My name is Ricardo Álvarez Crevelló, 49 years old, single, a doctor by profession, born and residing in Valencia. My father developed Alzheimer’s disease in 2006. There were 7 years of natural progression of the disease until one night in mid-May 2013 he woke up aggressive and violent, beside himself. Some years earlier I had gone to live with my parents to help my mother; she alone could not bathe him, dress him, help him eat, etc... he already needed help with many things and we had to keep watch over him 24 hours a day.
That night it was my turn to sedate him with injected emergency medication, and the following morning we transferred him to the Hospital Clínico of Valencia. He was admitted under the Neurology service, where they did everything humanly possible to find out the reason for such an abrupt change in my father’s neurological state. He could not speak (when less than 24 hours earlier he could do so perfectly), he could not stand steadily because he would fall, he did not recognize anyone, etc... I saw how each day he was “switching off” a little more. When the end was approaching, and since my father had always been a person of faith, I suggested to my mother that we call the priest who was on duty at the hospital; we told the nurses. I assumed that, being my father in that state, he would not be able to receive Communion,
Shortly afterward, a tall man entered the room; he was wearing a white coat like the ones we doctors wear, and with a very marked foreign accent he said in a loud voice, addressing my father, “Hello Francisco”! I thought he would be a neurologist, an internist, or some other specialist, but at that very instant I saw how my father brought his hands together in a gesture of prayer, and I thought about my father, “but what is he doing”? Next the man who had entered says, “I am the priest.” That was the first shock; my father had never been brought to the Clínico before, had never gone to Mass at the Clínico chapel, my father did not recognize me —who am his son... how was he going to recognize Fr. Henry and know that he was a priest?! He was wearing a white coat and the clerical collar was not clearly visible, nor was there any crucifix or anything that identified him as a priest.
Next, addressing my father, he says, “Francisco, do you want to confess”? Confess? but what is this priest saying? My father cannot speak! At that moment I observe how my father nods his head, and there I broke down. I stepped aside to give them the necessary privacy, and Fr. Henry sits on one side of the bed; I saw how my father communicated with gestures of the head. It was hard for me to accept what I was seeing. A few hours before this episode, my father had not responded to the sedative medication and had to be tied (with mechanical restraints) to the bed to prevent him from harming himself and others, but with Fr. Henry he was calm, serene, and at all times his hands appeared joined.
When the confession ended, he administered the Anointing of the Sick and placed on his tongue a very small particle of a Consecrated Host, which he was able to swallow. Fr. Henry stayed a little while talking with us, above all giving us encouragement and strength in the Lord. That priest had achieved what the medication could not achieve.
But the story does not end there. When Father Henry left the room, I approached my father and said in his ear, “Dad, now you are ready to make that last trip you are going to make,” and again, he nodded his head.
I have never seen a “supernatural” event like this. It cannot be explained by reason, by science, by medicine, that a patient with 7 years of Alzheimer’s progression, completely disconnected from the environment, “instantaneously” recovers consciousness in the presence of a priest and of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. There are many scientists who refuse to admit the supernatural origin of some things, and when they cannot explain something through reason they always use the same argument: “things happen by chance.” I was there, I am a witness to what happened in that room, and this is how I have told it.
Some time later I began to go to the 7:30 a.m. Mass in the Hospital chapel, and at each Eucharist I saw the devotion with which Father Henry celebrated. I only remember him sad and somewhat upset on one occasion; it was a Sunday afternoon, I arrived a little before Mass and he said to me, “how can it be that in a hospital where today there will be about 700 patients, only 2 have asked me for Communion?” That is (I do not want to speak of him in the past) Fr. Henry, a true Apostle of the Eucharist.
Thank you very much for having given me the opportunity to share the testimony. May God bless all the Servant Brothers and Sisters of the Home of the Mother.
Ricardo Álvarez Cervelló.
