Burden of Light

Father Richard Bain's journey from singles bars and atheism to faith healing and humility.

BY: Kimberly Winston

Excerpted from " Faith Beyond Faith Healing" with permission of the publisher, Paraclete Press.

Look at his hands and they are nothing special--long, lean fingers that taper gently from supple knuckles to manicured nails. His hands bear no remarkable scars, no memorable lines, no distinguishing marks at all that would seal them in anyone's memory for very long. They are graceful hands for a man, and he moves them in delicate arcs when he gestures, as he often does when he speaks.

But thousands of people testify that there is, in fact, something very special about the pale hands of Father Richard Bain, a 58-year-old Roman Catholic priest at Sacred Heart Church in the tiny town of Olema, Calif. Tens of thousands of people seek him out each year to receive a touch from those hands, which they believe bestow God's healing upon them.

For 15 years, Father Bain has traveled the country holding healing Masses and three-day parish missions. From his base in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, he has traveled from Vermont to Hawaii, Texas to Ohio. At his larger missions, a thousand people may show up, most of them in the hope that he can heal them or their loved ones of illness and disease.

Over the years, Father Bain has collected dozens of letters from people who believe he has helped cure them of everything from acne to cancer. A woman from Las Vegas writes that Father Bain took away pain she had after surgery. Another woman from San Bruno, Calif., said her husband was healed of an arthritic knee. A nun in San Francisco describes how, after a blessing from Father Bain, a 70 percent blockage in her cardiac artery disappeared. And Joe Illuzzi of West Hempstead, New York, writes that he and his wife, who were planning to resort to in vitro fertilization, conceived a child the usual way after Father Bain laid his hands on Mr. Illuzzi.

When asked about his gift of healing, he explains it away. "I don't think it is anything special," he says. "I think we all have this power. I prayed for these people the way I was taught to, and I really believe if anybody else did it, the same thing would happen."

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