New Italian saint tied to “miraculous” healing of Delaware County man

A Delaware County man is headed to Rome to witness Pope Benedict XVI’s canonization this weekend of Father Louis Guanella, an Italian priest who died in 1915. 

Guanella is becoming a saint because it was deemed a miracle that William Glisson Jr. recovered from his injuries after a March 2002 accident when he was rollerblading with a friend.  “Down Baltimore Pike down a hill,” said Glisson. “I was going backwards. I hit a crack in the curb, and it knocked me up backwards. I flew up in the air, I hit my head and kind of pretty much went unconscious from the beginning.”His medical prognosis wasn’t good.  Then family members, friends and others used two relics of Father Guanella’s in their prayers to ask for Glisson’s recovery.  Glisson said his doctor refused to take all the credit.”He said that it wasn’t him that did it—that’s he’s good but he’s not that good, so he instantly knew—even the doctor knew that it was some type of a miracle,” said Glisson.In November 2009, the medical commission of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints declared there were no scientific, natural, or medical reasons for Glisson’s cure.  While the experience saved his life, Glisson said it hasn’t completely changed him.”It hasn’t made me more active in the church, but it has made me more aware that there actually is something or someone else here with us watching over us,” he said.

Glisson said he still wonders why his life was saved.