February 27: Rome: The Church in Myanmar might soon have its first blessed, Father Clemente Vismara, a missionary priest of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions.

So says Father Piero Gheddo, also of PIME, when he announced the examination of the healing of a boy, attributed to the intercession of the priest who was called “the patriarch of Burma,” as Myanmar was then known.

If the healing is approved as a miracle, it will open the doors to the beatification.

Father Gheddo, the founder of the AsiaNews service, today explained the progress of the process of beatification of the missionary in Burmese lands.

Father Vismara carried out his work for 65 years in the Asian country, from 1923 to 1988. He returned to Italy only once, in 1957, because of illness.

He died on June 15, 1988, in Mong Ping, in the Diocese of Kengtung, on the border with China and Laos.

He was immediately invoked as “protector of children” because “he always lived among 200 to 500 orphans, whom he used to collect from villages destroyed by war or were lost through hunger or disease,” recalled Father Gheddo.

Never felt old

The missionary priest set up six parishes, built many churches and chapels, schools and hospitals, orphanages and residences, and taught tribal people more modern agricultural methods.

“Clemente died at age 91 but he used to write that he never felt old, because he was still useful to many abandoned children and people, whom he gathered into his mission, supported and cared for with the help of Sisters of Maria Bambina,” continued Father Gheddo.

In October 1996, Cardinal Carlo Martini of Milan launched the cause for his beatification — in his birthplace, Agrate Brianza. The cause “today has nearly come to a close,” said the founder of AsiaNews.

“In 2001, I presented six alleged miracles obtained through his intercession to the Congregation for Sainthood Causes,” Father Gheddo said. “One of them seems to be at the point of being approved: a 10-year-old boy, Joseph Tayasoe, fell 5 meters from a tree and hit his head on a big stone: He bled from his nose and ears and smashed his skull with a crack visible to the naked eye.

“He spent four days in a coma and, after prayers to Father Vismara, he suddenly woke up and asked to eat, completely healed, without any consequences or care in ensuing years. Today, aged 16 years, he is a completely normal boy.”

Tomb visits

According to the PIME priest, also interested in Father Vismara’s beatification are Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, and the bishops of Myanmar “who, in an official document to mark his 90th year, described him as ‘the patriarch of Burma.’”

Visitors to his tomb in Mong Ping include Protestants, Buddhists, animists and Muslims.

Among Myanmar’s approximately 51 million people, 72% are Buddhist, 12.6% animist, 8% Christian and 2.4% Muslim. Catholics number 600,000.