Sue Crates's renewed faith

Sue Crates’s renewed faith is a gradual return to Catholic belief, awakened not by certainty about a single cure but by the shared hope and compassion she encounters at St. Joseph’s Church in Banfield. Her response stands between skepticism and conviction: she cannot settle whether Alice Pagett’s recovery was miraculous, yet the church and its pilgrims restore a trust she had nearly lost.

Earlier Distance from the Church

Sue tells Gerry Fenn that she is Catholic, or at least used to be, and is uncertain whether she still can be because the Catholic Church does not approve of divorce. She has not spoken of this before because, as she explains, it had not seemed important. Her religious practice has dwindled to Christmas services, which she attends mainly for Ben, who enjoys the ceremony. The detail establishes that her return is not a simple resumption of settled habits: she has lived at a remove from the Church, with religious belonging complicated by her personal circumstances and reduced to an occasional observance shared with her son.

The change begins before Fenn sees it for himself. Sue has returned to the church and has been taking Ben there on Sundays. She describes the growing attendance as something almost like a pilgrimage: families bring children, sick people, and people with disabilities, and she experiences happiness in the surroundings before reaching the church grounds. Her account shifts the focus from a new physical cure to the atmosphere formed by those who have come seeking hope. For Sue, that collective experience is itself a reason to return.

A Pilgrimage of Shared Expectation

Sue urges Fenn to visit because she believes the church’s significance cannot be conveyed by reports that no further apparitions or cures have occurred. She does not deny that the visible events have stopped; instead, she understands the continuing attraction as residing in the atmosphere and the people gathered there. A rumor that Alice has said the Lady wishes to see her again on Sunday the twenty-eighth gives the growing expectation a specific focus, and Fenn goes with Sue and Ben to the church.

The crowd makes Sue’s description tangible. The approach through Banfield is unusually busy, with traffic and pedestrians moving toward the church despite cold, drizzling weather. At the entrance, the pathway is crowded; Sue holds Ben close so he will not be jostled as the family squeezes through. Fenn has brought a camera and a recorder, expecting a possible story, while Sue has brought him because she wants him to experience what she has found there. Their different purposes accompany them into the same gathering.

Inside, the church is crowded with people, including more wheelchairs beside the benches. Sue sees the vulnerable people around her and feels compassion and love rising beyond her private concerns, joining her emotionally to others in the congregation. The change has been gathering over the preceding three weeks. Her belief does not suddenly become certainty: she still does not know whether Alice’s cure was miraculous. What has changed is her willingness to trust the significance of what she has witnessed. After years in a spiritual wilderness, an extraordinary experience at the church has rekindled that trust, first tenuously and then with greater strength.

Faith and Fenn’s Skepticism

The congregation’s shared feeling is not enough to erase Sue’s differences with Fenn. When he winks at her in a manner she reads as mocking, his gesture interrupts her sense of fellowship. She had hoped he had come because he loved her and wanted to share in what mattered to her; she instead sees him as present for the chance of a story and as unwilling to trust what cannot be turned to professional advantage. Her sudden hostility reflects the personal cost of the divide: the church has drawn Sue toward belief, while Fenn’s journalistic detachment makes her feel that he cannot meet her there.

That contrast also clarifies what her renewed faith does and does not depend on. Sue does not claim proof of a miracle, nor does she base her return solely on a promised repetition of Alice’s earlier recovery. Her experience is communal and emotional: the suffering people, their hope, and the compassion she feels among them have made religious trust possible again. The gathering’s atmosphere matters to her even as Fenn initially regards it as material for a follow-up article.

Public Hope and Institutional Control

The growing pilgrimage has meanings beyond Sue’s private return. George Southworth presents the events at Banfield as possibly divine while also describing the opportunity for the village’s economic rebirth and for residents to regain belief. He asks Fenn to write more about what is becoming known as the Banfield Miracle. Sue’s response is different in emphasis: she speaks of the happiness and trust among those attending, not of commercial advantage, though she too understands the site as changed by the people who come to it.

Church authorities likewise recognize the scale of the consequences. Bishop Caines wants to see Alice and her mother, notes the possibility of wider religious fervor, and argues that the Church must control the situation as news spreads. He cites five cures, plus Alice’s own recovery, and anticipates that thousands may visit whether or not the site is formally declared a shrine. In a public statement, he describes the cases as extraordinary alleged cures and announces that a specially formed medical bureau will examine them before the International Medical Committee reviews its findings. The Church has also reached agreement to purchase the neighboring field. These procedures distinguish official judgment from the hope already gathering among pilgrims; Sue’s trust develops within that unresolved space rather than waiting for an institutional verdict.

The later procession extends that collective dimension. Thousands, from Banfield and farther away, join the march into the field, including people who had not previously held deep religious beliefs. Monsignor Delgard, facing the expectant crowd at the open-air Mass, hopes that the sick will not be disappointed and questions whether the event can be repeated. His anxiety sets the congregation’s fragile hope against the uncertainty of what will happen. Sue’s renewed faith is shaped by precisely this tension: she remains unsure what the cures prove, but the people’s shared expectation and her own rediscovered compassion have already drawn her back toward religious trust.