Montemaria mega shrine not yet up but healing stones abound
By Allison Lopez
Inquirer
First Posted 01:54:00 12/02/2007
MANILA, Philippines -- It was in August that Fr. Nap Baltazar of the St. Francis of Assisi parish in Meycauayan, Bulacan, first heard about the phenomenal gift of healing of Fr. Fernando Suarez, from a Mass the latter celebrated on television.
Baltazar recalled experiencing a strange, compelling sense to find out more about Suarez. He searched the Internet and found out that the Canada-based Suarez was planning to build in five years a mega-shrine dedicated to Our Lady of the Poor in Montemaria (Mary’s Mountain) in Batangas.
There were a dozen or so YouTube videos of Suarez, including one where he recited a healing prayer in Montemaria (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= 8UP3LHBgtIc ). It is part of a “Cyber Healing Center” being posted on the Internet, intended for those who need healing but cannot travel.
Baltazar spent sleepless nights mulling over his discoveries. Something was pushing him to go to Montemaria.
And so, on Aug. 30, accompanied by four parishioners and armed with a crude map, he embarked on a trip, a pilgrimage, to Montemaria.
There, amid a strong wind, Baltazar went to the very edge of the cliff and contemplated the mesmerizing panorama of Verde Island and the passing ships looking like tiny toys below.
The hilltop was bare except for a white wooden stage where Suarez said Mass back in 2006, when it was erected.
This would be dwarfed by the planned mega-shrine on the five-hectare pilgrimage site, which would include a statue of Our Lady of the Poor as tall as the Statue of Liberty in New York or that of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro.
Healing stones
By compulsion, perhaps wanting a memento of what he believed was sacred ground, Baltazar picked up a number of stones.
He gave a stone to each of his companions before embarking on the trip home.
The next day, he received a phone call from one of them.
The frantic, weeping parishioner was saying that on the previous night, he rubbed the stone on his shoulders, which he had not been able to move for years. And now, he said, he could move his shoulders and even lift his arm.
The news spread like wildfire. People came to Baltazar asking for a stone. He handed six more stones to them.
More reports of healing flooded the parish—cancer cells disappearing, pain vanishing instantly, chemotherapy schedules cancelled, dead kidneys revived.
Baltazar soon found himself running out of stones. On Oct. 11, he embarked on a second trip to Montemaria.
He took only 12 stones—after the 12 apostles, he said.
Pilgrimage
After three days, Baltazar had only three stones left. One was sent to Italy for a parishioner’s ailing brother.
He thought: “Why wait for the future when Father Suarez returns? We can get the Lord’s healing now. Montemaria is a sacred place of healing, just like Lourdes and Fatima. The stones are related to the Holy Eucharist.”
Although Baltazar had never met Suarez, he asked permission from the latter’s aides to conduct a parish-wide pilgrimage to Montemaria.
Instantly, 250 parishioners enlisted. In the end, there were 400 of them in a convoy of six buses and four vans, coming from Meycauayan, Obando, Valenzuela, Malolos and Plaridel.
On his third trip to Montemaria on Oct. 22, Baltazar brought an army of believers.
He asked the pilgrims to bring stones to replace what they were to get. He told them: One must give back something in return, not just take. What if the place runs out of stones?
In Montemaria, the pilgrims took about 5,000 stones, and replaced about 4,000.
A Mass was celebrated, after which the pilgrims wrote their names and illnesses on the stems of white roses that they placed at the foot of a steel crucifix.
A woman gave a tearful testimony of how her stage-4 cancer of the ovary had vanished into thin air, shocking her doctors.
The pilgrims released balloons before returning home to proclaim the love and mercy of the healing Lord.
Healing reports go global
A week later, a doctor who was healed of cancer had stampitas of St. Francis of Assisi printed and distributed to parishioners.
An ailing woman eventually reported that because the healing stones were hard to come by, she put a stampita on her belly and found that her pains had disappeared by the next morning.
As of this writing, more reports of the healing stones of Montemaria are spreading beyond Bulacan.
Recently, I went to Meycauayan to interview on camera Baltazar and five women who have been healed. This is for a new Youtube video for the Cyber Healing Center, for the whole world to see, especially Filipinos abroad who have seen the first Youtube on Suarez’s healing prayer.
Lolit Esguerra writes: “I prayed with Father Suarez his Youtube healing prayer and the pain in my shoulders, which no medicine could remove, disappeared.”
The Lord’s healing is becoming global through the Internet. He heals by touch, by cellular phone, or by land line.
Too old to go to church, 87-year-old Rosella Purugganan said all her pains vanished after she heard Suarez’s healing Mass on television.
In Medjugorje, Mary’s message was that the Philippines would one day become a global spiritual center. Was the message about Montemaria?
Healing of the poor
Suarez, who hails from Taal, Batangas, is a member of a small congregation in Canada called Companions of the Cross.
He says his mission is “the healing of the poor.”
He lives in a suitcase, travelling to bring the healing of the Lord to other Third World countries in Asia, Africa and South America.
In his visit to the Philippines in December 2006, his healing Mass in Marilao was attended by a staggering 10,000 people and covered live by Radio Veritas.
Suarez plans to return this month from his base in Canada.
For inquiries, contact eastwind@motherignaciahealingministry.com.
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