Reported in [Spirit Daily.com] online newspaper. The prayer cards? They show Raphael appearing to Tobiah and have a special prayer requesting the great angel's intercession. Nearly ten years ago Father Whalen already had gathered the written testimonies of eighty people who claimed relief or outright healing from seizures, leukemia, heart problems, and cancerous tumors. No one knows what the count is now. "I just can't tell you how wonderful it is to experience the prayer power and miraculous workings of the St. Raphael prayer card," wrote a woman named Ginny. "And day by day I have felt the lump disappearing. My doctor tells me I am one of those people who they cannot explain but I am very much aware of what has happened through faith in St. Raphael."

"I was diagnosed with leukemia found in my blood tests," wrote another. "I had been sick for some time until my wife obtained a St. Raphael card from a friend who told us to pray for healing. My family began to pray, and when I went back for more blood tests, the leukemia was gone!" Claimed a woman identified only as Mildred: "My 15-year-old grand-daughter, Laurie, had cancerous lumps all over her body. They all disappeared. Now she has only scars. Her cancer is in remission."

Naturally, we can't verify all these claims. There are more. There are accounts of healing for lesser problems also. There are calcium deposits that have gone, there are habits that have been kicked, there are emotions -- like Father Whalen's own -- that have been repaired. This is a man of faith, a man who prays for 12 hours over vats of holy oil, a man who was praying on a stormy day at a St. Pio shrine in Barto, Pennsylvania, recently when, according to one witness, the clouds suddenly parted and a ray of sun illuminated the luminous priest!

They swear the clouds formed an image of Padre Pio.

Ah, yes, Father Joe Whalen -- now at St. James Church in Danielson, Connecticut. He dispenses healing oil and the special St. Raphael prayer cards everywhere he goes as a Missionary of LaSalette, which is celebrated September 19.

One heckuva a priest -- the one God sent to bless our apartment when there was no one else, the one who presided over his former wife's funeral, and has baptized five of his grandchildren. The drop-down drunk who is now a hero to his children.

And to us.

"God does draw with crooked lines, you know that," says the priest, who stopped in on us again last week. As for his calling: he urges the Church to promote late vocations at this time of crisis and still thinks of that nun who has been cloistered for more than fifty years now and with whom he remains in touch.

"When I visited Sister Mary Michael again, she said, 'Joseph, I am convinced that your mother got a glimpse of your ordination," recalls the priest. "Jesus surely parted the skies to allow her to look down from Heaven and see the fulfillment of her prayers." Learn more about Father Whalen [here].