In 1918, E.P. Schwartz pushed his 4-year-old daughter, Jean, in a small carriage through the University of Notre Dame campus near South Bend, Indiana.

Two years earlier, polio had left the little girl’s left leg paralyzed and bent so that she was unable to stand on it. When she passed children playing, she must have felt sad knowing that she couldn’t join them.

Though many doctors had told Schwartz that Jean would remain crippled, he had brought her to Notre Dame from their home in Lansing, Michigan, to seek the prayer of Congregation of Holy Cross Brother Columba O’Neill, who, along with being a shoemaker, was known for healings that resulted from his intercession to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

The now-Servant of God, who himself had suffered from a congenital foot disability, simply patted her on the head and said, “The little girl will be alright,” Jean Schwartz Donohue recalled in the memoir she wrote for her family. The shoemaker also recommended she visit a chiropractor to stretch the leg to the length of her other one. 

On the way home, Schwartz noticed that his daughter’s leg was no longer bent, said Barbara Fulkerson, of Michigan City, Indiana, one of Donohue’s 10 children. “Whatever he did released that leg so it hung like the other one,” she told the Register, adding that her mother only had a slight limp afterward.

Fulkerson said her mother went on to complete college, have a career and raise a family.

Jean Schwartz Donohue’s cure is one of thousands attributed by the Congregation of Holy Cross to the intercession of the humble shoemaker whose devotion and patient prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the sick earned him the name “Miracle Man of Notre Dame” in the early 20th century. 

Following the location of thousands of letters documenting Brother Columba’s reach and ministry, including 1,400 that refer to special favors received from his prayer, Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, accepted the congregation’s petition to pursue the cause for Brother Columba’s canonization and opened the diocesan inquiry into his cause in 2022. 

‘Such a Man of Prayer’

Servant of God Brother Columba O’Neill may become the third member of the Congregation of Holy Cross to be beatified or canonized in the past 20 years, along with the Congregation’s founder, Blessed Father Basil Moreau, who was beatified in 2007, and St. André Bessette, a Canadian Holy Cross brother, canonized in 2010, to whose intercession are also attributed thousands of healings. 

“Brother Columba’s confreres in Holy Cross and others who knew him witnessed his exemplary religious life of poverty, chastity and obedience, his humility, his boundless trust in the Sacred Heart of Jesus, his devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and his love and compassion for all who came to him with their needs,” Bishop Rhoades, whose ministry serves Notre Dame, wrote in an article reprinted in the Register ahead of the U.S. bishops’ consecration of the United States of America to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on June 11.

Bishop Rhoades further explained the witness of Brother Columba on a June episode of Register Radio.

“People could see he was such a man of prayer. He was kind to everyone,” the bishop said. “And when people would come to get their shoes fixed, he would give them Sacred Heart badges. And some people who came were sick or had various maladies, both spiritual and physical. And then a lot of cures started to be reported, a lot of favors, a lot of healings … where people testify to favors and even miracles through the Sacred Heart of Jesus.” 

Brother Columba’s life and legacy drew new attention following the 2020 discovery of boxes of letters and items in the Brothers of Holy Cross Midwest Province archives, according to Holy Cross Brother Philip Smith, archivist and U.S. coordinator for the cause of Brother Columba. About 7,000 letters discovered are dated and another 3,000 are either partially dated or not dated, he told the Register.

Holy Cross Father Richard Gribble has written a biography of Brother Columba’s life, titled The Miracle Man of Notre Dame: The Life and Legacy of Br. Columba O’Neill, CSC, which is scheduled to be released in September and which will submitted to the Vatican for his cause.

Brother Columba “was just a very ordinary guy that no one would have ever thought two things about him, even within the Congregation of Holy Cross, had not he had this [Sacred Heart] devotion,” Father Gribble, superior of Notre Dame’s Our Lady of Fatima House and professor emeritus at Stonehill College in North Easton, Massachusetts, told the Register. “Somehow, touched by God, obviously, he was able to effect cures for so many people who believe very fervently in his advocacy for them.”

A Simple Life

Brother Columba was born John O’Neill in 1848 to poor but devout Irish immigrants in the coal-mining town of Mackeysburg, Pennsylvania, the same region where Bishop Rhoades was raised.

The fifth of six children, he had clubfoot, a congenital foot deformity. An operation later in life helped correct the disability. 

Because of his feet, John couldn’t work in the mine with his family members and instead was encouraged to learn shoemaking, possibly apprenticing with a local cobbler, Father Gribble said. Several years later, John traveled west with another shoemaker, first to Denver and then to California, he said.

