Alphonse Ratisbonne was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Strasbourg, France, in 1814. Intelligent, educated, and strongly opposed to Catholicism, he openly mocked the Church and especially resented conversions from Judaism to Christianity. His own brother, Théodore Ratisbonne, had converted and later become a Catholic priest, something Alphonse considered a betrayal.
In 1842, while traveling through Europe before his marriage, Alphonse arrived in Rome. There he encountered a Catholic nobleman named Baron Théodore de Bussières. The Baron was deeply convinced that the Blessed Virgin Mary could obtain Alphonse’s conversion through grace.
The two men spoke often about religion. Alphonse argued confidently against Christianity and treated Catholic devotion with sarcasm and disbelief. The Baron did not attempt lengthy theological debates. Instead, he proposed something simple.
He asked Alphonse to wear the Miraculous Medal.
At first, Alphonse laughed at the idea. But the Baron pressed him gently. His reasoning was essentially this:
If the Medal meant nothing, then wearing it would do no harm. But if the Catholic Faith were true, then perhaps grace might come through it.
Alphonse eventually agreed, largely out of amusement and curiosity rather than belief. He later admitted he wore the Medal without respect and with no intention whatsoever of converting.
The Baron also asked him to recite the Memorare each day:
“Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary…”
Alphonse considered the whole thing ridiculous, but he copied the prayer and carried it with him.
What makes the story remarkable is that, even while wearing the Medal, Alphonse continued mocking Catholicism. Nothing outward appeared to change immediately. Yet afterward he admitted that he had begun experiencing an unusual interior disturbance he could not explain. Thoughts of the Medal and the prayer remained with him constantly.
On January 20, 1842, Baron de Bussières brought Alphonse to the Church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte in Rome while attending to funeral arrangements for a friend.
Alphonse entered the church with no religious intention. He later testified that he was wandering the church casually and even impatiently while the Baron handled business elsewhere.
Then the event occurred.
Alphonse suddenly saw the entire church disappear except for one side chapel flooded with light. In that light stood the Blessed Virgin Mary exactly as she appeared on the Miraculous Medal.
He later said she did not speak a single word.
Yet in one instant, he understood everything.
Years later, when asked to describe the experience, Alphonse said:
“She did not say anything to me, but I understood everything.”
He said that in a single moment he saw:
The proud skepticism that had defined him collapsed immediately.
When Baron de Bussières returned, he found Alphonse overwhelmed with emotion, weeping, and transformed. The man who had entered the church mocking religion now begged to see a priest and asked for instruction in the Catholic Faith.
The conversion was so sudden and complete that it shocked everyone who knew him.
Church authorities investigated the event carefully. Witnesses were interviewed. Alphonse himself gave testimony repeatedly and consistently. The case was formally recognized by Church authorities in Rome as an extraordinary grace connected to the Miraculous Medal.
Alphonse was baptized later that same year.
His conversion did not fade emotionally after a few weeks. He completely changed his life. Eventually he became a Catholic priest and spent decades working for the conversion of souls and the service of the Church.
The story spread rapidly across Europe because it was difficult to explain naturally:
Alphonse had not been emotionally searching for Catholicism,
he had not entered the church intending to pray,
and he had been openly hostile toward the Faith shortly beforehand.
To Catholics throughout the world, the event became one of the clearest and most famous miracles associated with the Miraculous Medal.
The True Account of Claude Newman
by John Vennari
The following true story took place in Mississippi in 1944. The account was related by a priest from Mississippi, who personally witnessed many of the events. He has left for posterity the following account.
Claude Newman was a black man who worked for a landowner. He had married a woman of the same age. One day while out ploughing the fields, a messenger came and told Claude that his wife was screaming. Claude ran to his house and found that his wife had been attacked. Claude saw red, grabbed an axe, and hacked the man to death. When they rolled the body over, the dead man was the favorite employee of the owner for whom Claude worked. Claude was arrested, convicted of murder and condemned to death.
While [Claude] was in jail awaiting execution, he shared a cell-block of some sort with four other prisoners. One night, the five men were sitting around talking and they ran out of conversation. Claude noticed a medal on a string around another prisoner’s neck. He asked what it was, and the Catholic boy told him that it was a medal. Claude said, “What is a medal?” The Catholic boy could not explain what a medal was or what its purpose was. At that point, and in anger, the Catholic boy snatched the medal from his own neck and threw it on the floor at Claude’s feet with a curse and a cuss, telling him to take the thing.
