
LA Catholics video screengrab / YouTube (Left), Wikimedia Commons (Right)
CV NEWS FEED // In a Dec. 16 press conference, Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez presented a local priest — Fr. Juan Miguel Gutierrez — who was healed through the intercession of Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati while in seminary. The healing was the second approved miracle needed to pave the way for Bl. Frassati’s canonization in 2025.
The press conference began with an opening prayer and a brief introduction from Archbishop Gomez. The Archbishop remarked that the Archdiocese already has two canonized saints, St. Juniperro Serra and Venerable Maria Luisa Josefa of the Blessed Sacrament. The city also received visits from St. Pope John Paul II and St. Teresa of Calcutta during their earthly lives.
“Los Angeles is truly a city of the angels and also a city of saints,” Archbishop Gomez said. “Now, we have a new saint who is watching over us from heaven.”
Then, Fr. Gutierrez told the story of his healing as a seminarian. In 2017, he was playing basketball with his brother seminarians when he injured his ankle. Doctors told him that it was most likely a pulled muscle, and he treated it like that.
Another seminarian, who had been a chiropractor before joining the seminary, tried to help Fr. Gutierrez recover, telling him to try some stretches. The exercises “turned out to be very painful, to say the least,” Fr. Gutierrez admitted, and the exercises ended up making the injury worse.
The chiropractor advised him to go back to the doctor when the injury wouldn’t heal, and an MRI revealed a torn Achilles heel, which would require surgery. He prayed at the chapel about the diagnosis, where he said he received an inspiration to pray a novena to Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati.
“Novenas are not magic,” he said, “they are journeys of prayer and journeys of faith. And sometimes we invite a saint to make that journey to help us pray to God for the need or intention that we have.”
During the novena, he was praying at the chapel again when he felt warmth all around his ankle. He said that he thought something was on fire, but couldn’t find a flame. During the experience of warmth, the pain in his ankle ceased, and when he returned to the doctor, there was no tear.
“Some people have asked me, why me? And I ask myself the question. God could have chosen a more charismatic, easy going, and less trouble-stirring person,” Fr. Gietierrez said. “Trust me I know, and my colleagues will be able to tell you how true that is. But as Scriptures tell us, it isn’t us who choose the Lord; it was Him who chooses us. And he has chosen us to bear fruit, and this event of this healing is meant to bear fruit.”
He concluded by saying that he is grateful at God’s work in our lives.
“I’m also left humbled by the fact that in Pier Giorgio, God has given me not only an intercessor but a friend,” he added.
After Fr. Gutierrez shared his testimony, Bl. Frassati’s niece, Wanda Gawronska, spoke through a remote feed and expressed her gratitude to the Archdiocese and for the miracle, noting that it would allow for the canonization of her uncle 100 years after his death.
Bl. Frassati will be canonized in 2025 between July 28 and August 3 during the Jubilee for Young People, as CatholicVote previously reported.
