The Healing of Peter Smith's Sister

The infant lay on the narrow bed in the annex ward, his face already swelling where the drops had hit. I was the one who had run for the superior when the nurse came screaming down the corridor with him still in her arms. The bottle stood open on the cart behind her, the label turned so the 50 percent mark showed clear.

Margaret Smith held the child against her shoulder and would not set him down. The two doctors arrived first, then the eye man from uptown. He lifted each lid with a gloved finger, shone the light, and stepped back. “The corneas are gone,” he said. Nobody contradicted him.

The superior returned with a small square of faded cloth. She laid it across the baby’s eyes, pinned the edge to his gown, and told us to come with her. We left the ward as it was, the cart still out, the bottle uncapped. Downstairs the chapel was empty except for one person already kneeling. Mary Redman kept her face to the tabernacle and did not look up when we filed in behind her.

We stayed through the night. The only light came from the sanctuary lamp and the street lamp outside the high windows. Every hour or so someone opened the door to check the time. At four the night nurse on the floor above sent word that the fever had begun. At five the breathing changed.

By morning the eye specialists were back. One of them carried a black case of instruments. The superior unpinned the cloth herself. The baby opened both eyes and turned his head toward the window where the light fell. The specialist set the case on the floor and did not open it.

That same afternoon the pneumonia took hold. The temperature climbed past what the glass could show. We moved him to the small side room where the oxygen was kept. Mary Redman stayed at the foot of the bed, repeating the same words she had used in the chapel. The superior sent for the relic again.

By evening the fever broke. The child slept without the laboring sound in his chest. The doctors who came on the late shift looked at the chart, looked at the baby, and said nothing that could be written down.

Margaret Smith was allowed to hold him again the next morning. She traced the line of his eyebrow with one finger and asked whether the eyes would stay clear. No one answered her.

The story moved through the hospital in pieces. By the end of the week the sisters had written it out for the provincial house. Mary Redman gave her account to the same two doctors who had first examined the child. They signed the paper and added that the corneas had been destroyed beyond any known repair.

Peter grew up in the city. At seventeen he stood in St. Peter’s for the beatification. Mary Redman stood a few rows behind him. The certificate from Columbus Hospital was read into the record along with the night report and the temperature chart.

He was ordained deacon in Texas and returned to New York in the spring of 1951. The chapel at Mother Cabrini High School was filled for the ceremony. The bishop who laid hands on him had come up from Corpus Christi. After the Mass Peter served parishes along the border for forty years.

The hospital itself closed years later. The annex where the birth took place was torn down to make room for the new highway. The relic that had been pinned to the gown is now sealed in the altar at the shrine on Fort Washington Avenue. Visitors sometimes ask to see the spot where the baby lay. The sisters point to the place in the floor where the old ward once stood and say nothing more.

Peter died in 2002. The cause listed on the certificate was an aneurysm. The two earlier healings remain the ones accepted for the beatification. No further medical explanation has ever been entered for either event.

In the weeks after the aneurysm was recorded at St. Vincent’s Hospital on West 12th Street, the parish office at Sacred Heart in McAllen, Texas, received seventy-three letters addressed to the late Father Peter Smith. One, postmarked 14 July 2002 from Sister Agnes Clare at Columbus Hospital’s former records division, quoted the 1928 night report verbatim: “Temperature 105.4 at 11:40 p.m., corneas opaque, respiration 48.” Another, dated 3 August 2002 and signed by Dr. Leonard Karp of the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, restated that the 1928 examination had shown “no measurable light perception in either eye” before the cloth was applied.

The diocese forwarded the letters to the postulator in Rome along with a copy of the 1950 beatification dossier that already contained the signed statements of the two Columbus physicians. In September 2003 the Congregation for the Causes of Saints requested the original temperature chart; archivists located it in a bound volume labeled “Ward B, October–December 1928,” entry 47, written in ink that had not faded. The chart listed hourly readings from 4:00 a.m. through 7:00 a.m. on the morning the fever broke, signed by night nurse Helen O’Rourke.

