Irving Houle

The Grandfather with the Wounds of Christ

Irving Houle was born on December 27, 1925, in Wilson, Michigan, a small community in the state’s Upper Peninsula. At age six, he nearly died after falling off a horse. The Franciscan sisters at a nearby convent prayed for his recovery, and young Irving pulled through. It was the first of many extraordinary events in an otherwise ordinary life.

For decades, Irving lived the quiet life of a blue-collar worker in Michigan: he married, raised a family, attended Mass, and worked with his hands. Nothing about his exterior life suggested anything unusual. He was, as he would later say, “just a nobody.”

Then, on Good Friday 1993, at the age of sixty-seven, Irving reported receiving the stigmata, visible wounds corresponding to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus Christ. The phenomenon, reported by a handful of saints and mystics throughout Church history (most famously Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Padre Pio), transformed the final chapter of his life.

For the next sixteen years, Irving devoted himself to praying over the sick and suffering. Tens of thousands of people came to see him, many reporting extraordinary healings. He never charged money, never sought publicity, and always deflected attention from himself. “God does the work,” he would say. He died on January 3, 2009, at age eighty-three. In November 2018, Bishop John Doerfler of the Diocese of Marquette formally opened his cause for canonization. The USCCB bishops affirmed the advancement of his cause in 2019.

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