When he could, the tall, brawny, red-headed John O’Neill attended daily Mass and spent hours in prayer. He discerned a call to religious life, Father Gribble said, adding that he was interested to learn that Congregation of Holy Cross had a manual labor school at Notre Dame. 

“It was a combination of, this is a religious community, but it also can use your skill as a cobbler,” Father Gribble said. “And so, to him, that was like, this is the ideal setup.”

Devoted to the Sacred Heart

John O’Neill arrived at the Congregation of Holy Cross at Notre Dame in 1874; and when he entered the postulancy he was given the religious name of “Columba.” 

He worked for eight years at St. Joseph’s Orphan Asylum in Lafayette, Indiana, recounted Father Gribble, returning afterward to Notre Dame to make shoes at the campus’ cobbler shop.  

In 1893, Brother Columba joined the Confraternity of the Sacred Heart, pledging to spread the devotion, Brother Philip said. 

During breaks from his shoemaking, he made Sacred Heart badges, apparently attaching purchased decals of the Sacred Heart image to fabric pieces. He also cut out paper images of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Brother Columba gave the badges to those he met in his workshop, on campus or who wrote to him. 

Until his death in 1923, Brother Columba made and gave out about 30,000 Sacred Heart badges and 10,000 Immaculate Heart of Mary badges, according to a Notre Dame article. 

The Sacred Heart badge emerged after Christ revealed his Sacred Heart to Visitation nun St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in a series of apparitions between December 1673 and June 1675 in Paray-le-Monial, France.

St. Margaret Mary promoted wearing the Sacred Heart image. 

The badge carries one of Christ’s promises to St. Margaret Mary: that he will be their secure refuge during life and, above all, in death. 

The badge or detente has been worn or carried by many, including during wars and plagues. In 1870, Pope Pius IX approved the Sacred Heart devotion and badge. Brother Columba encouraged people to keep it in a pocket or purse, and today it’s common to place the image on a cellphone case.

The first recorded healing from Brother Columba’s prayer was in 1910, Brother Philip explained. Columba instructed those who visited or wrote to him seeking healing to pray a novena prayer, which he also prayed for each of them, sometimes as many as 70 novenas a day, according to Brother Philip.

Brother Columba’s faith seemed childlike, Brother Philip said. “He truly believed that the devotion of the Sacred Heart was very powerful,” he said. “And that was his devotion. He told people, ‘You need to believe that this is going to happen and take the badge.’”

Brother Columba answered each of the letters he received — as many as several hundred in a day — despite his poor writing skills, Brother Philip said. 

He signed his letters with “In Kind Love,” which is the title of a documentary about his life available on YouTube that was produced by NewGroup Media, the Midwest Province of Brothers, and the Congregation of Holy Cross (United States Province of Priests and Brothers).

He never charged for the badges or visits, but people gave him offerings, according to Brother Philip, who added that, over the course of his years in the congregation, he received an estimated $5 to $6 million in donations, by today’s terms.

In 1917 Brother Columba contracted the Spanish flu, Father Gribble said. Subsequent bouts of the flu left him frail, with a cough and difficulty breathing, but he continued to meet with visitors until close to his death on Nov. 20, 1923. 

Thousands of people came then, and still do, to pay their respects at his gravesite, Brother Philip recalled.

Though many healings have been attributed to Brother Columba’s prayers during his life, a current miracle is required for his beatification, Brother Philip said. Favors received through his intercession are still reported, but none so far have met the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints’ criteria, he said.  

Visitors continue to pray before Brother Columba’s Sacred Heart statue and his gravesite on Notre Dame’s campus, and to obtain Sacred Heart badges, said Brother Philip, adding that he’s given away almost 3,000 badges in the past two years.  (You can get badges for yourself and your family here.)

“Brother Columba would likely say that faith powered his prayer,” Brother Philip said. “And if my faith is strong, then my prayer will be strong, and perhaps then God’s favor will be strong for me.”

The faith and prayer of a devout shoemaker may have changed the world, Fulkerson said, “at least for thousands of people, because all of those thousands of people had descendants who had descendants, who had descendants, over 100 years ago.”

“Brother Columba,” Bishop Rhoades said, “he just had this amazing trust in the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”

REPORT A FAVOR

If you pray this prayer and receive relief, please contact Holy Cross Brother Philip Smith at [email protected] or (574) 631-8972.