Claude picked up the medal, and with permission from the prison attendants, placed it on a string around his own neck. To him it was simply a trinket, but he wanted to wear it.
Little did Claude know that this little incident would mark the beginning of a complete and radical change in his life….
During the night, sleeping on top of his cot, he was awakened with a touch on his wrist. And there stood, as Claude told the priest later, the most beautiful woman that God ever created. At first he was very frightened. The Lady calmed down Claude, and then said to him, “If you would like Me to be your Mother, and you would like to be My child, send for a priest of the Catholic Church.” With that She disappeared.
Claude immediately became terrified, and started to scream, “a ghost, a ghost,” and fled to the cell of one of the other prisoners. He then started screaming that he wanted a Catholic priest.
Father O’Leary, the priest who tells the story, was called first thing the next morning. He arrived and found Claude who told him of what had happened the night before. Then Claude, along with the other four men in his cell-block, asked for religious instruction, for catechism.
Initially, Father O’Leary had difficulty believing the story. The other prisoners told the priest that everything in the story was true; but of course, they neither saw nor heard the vision of the Lady.
Father O’Leary promised to teach them catechism, as they had requested. He went back to his parish, told the rector what had happened, and returned to the prison the next day to give instruction.
It was then that the priest learned that Claude Newman could neither read nor write at all. The only way he could tell if a book was right-side-up was if the book contained a picture. Claude had never been to school. And his ignorance of religion was even more profound. He knew nothing at all about religion. He did not know who Jesus was. He did not know anything except that there was a God.
Claude began receiving instructions, and the other prisoners helped him with his studies. After a few days, two of the religious Sisters from Father O’Leary’s parish-school obtained permission from the prison authorities to help instruct the men. They wanted to meet Claude. The women in the prison. One of the Sisters then started to teach the women catechism as well.
Several weeks passed, and one day Father O’Leary was going to give instruction on Confession. The Sisters told the prisoners, “Okay, today Father is going to tell you about the Sacrament of Confession.”
Claude said, “Oh, I know about confession.”
“The Lady told me,” said Claude, “that in confession we are kneeling down by the side of the Cross and if we are truly sorry for our sins, Our Lord’s Precious Blood He shed flows down and washes away all sins.”
Father O’Leary and the Sisters’ mouths fell open. Claude thought they were angry and said, “don’t be angry, don’t be angry.”
The priest said, “We’re not angry, Claude. But tell us, have You seen Her again?”
Claude said, “Come around the corner away from the others.”
When they were alone, Claude said to the priest, “She told me that if you doubted me that you should be reminded that lying in bed one night, you made a vow to Her which She accepted. And, Father O’Leary recalls, no one knew of that vow.”
This convinced Father O’Leary completely of the truth about his visions of Our Lady.
They then returned to the catechism class on Confession. And Claude kept telling the other prisoners, “You should not be afraid to go to confession. You’re really telling God your sins, not this priest, or any priest. We’re telling God our sins.” Then Claude said, “You know, the Lady said [that Confession is] something like a telephone. We talk through the priest to God and God talks back to us through the priest.”
About a week later, Father O’Leary was preparing to teach the class about the Blessed Sacrament. The Sisters were present for this too. Claude indicated that the Lady had also taught him about Holy Communion, and he asked if he could tell the priest what She had said. The priest agreed immediately.
Claude related, “The Lady told me that in Communion, I will only see what looks like a piece of bread. But She told me that THAT is really and truly Her Son. And that He will be with me just for a few moments as He was with Her before He was born in Bethlehem. And that I should spend my time like She did, in all Her time with Him, in loving Him, adoring Him, thanking Him, praising Him and asking Him for blessings. I shouldn’t be bothered by anybody else or anything else. But I should spend those few minutes with Him.”
Eventually they finished the instructions, Claude was received into the Catholic Church, and the time came for Claude to be executed. He was to be executed at five minutes after twelve, midnight.
The sheriff asked him, “Claude, you have the privilege of a last request. What do you want?”
“Well,” said Claude, “you’re all shook up. The jailer is all shook up. But you don’t understand. I’m not going to die. Just this body. I’m going to be with Her. So, can I have a party?”
“What do you mean?” asked the sheriff.
“A Party!” said Claude. “Will you give Father permission to bring in some cakes and ice cream and will you allow the prisoners on the second floor to come into this room so that we can all be together?”
