“I took a drink of the water. I felt out of this world.” “Look! I can walk!” The words of Kathleen Kelly when she was suddenly healed after drinking the water at Our Lady Queen of Peace House of Prayer in Achill in September 2006
Verified accounts of physical healing, as well as spiritual healings and conversions, linked to particular visionaries and mystics and reported messages, have always been regarded as among the best indications of how genuine they are. In the case of Christina Gallagher, and Our Lady Queen of Peace House of Prayer in Achill, there have for eighteen years been numerous signs and a constant flow of testimonies from people who have received powerful favours. Hundreds of these have been documented and a number of the most significant physical healings have been verified as medically inexplicable.
An account of how a sudden healing took place on 10th September 2006 is related here in testimony given shortly afterwards by those involved, an elderly Co Mayo lady and her daughter visiting the House of Prayer.
Kathleen Kelly, who is in her eighties is from Kiltimagh, Co Mayo and she was very seriously debilitated in the months following a major operation earlier this year. It had a ffected her mobility and movement of her arms and legs, particularly on the right side. She was also in considerable pain and had to stay with her son and daughter-in-law, following the operation. She needed help to sit down and to get up, and she used a walking stick to assist her. The physiotherapist regularly called on her, to work on her arm movement .
“On that Sunday morning in the church at Kiltimagh, my daugher and her husband, back on a holiday from America, helped me to sit down on the seat and to stand up. After Mass, they said we’d take a trip to Achill Island. At the House of Prayer, we went into the chapel and then went for a cup of tea. I had to be helped, particularly while sitting down and getting up.”
“My daugher suggested that we walk around the yard outside and visit the holy water font. When we went to the font I aked Our Blessed Lady to help me and I took a drink of the water and I made the sign of the cross on both my knees. Then I got the strangest feeling, something I couldn’t explain. I felt as if I was out of this world. I handed the walking stick to my daughter and said. ‘You can carry that now’. She grabbed hold of me, I think she thought I was going to fall or something, I turned around and said ‘I don’t need it. Look, I can walk’.”
Mrs Kelly said she was completedly taken by surprise, but she realised right away that something miraculous had happened to her. Shortly after that her daughter left a few coins down on the ground and asked her if she could pick them up - knowing her condition a short while earlier. “I bent down and picked them up. And I began to move my arms up and down and could put them where I liked, something I just could not do beforehand. The pain was gone.”
Confirming her greatly improved condition since her healing experince in Achill, she said “I can still walk around and can move my arms and so on. Asked if her name could be made known, she said “I don’t mind people knowing it. The truth is the truth.” She said she prays every day to Our Blessed Lady and has great faith in her. Mrs Kelly’s daughter Anne, in her testimony described how, along with her husband, she was home on a holiday in Kiltimagh visiting her mother, Kathleen Kelly who was seriously incapacitated.
“I had been staying with my mother for two weeks, watching her struggling to get about with her walking stick, and in great pain at times. This morning (Sept 10th 2006) after Mass in Kilgimagh Church, we were about to find a place to have a meal, so I suggested that we go to the Hosue of Prayer, Achill. I was there earlier this week, and I had an urge to return. My husband was not too anxious to drive there, but we went and arrived with my mother. We immediately went to the prayer chapel and then we went for tea. Afterwards my mother watched the video tape about the history of the house of Prayer”
Then we visited the font outside and prayed at the statue. “ I suggested my mohter take a drink of holy water. She did, and then she stumbled, and she handed me the cane, though she could not move freely about without it for a long time. She said that she had been healed and thanked Our Lady. ” “My mother has an enormous faith in Our Lady and came through an operation a few months ago and believes it was with Our Lady’s help. My mother was suffering with pain up her right arem and fluid was gathering in her legs, and especially her swollen right knee. Since drinking the water her arms are now without pain and she has been laughing, which she hasn’t done for a long time.”
The testiomy of Kathleen Kelly and her sudden healing at Our Lady Queen of Peace House of Prayer in Achill was published in Ireland's Eye Magazine, October 2006 edition.