By 2008 the former Columbus Hospital site at 227 East 19th Street had become a 22-story condominium whose ground-floor plaque notes only the building’s 1892 opening date. The relic once pinned to the infant’s gown remains sealed beneath the mensa of the altar at the National Shrine of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, 701 Fort Washington Avenue, installed there on 12 November 1958 after transfer from the provincial house. Shrine records show 2,114 requests for private prayer before that altar in 2011, each logged with date, petitioner’s initials, and intention category.

In 2014 the shrine’s director, Sister Maria Concetta, arranged for high-resolution scans of the 1928 chart and the two physicians’ affidavits to be placed in a climate-controlled case beside the altar. The scans measure 11 by 14 inches and carry the stamp of the New York Archdiocesan Archives. Visitors who ask to view the location of the old annex ward are directed to a brass marker set in the sidewalk at the southeast corner of 19th Street and Second Avenue, installed by the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1996.

Peter Smith’s sister, Margaret Mary Smith, born 1931, attended the 2002 funeral at Sacred Heart Church, McAllen, and afterward deposited his chalice and stole in the sacristy cabinet. She returned to New York in 2009 and, on 22 June of that year, signed the shrine’s guest book with the single line “Margaret Smith, sister of the child.” She died in 2017 at the Cabrini Nursing Home on 63rd Street; her death certificate lists the same religious community that had recorded the 1928 event.

In 2021 the shrine installed LED lighting over the altar reliquary, increasing the average daily foot-candle reading from 18 to 92. The same year the archivist catalogued a previously uncited letter dated 19 March 1951 from Bishop Mariano Garriga of Corpus Christi, stating that he had examined Peter Smith’s eyes under daylight on the morning of ordination and found “clear corneas, full extraocular movement, no scarring visible to the naked eye.” The letter is filed under “Beatification—Additional Testimony, Folder 12.”

The last documented visitor to request the 1928 chart was a medical student from Columbia University on 8 February 2023. She photographed the entry for Ward B, case 47, with her phone camera set to 600 dpi and noted in the logbook that the handwriting matched the signature of Helen O’Rourke on three other charts from the same month. The student left no further comment.

The archivist at the National Shrine of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, Sister Elena Rossi, entered the Columbia student’s 8 February 2023 log note into the digital database on 11 February, cross-referencing it against the three other O’Rourke signatures from Ward B charts dated 14 October, 22 November, and 3 December 1928. The database entry recorded the student’s name as Rebecca Lang, Columbia College class of 2024, and assigned the scan file number SHR-1928-047-B. On 19 March 2023 the same archivist received an email from the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary records office confirming that Dr. Leonard Karp’s 2002 statement had been copied into their own digitized case file 1928-1147, with the phrase “no measurable light perception” highlighted in the attached PDF metadata.

In April 2023 the shrine received a bequest from the estate of Margaret Mary Smith’s niece, Catherine Ann Doyle of Laredo, Texas, consisting of a leather-bound missal printed in 1949 by Benziger Brothers and inscribed on the flyleaf “To Peter on your ordination, Mother.” The missal was catalogued under accession number 2023-0412 and placed in the climate-controlled case beside the scanned affidavits. Shrine records show that Doyle had visited the altar on 14 June 2016 and signed the guest book with the line “Praying for my uncle’s eyes, C. Doyle, Laredo.”

The brass sidewalk marker at the southeast corner of 19th Street and Second Avenue was repainted by the Landmarks Preservation Commission on 7 May 2024 after a construction crew from the 227 East 19th Street condominium chipped the original lettering. The new lettering reads “Columbus Hospital Annex 1922–1960, site of documented corneal healing 1928,” with the commission’s project number LPC-24-1187 stamped on the reverse. A maintenance log dated 9 May 2024 notes that the paint used was Sherwin-Williams SW 7069 Iron Ore, two coats, applied at 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

On 2 July 2024 Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas, sent a letter to the postulator in Rome enclosing a photocopy of the 1951 ordination examination notes from St. Joseph’s Seminary in San Antonio. The letter quotes Bishop Garriga’s earlier observation and adds that Flores himself examined Father Peter Smith’s eyes on 4 June 1987 during a parish visitation in McAllen and recorded “corneas clear, pupils equal and reactive, no nystagmus” in his own notebook, page 47, entry dated that day. The letter is filed under “Additional Post-Beatification Testimony, Folder 19.”

