A Gratifying Mistake

A Gratifying Mistake

Gérard Duquet had gone to church to ask the Lord to shorten his sufferings, and he came out of it healed. This took place on July 5, 1993, at the church of Saint-Zacharie. Church of St-Zacharie

. Church of St-Zacharie

It is the story, to say the least astonishing, that was told to us by the person most concerned. Former mayor of Saint-Côme, Mr. Duquet was kind enough to tell us his uncommon experience. He had had an accident at the age of 22, which had left him with a problem in the spine. “It hurt but it was bearable,” he explains. But it was at the beginning of the nineties that it went bad. Osteoarthritis made him suffer more and more, and the situation grew continually worse.

After 18 months of this regimen, he was suffering and had difficulty moving, despite the 16 cortisone pills he took daily. His family doctor had referred his case to the CHUL, but without success. “They told me: 'We can do nothing for you. If you have treats to buy yourself, now is the time'” affirms Mr. Duquet. When he asked if it was a cancer, they answered him 'Not yet'. He promised the Virgin, to whom he had long devoted a devotion, to erect a statue to her if he healed.

Mr. Gérard Duquet

Several months later, on July 4, 1993, Mr. Gérard Duquet, despite his ailment, goes to the anniversary service of his brother, in Saint-Zacharie. There he hears that the Mass of the next day would be celebrated by Abbé Émile Tardif, the very one who had celebrated the marriage of Mr. Duquet. He decides to return the next day. “I could not take it anymore! I wanted to ask him to pray that my suffering stop,” affirms the man, who wished to die that very evening. What was his surprise to find that it was not Abbé Émile Tardif (dead for several years), but rather Émilien Tardif, a priest who works in charismatic circles. Not very enthusiastic about this idea, he nevertheless decides to stay, saying to himself: “It's Catholic, there's nothing there”

Father Émilien Tardif

When Father Tardif began to speak “in tongues” and announce signs of healings, Mr. Duquet was quite surprised to understand something of it. “He was saying everything that was in my file at the CHUL,” affirms the Beauceron. Addressing the 400 faithful present, the priest then asked “the person suffering from a cancer of osteoarthritis” to come forward if she felt relieved. A little later, he was more precise, saying that a person present suffered from a curve of the spine, and that she was healed at once.

Mr. Duquet then felt a warmth in his back, but at that moment, he thought he was dying, as he had asked. At the request of the priest, he came out of his pew and bent down to touch the ground with his hands. A gesture he had not been able to do since the age of 22. “I no longer knew if I was going mad or what was happening,” remembers Mr. Duquet, who affirms that since that time, he has felt no more pain, and that without taking any medication! It is in the months that followed that he erected in front of his home (motel La Truite) a statue of the Virgin and a grotto.

“Before I could no longer move, and there, I was working with 200-pound stones.” His neighbor Henri Brochu also noticed a radical change in his behavior. “It is night and day; before he had trouble walking,” he told us.

At the CHUL, where he told nothing of his experience, Mr. Duquet caused quite a commotion when he returned to be examined. “Either something happened, or we simply mixed up the files, because the man in front of us and the file, they don't match,” he would have been told. “To understand what happened to me,” he began to take part in the activities of the charismatics, where he sometimes gives testimonies. “I tell what happened, I tell the truth,” maintains the man, who at the beginning hesitated to speak publicly, for fear that it might all be but a mirage.

Mary, thank you for this gratifying mistake!

Article by Jacques Légaré, journalist.

(Extract from Hebdo Régional de Beauce, P.Q., Canada, December 23, 1995, p. 3)