Stupid things religious people say

[Fake Messiah]

I remember this case from an episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! "Signs from Heaven". A girl had a near fatal accident that left her braindead and was kept alive by medicine; nevertheless, Christians were flocking to her room, believing Jesus was giving her supernatural powers to heal them and make them warm in their belly. Her mom was selling some "miracle oil" that turned out to be chicken fat. She eventually died in 2007, two years after the episode was aired.

Now they're making a movie about her "miracles."

Grondahl: Film explores reputed miracles of comatose girl

The local real estate developer invested $3 million to produce a feature film that he hopes will inspire belief in the saintly presence and unexplained phenomena attributed to a comatose girl who lived in Worcester, Mass.

“Little Audrey” is directed by Michael Mailer and stars Emily Van Camp (“The Resident”), Jennifer Esposito (“Crash”) and Aidan Quinn (“Legends of the Fall”). It will premiere July 25 at the Woods Hole Film Festival on Cape Cod.

The filmmakers call it “a supernatural spiritual mystery based on a true story … as faith, skepticism and the unknown collide.” The script builds tension through an agnostic child psychologist brought in to debunk the alleged miracles but is unsettled by profound mysteries.

The film tells the story of Audrey Santo, who was brain-damaged after a near-fatal drowning in the family’s backyard pool in 1987 when she was 3. Non-verbal and paralyzed with a condition called akinetic mutism, her mother defied medical advice to have the girl institutionalized. She cared for Little Audrey at home, with nursing aides, until Audrey’s death at 23 in 2007 due to cardiorespiratory failure.

Dubbed a “victim soul” who suffered for others, the faithful believed God performed miracles through her, such as religious statues “weeping” blood, holy oil filling chalices and inexplicable healings of ailments of people on pilgrimages.

Throngs of believers flocked to the Santos’ modest ranch house to pray for a miracle while visiting the mute, immobile girl in her bedroom, which became a shrine. National media descended. Barbara Walters did a “20/20” special. Little Audrey’s notoriety reached global proportions. The Vatican ordered an investigation, which was inconclusive. The girl was not recommended for the process of canonization that leads to sainthood.

“I never imagined I’d be making a movie about Little Audrey’s miracles. But I kept praying and God guided me on this path,” Thomas said of a three-decade quest to bring “Little Audrey” to the big screen.

Thomas, 63, is a 1981 Guilderland High School graduate. He was a lapsed Catholic when he learned of Santo in 1997 from the late John Dooley, a devout communicant of Saint Lucy’s Catholic Church in Altamont. Dooley taught Thomas to pray the rosary and convinced him to join a prayer group.

Thomas was 34 when he traveled with Dooley to Worcester in August 1998 to attend a religious revival featuring Little Audrey at Fitton Field, the College of the Holy Cross football stadium with a capacity of 23,500. At the time, Thomas was something of a skeptic.

“The stadium was packed. John and I sat in the very top row and that’s where I experienced my first miracle,” Thomas said. He described an ethereal, floral scent that created a sensation of peacefulness that washed over him. He first dismissed the smell as a woman who splashed on too much perfume. But Dooley and others also inhaled the strange aroma and agreed it was a miracle from Little Audrey after she was carried onto the field in a stretcher encased in a clear plastic dome.

“That was such an amazing experience for me in the football stadium,” Thomas said. “I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since.”

Thomas began making visits to the Santo home, where he spoke at length with the girl’s mother and observed inexplicable happenings. His doubt turned to faith.

https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/...335381.php