The Cabrini Nursing Home on East 63rd Street transferred its remaining patient ledgers to the shrine archives on 15 September 2024. Ledger volume 12, page 214, records Margaret Mary Smith’s admission on 4 March 2009 and notes her daily medication log, including “artificial tears OU, 1 gtt qid” prescribed by Dr. Paulina Reyes on 12 April 2009. The final entry, dated 18 November 2017, is signed by charge nurse Rita Mendez and states “patient deceased 2:15 a.m., last rites administered by Fr. Thomas Kelly.”

Shrine visitor logs for 2024 list 2,487 requests for private prayer before the altar through 30 September, with 312 of those entries marked “healing of eyes” in the intention category. One entry dated 22 August 2024, signed “M. Lang, New York,” records the petitioner’s request to view the original 1928 chart and notes that her daughter Rebecca had photographed it the previous year. The logbook column for “time spent” shows 47 minutes for that visit.

On 14 October 2024 the last living relative to have known Peter Smith in person, his grandnephew Michael Anthony Smith of Corpus Christi, stood at the altar rail of the National Shrine at 10:42 a.m. and placed a single white rose in the brass holder beneath the reliquary. Shrine security footage timestamped that moment shows Smith remaining in place for four minutes before signing the guest book with the line “For Uncle Peter, whose eyes saw further than mine, M. Smith, 14 Oct 2024.” He left the building at 10:51 a.m. through the Fort Washington Avenue doors.

The shrine’s digital database recorded 3,112 total visitor entries for calendar year 2024, with the 22 August entry by M. Lang cross-referenced under file SHR-VIS-2024-0847. On 3 November 2024 the archivist Sister Elena Rossi added a new scan of the 1951 ordination examination notes from St. Joseph’s Seminary, file number SEM-1951-062, which quotes Bishop Garriga’s daylight observation and includes the marginal note “pupils 3 mm, equal, reactive” initialed by seminary physician Dr. Raymond Soto on 19 March 1951.

In December 2024 the Landmarks Preservation Commission approved an additional interpretive panel for the sidewalk marker at 19th Street and Second Avenue. The panel, fabricated in bronze by the firm of Polich Tallix and installed on 12 January 2025, measures 18 by 24 inches and carries the text “Site of Columbus Hospital Annex Ward B, case 47, 1928 corneal record entered by Helen O’Rourke, R.N.” along with the commission’s project number LPC-25-003.

Shrine visitor logs for the first quarter of 2025 list 814 requests for private prayer before the altar through 31 March, of which 47 were marked “healing of eyes.” One entry dated 17 February 2025, signed “R. Lang, Columbia College,” records that the petitioner examined the climate-controlled case containing the 1928 chart scan for 29 minutes and added the note “handwriting confirmed against O’Rourke signatures on charts 14 Oct, 22 Nov, 3 Dec 1928.”

On 4 April 2025 the postulator in Rome acknowledged receipt of Bishop Flores’s 2 July 2024 letter and requested a certified copy of the 1987 notebook entry. The Brownsville diocesan archive supplied a scanned page 47 from Bishop Flores’s visitation notebook, dated 4 June 1987, McAllen, with the quoted line “corneas clear, pupils equal and reactive, no nystagmus” and the bishop’s initials in the lower right margin.

The National Shrine installed a new environmental monitoring system on 22 May 2025. Sensors inside the reliquary case now log temperature at 68.4 degrees Fahrenheit and relative humidity at 42 percent every fifteen minutes, with data transmitted to the archdiocesan server under record SHR-ENV-2025-05. The system replaced the earlier analog hygrometer that had been in place since the 1958 installation.

Sister Maria Concetta retired as shrine director on 1 June 2025. Her successor, Sister Theresa Marie Delgado, entered the first official log note under her own name on 9 June 2025, recording the accession of a 1949 Benziger missal under number 2023-0412 and noting that the flyleaf inscription had been verified by ultraviolet light against known samples of Margaret Smith’s handwriting from the 2009 shrine guest book.

On 11 October 2025 Michael Anthony Smith returned to the National Shrine at 10:37 a.m. and stood at the same position along the altar rail. Security footage shows him placing a second white rose in the brass holder, remaining in place for six minutes, and signing the guest book with the single line “Still here, M. Smith, 11 Oct 2025.” He departed through the Fort Washington Avenue doors at 10:49 a.m.

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