Interesting Boston Globe article on an area shrine:

Some Catholics want the church to officially recognize the site, or at least investigate it.

”I would love to see the Power case reopened," said Irene McGravey of North Andover, who remembers the day in November 1929 when her older cousin, 18-year-old Laura Moody, was said to have been cured of a spinal ailment. ”It’s just been a lost case."

Born in Ireland in 1844 and sent to Massachusetts at age 4 to live with a brother after his parents died, Power served as an altar boy at Holy Redeemer Church in East Boston, and attended the seminary at Laval University of Quebec. While there, he made pilgrimages to the shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, and was said to be deeply saddened by the suffering of the children he saw there.

After his ordination in Boston in 1867, Power became ill during his first assignment as a priest in Chicopee and died at his brother John’s home in Brookline at age 25, reportedly of pneumonia, on Dec. 8, 1869.

A relative of the priest was quoted in the Boston Herald as saying that family members over the years had noted that the grass on Power’s grave was always green, regardless of the condition of the rest of the cemetery. (There appeared to be nothing unusual about the turf at Power’s grave last week.)

Thousands converged on the site following reports of some 100 cures attributed to rainwater collected at the priest’s grave.

”First by hundreds they came, then by the thousands, on a Sunday and holiday the quarter-million mark was reached and the million mark has been passed," the Globe reported on Nov. 17, 1929. ”From far and near, in ambulances, on stretchers, on crutches, hobbling in braces, blind being led, sick babies being carried."

There were about 100,000 visitors on Nov. 24, the last day that the cemetery was open before the ban went into effect. One headline the next day said thousands had carried away bits of loam and that some brought bottles of water to touch to the ground.

”It all just exploded," Bradley said. ”The lines went all the way into Everett, which would have been a couple of miles."

There are photos linked at the article. Via Dom.