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DETROIT (WJBK) - Detroit is the center of the Catholic world this week as a legendary Catholic priest is honored for answering a prayer with a miracle.
Father Solanus Casey will be Beatified on Saturday during Mass at Ford Field in Detroit. He's being honored for miracles he performed but his impact on the city of Detroit is even greater.
Around the corner from where Father Casey lies for Catholics to pray in front of is the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, a bustling kitchen he helped start in 1929 to provide a meal, a warm place, and a warm smile.
"These guys are getting three square miles a day here on Conner. They get breakfast, they get the meal they get at 11 o clock and another meal later. And it's not just sandwiches. It's meals," Lenora Coppiellie said.
Lenora believes in small miracles and big ones. The volunteer at the kitchen said her husband, Raymond, was healed by the priest in 1932 when he was only just a few months old. He had a 108 degree fever, severe ear infection, and antibiotics weren't available.
Raymond Coppiellie is the grandfather of FOX 2's Derek Kevra.
Raymond's mother decided against a medical procedure on the delicate infant because it would be too risky. She went to the monastery and that's where Kevra's grandfather's life was saved and changed.
"Father Solanus was in his office alone and he always answered the door. So she took him in and he blessed him. Ie enrolled him in some masses and told her to take him home-do not worry, he will be fine and he blessed her. His temp started coming down and the next day he was normal. He started eating and drinking and he had been fine then," Lenora said.
Even the doctor who was treating Raymond, not even Catholic himself, knew something significant and miraculous had happened.
"The doctor said 'I do know what happened here but he said if you want to call it a miracle then call it a miracle because this child should have been dead with the high fever that he had'," Lenora said.
On Saturday, 70,000 will gather at Gord Field where Father Solanus Casey, under the order of the Pope himself, will be beatified - which is the step before sainthood. There's even mention of Raymond Copiellee's miracle in the book about The Late Father who died at the age of 86 back in 1957.
For Lenora Coppiellie, this celebration is something she would never miss.
"You asked him for something he usually gave it to them if it was supposed to be." Lenora said.
Her marriage to Raymond was supposed to be. And she thanks Father Solanus for that.