Oklahoma City Gets A New Shrine And Maybe A Saint

This Friday, 1000’s of the Catholic trustworthy will collect in south Oklahoma City for the dedication of the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine. They will be a part of Catholic Bishops from across the United States and Guatemala to honor the farm boy from Oklahoma who may quickly develop into a saint.

At Resurrection Cemetery in Northwest Oklahoma City an important piece in a large memorial -Blessed Stanley Rother’s body- is revealed, raised and readied for its last resting place.

“A lot of people ask ‘what was it like to go to a family gathering when Father Stan was there?’ ‘What was it like to have a saint in the family?’ And I always say he wasn’t born with a halo,” says Father Donald Wolf.             

Father Wolf is the Blessed Stanley’s second cousin.

“He [Blessed Stanley] came home for the last time to the state of Oklahoma for my ordination,” says Father Wolf.

Father Wolf would be the parish priest for the shrine which may even serve the realm’s rising Hispanic inhabitants and mix the parishes of Sacred Heart and Holy Angels.

The first Sunday there will probably be an estimated 5,000 worshipers for mass.

“If I’m supposed to be the living representative of the parish, yes there will be a lot of nervousness,” smiled Father Wolf.

The shrine is constructed within the Spanish colonial model. Much like blessed Stanley would have recognized in Guatemala. The grounds may even characteristic a duplicate of Tepeyac Hill in Mexico City the place the Virgin Mary is claimed to have appeared in 1531.

A 50-million-dollar shrine, the most important catholic church in Oklahoma devoted to a person many say is the least prone to develop into a saint.

“If somebody who’s a Rother can be considered a saint, then anybody could,” jokes Father Wolf. 

Blessed Stanley was born on a farm in Okarche.

“He was in the FFA and obviously grew up on the farm he knew about farming and techniques about that,” says his nephew, Patrick Rother. “So, when he went to Guatemala that was his strength and made him prosper down there.”

He had the quiet reserve of his mom, and was a tough employee and cussed like his father.

“He wanted to do what he knew was right, regardless of the circumstances,” says Patrick.

Yet he by no means discovered Latin – a sort-of-must for any would-be priest.

“He flunked out and was asked to leave the seminary where he began his training in San Antonio,” explains Archbishop Paul Coakley.    

The bishop on the time believed in him and located him one other seminary in Maryland.

Father Stanley was ordained a priest in 1963 right here in Oklahoma City.

Ultimately, he was requested to hitch the mission in Guatemala based mostly on expertise outdoors the church.

“He was sent down to do this work that nobody else could do because he was a better mechanic and carpenter,” mentioned Father Wolf.

When civil warfare grew more and more violent, Father Rother stubbornly stayed along with his church and its members in Guatemala.

He was murdered in his rectory in 1981.

On Monday, his physique was ceremoniously positioned within the altar of the chapel on the shrine.

People from all over the world are anticipated to return and pray for blessed Stanley’s intercession- his divine intervention.

“People have asked me repeatedly what’s it going to take for Blessed Stanley to become Saint Stanley Rother? And I’m like it’s going to take a miracle. But in fact that’s what it’s going to take,” says Archbishop Coakley. 

Rother is the primary US born martyr, making him one miracle away from sainthood.

“The standards are very rigorous, the church will take a very skeptical approach to any reported miracles, so we’ll see,” says Archbishop Coakley.

The course of has already moved alongside rapidly.

 “I’m hoping my dad and aunt can see that,” says Patrick. “That would be a great thing.”      

 “So, God’s made Stanley a saint,” says Father Wolf. “We’re just trying to keep up the bureaucracy of something that’s already happened.”

But Father Wolf says that is the lesson on this for all of us.

“Holiness is not something in books, holiness is not something that’s only present for those people that from the beginning are set apart from everyone else,” says Father Wolf.

If a cussed farm boy from Okarche, who flunks out of seminary, and is chosen for mission work as a result of he is a very good mechanic can develop into a saint.

“Holiness is the product of what people do in the situations they are a part of,” says Father Wolf.           

Then there’s hope for us all.

“Of course,” says Wolf. “That’s the way God would do things because that’s the way God always does things.”

Dedication for the Shrine is at 11am Friday morning. The shrine may even characteristic an training constructing, an occasion house and museum.