- Parents say oil weeps from son's bedroom
- "Has healing powers"
- "He's worthy of sainthood"
A SYDNEY couple believes their son - "hand-picked by God" - could be Australia's first male saint.
Mike Tannous died three years ago but a mysterious oil that weeps from the walls of his bedroom has been hailed by his parents, George and Lina, as having helped heal dozens of people, The Daily Telegraph reports.
The oil started to appear in the Guildford home just weeks after the 17-year-old died in a car accident in September 2006.
"Mike is a messenger between us and God. He has healed so many people," Mrs Tannous said.
Extensive scientific testing of the oil has failed to identify exactly what it is but that has not stopped hundreds praying at the home.
The Tannous' push for sainthood for their son emerged as Mary MacKillop fever swept the nation.
Sydney Archbishop Cardinal George Pell suggested yesterday crusader for convicts Caroline Chisholm and Sydney's first Archbishop John Bede Polding to be considered as "would-be saints" after Mother MacKillop's canonisation.
But Mr Tannous said the next saint would be his son, and the family was documenting his healing powers.
"Our boy is a saint. This is him talking to us, talking to other people," he said.
Last year a woman who lived near the Tannous' house was told by doctors she could not have the third child she desperately wanted.
"She came here and prayed . . . one month later she came with a box of chocolates and said 'Guess what, I am pregnant'," Mike's aunt Susan Sawan said.
Since Pope Benedict XVI confirmed Mother MacKillop's second miracle, scores of people have flocked to the Tannous' house.
Read more at http://theunexplainedmysteries.com/dead-boy-powers.html
A 13th-century letter from Genghis Khan’s grandson demanding homage from the pope is among a collection of documents from the Vatican’s Secret Archives that has been published for the first time.
The Holy See’s archives contain scrolls, parchments and leather-bound volumes with correspondence dating back more than 1,000 years.
High-quality reproductions of 105 documents, 19 of which have never been seen before in public, have now been published in a book. The Vatican Secret Archives features a papal letter to Hitler, an entreaty to Rome written on birch bark by a tribe of North American Indians, and a plea from Mary Queen of Scots.
The book documents the Roman Catholic Church’s often hostile dealings with the world of science and the arts, including documents from the heresy trial against Galileo and correspondence exchanged with Erasmus, Voltaire and Mozart. It also reveals the Church’s relations with princes and potentates in countries far beyond its dominion.
In a letter dated 1246 from Grand Khan Guyuk to Pope Innocent IV, Genghis Khan’s grandson demands that the pontiff travel to central Asia in person – with all of his “kings” in tow – to “pay service and homage to us” as an act of “submission”, threatening that otherwise “you shall be our enemy”.
Another formal letter in the archive highlights the papacy’s political role. In 1863 Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States, wrote to Pope Pius IX claiming that the civil war raging across America was entirely due to “Northern aggression”.
“We desire no evil to our enemies, nor do we covet any of their possessions; but are only struggling to the end that they shall cease to devastate our land and inflict useless and cruel slaughter upon our people.”
Other letters in the archive are more personal. In a 1550 note, Michelangelo demands payment from the papacy which was three months late, and complains that a papal conclave had interrupted his work on the dome of St Peter’s Basilica.
Read more at http://theunexplainedmysteries.com/vatican-secrets.html
