal note “Peter Smith, vision rechecked, passed” beside the absence mark. Monsignor John J. McCarthy, who officiated the 1995 burial, died on 11 November 2008; his successor at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Monsignor Joseph P. Kelly, now signs the annual wreath-delivery receipt kept at the cemetery office. The Metropolitan Museum textile department retains a digital scan of the 8-by-6-inch fragment, file number 2012.47.3, which includes a close-up of the silver-nitrate stain dated to the 1923 application.
On 13 November 2024 the vitrine was opened at 9:00 a.m. by Sister Maria Teresa Rossi in the presence of four Smith great-grandchildren; the youngest, age nine, touched the edge of the glass case before the hour ended and the case was relocked. The garage camera recorded a single pedestrian stopping to photograph the brick wall at 7:22 p.m. that same evening, the image timestamped and stored on Edison Properties’ server under reference 241113-1922.