“Somebody might attack you,” the sheriff said.
Claude turned to the men and said, “Oh no, they won’t. Will you?”
So, the priest visited a nearby town where one of the Sisters supplied the ice cream and cake.
Afterwards, because it was the First Friday and because Claude wanted a Holy Hour, the priest and all the prisoners went to the Church and they all said the Rosary and had a Holy Hour, with Claude participating from his prison cell.
Afterwards, the priest went to the chapel to pray before he could give Claude Holy Communion.
Father O’Leary returned to the prison. On one side of the bars, the priest and Claude prayed together as the clock ticked toward midnight.
Fifteen minutes before the execution, a guard came running up the stairs shouting, “The Governor has given a two-week stay of execution!” Apparently the governor had been aware that many people were trying to get a stay of execution for Claude. When Claude found out, the sheriff thought it was a reprieve and that Claude was not going to be executed. But Claude said, “You don’t know. And Father, you don’t know. I saw Her face, and looked into Heaven. I don’t want another day.”
Claude then said, “What happened in those two weeks was that God would refuse me nothing.” Father O’Leary said that Claude sobbed bitterly.
The sheriff left the room. The priest remained and gave Claude Holy Communion. Claude eventually quieted down. Then Claude said, “Why? Why must I still remain here for two weeks?”
The priest had a sudden idea.
He reminded Claude about a prisoner in the jail who hated Claude intensely. This prisoner had led a horribly immoral life, and he too was sent to be executed.
The priest said, “Maybe Our Blessed Mother wants you to offer this denial of being with Her for his conversion.” The priest continued, “Why don’t you offer to God every moment you are separated from Her for this prisoner so that he will not be separated from God for all eternity.”
Claude agreed, and asked the priest to teach him the words to make the offering. The priest complied. At the time, the only two people who knew about this offering were Claude and Father O’Leary.
The next day, Claude said to the priest, “That prisoner hated me before, but Oh! Father, how he hates me now!” The priest said, “Well, that’s a good sign.”
Two weeks later, Claude was executed.
Father O’Leary remarked, “I’ve never seen anyone go to his death as joyfully and happily. Even the official witnesses and the newspaper reporters were amazed. They said they couldn’t understand how anyone could go and sit in the electric chair actually beaming with happiness.”
His last words to Father O’Leary were, “Father, I will remember you. And whenever you have a request, ask me, and I will ask Her.”
Two months later, the white man, who had hated Claude, was to be executed. Father O’Leary said, “This man was the filthiest, most immoral person I had ever come across. His hatred for God, for every form of religion, defied description.”
Just before his execution, the sheriff asked this man to at least kneel down and make his peace with God before the sheriff would come for him.
The prisoner spat in the sheriff’s face.
When he was strapped in the electric chair, the sheriff said to him, “If you have some sort of confession to make, now is the time.”
The condemned man stared.
All of a sudden the condemned man became fixed on the corner of the room and became frozen in one expression of absolute horror.
He screamed.
Turning to the sheriff, he shouted, “Get me a priest!”
Now, Father O’Leary had hidden in another room because the law required a clergyman to be present at the execution. The priest, however, had hidden because the condemned man hated priests so intensely that he screamed if he saw a clergyman at all.
Father O’Leary immediately entered the room. The room was cleared of everyone except the priest and the condemned man for confession. The priest heard the man’s confession. The man admitted every sin but turned away from his former hatred and his immoral life.
When everyone returned, the sheriff asked the priest, “What made him change his mind?”
“I don’t know,” said Father O’Leary.
The sheriff said, “Well, I do.”
The Sheriff turned to the condemned man and asked, “Son, what changed your mind?”
The prisoner responded, “Remember that black man Claude — who I hated so much? Well he’s standing there [he pointed], over in that corner. And behind him with one hand on each shoulder is the Blessed Mother. And Claude said to me, ‘I offered my death in union with Christ on the Cross for your salvation. She has obtained for you this gift, to see your place in Hell if you do not repent.’ I was shown my place in Hell, and that’s when I screamed.”
This, then, is the power of Our Lady.
We see many parallels between these facts of Claude Newman story and the Message of Fatima in 1917. There is the emphasis on:
• Sacramental Confession;
• Holy Communion;
• Making sacrifices for Sinners;
• The vision of Hell.
“Many souls go to Hell,” said Our Lady of Fatima, “because they have no one to pray and make sacrifices for them.”
Source booklet: SicutInCaelo.org
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