Albert Chmielowski (20 August 1845 – 25 December 1916) – born Adam Hilary Bernard Chmielowski – was a Polish nobleman, painter, disabled veteran a professed religious, and founder of both the Albertine Brothers and Albertine Sisters servants of the homeless and destitute.
The Visitandines of Krakow Poland played a role in his eventual canonization!
Herre is the story.
The miracle that made Brother Albert a saint was spectacular . It happened in Warsaw on May 3, 1986.
A month and a half earlier, on March 19, 1986, the eighth child of Barbara and Walerian Szułczyński was born in the delivery room of one of Warsaw’s hospitals. It was healthy – in the Apgar scale assessing the health of newborns, it received 10 points out of 10 possible.
After some time, however, the boy’s health suddenly began to deteriorate. Mrs. Barbara noticed that he had yellowed. Diagnosed with jaundice (but ordinary, and not the physiological one that many newborns have), oral thrush, a lot of underweight. The infant was taken to the hospital. Unfortunately, the treatment did not work, and the child’s condition deteriorated from hour to hour. The permissible level of bilirubin was eight times exceeded, which could significantly damage the brain. There was life-threatening sepsis, as well as brain-poisoning uremia. The child’s organs, one by one, ceased to function.
The parents suspected that the child’s serious condition may be related to the accident of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, which took place at that time. He was given an antidote to radiation: iodine, to which – as it turned out – he was allergic, which further aggravated his condition.
At such a difficult time for themselves, the Szułczyńscy family hurried to the Warsaw convent of the Visitation Sisters to ask for help from the local – a friend of the family – superior Sister Maria Klaudia Niklewicz. It so happened that Mother Klaudia in her youth studied medicine and knew it very well herself. In addition, as a great devotee of Blessed Brother Albert, she advised her family to pray for a miracle through his intercession. The Albertine Sisters in Krakow, who were informed by her, also prayed for the boy’s life and health. Together with the Visitandines, they began to recite the novena.
Meanwhile, in the hospital, the child’s health deteriorated even more from hour to hour. On April 29, another study was conducted. Renal, hepatic and circulatory system failure, pediouria were found. A chest x-ray showed developing pneumonia with respiratory failure. The infant was placed under an oxygen tent. The situation became hopeless and in fact only a miracle could save them.
The parents of the child came to the conclusion that there is nothing to wait for, and the dying child should be baptized as soon as possible. Yes with the whole ceremony, because from the water Mrs. Barbara has already baptized him. And this – fearing that she did something wrong – several times! The holy baptism took place in the hospital on the night of May 2-3, 1986. Conspiratorially, because in communist times in a military hospital it was unacceptable. He baptized a military chaplain, Father Captain Paulin Jan Wolny. The godparents were a nurse and a random man who came to visit his child. The boy’s name was Albert. Like Brother Albert!
Albert’s father noticed that already during this ceremony the color of the child’s skin began to change – the earthy face brightened (it turned out later that almost immediately after baptism the organs began to function properly).
Late at night, however, Barbara received a phone call from the hospital. A nurse called. She had no good news. Tragic. She said Albercik was in agony and she was leaving and afraid to leave.
The next day, Mrs. Barbara came to the hospital with her soul on her shoulder. She walked into the ward . The place where her son was lying under the oxygen tent was… Empty. “But he died,” she thought. She cried. Fortunately, this was not true. In the corridor she saw the head of the department. “When my child recovered miraculously! (…) Now you can go to the temples of the threshold and thank God for the returned life” – at the sight of the woman, the doctor from a distance joyfully shouted fragments and paraphrases of the Invocation from the Polish national epic – Pan Tadeusz Adam Mickiewicz, in which the author wrote about the return to life prayed to God through the intercession of the Mother of God. Mrs. Barbara did not know what he meant. The head of the department – an atheist, incidentally – hugged her and explained that Albert had suddenly and unexpectedly recovered. The boy, whose life had been hanging in the balance for days, suddenly became… a specimen of health.
Both the head of the department and the other doctors had no idea how this was possible, they could not explain it. It was almost like… resurrection.
The extraordinary healing of little Albert served as the miracle needed for the canonization of his blessed namesake. Despite the difficulties on the part of the hospital, medical records were collected and analyzed, witnesses were interviewed.
In November 1989, the Szułczyńscy family went to Rome to participate in the ceremony of canonization of their “benefactor”.
Severe illness from the first months of life did not have any negative impact on the further development of the baby. Albert Szułczyński – musically talented and still strongly connected with the Catholic Church – is today an adult, husband and father.
Source: https://pch24.pl/byc-dobry-jak-chleb-sw-brat-albert-adam-chmielowski/