This
is a memorial webpage for the famed Roman Catholic "victim saint"
healer Filomena Vendola Dingle, who passed from this world on May 3,
2006.
Filomena Vendola Dingle, aka Mama Filomena or
Filomena Dingle, was a well-known Roman Catholic "victim saint" healer
who developed her gift of healing in the aftermath of a stroke which
had left her in a coma for 40 days and 40 nights. She worked both with
clients who came to visit her in person and also with clients who were
located at a great distance, the latter via remote healing. She always
claimed that her healing work simply involved invoking the aspect of
Divinity and the Divine Mother which she she called "Blessed Virgin
Mother Mary" to bless her clients and also to consecrate the "blessed
water" which she dispensed to clients and also taught distant clients
to make for themselves (they were asked to leave water in a glass
container overnite so that the Blessed Mother could infuse it with
"healing energies and love".
Filomena has been credited with healing numerous
clients all over the world of very serious illnesses after conventional
Western medical treatments had been exhausted and had failed to help
them.
Filomena Vendola Dingle, known simply as Filomena Dingle or Mama
Filomena to many, was a spiritual healer -- located in her later years
the island of Maui in Hawaii -- who worked with the Blessed Mother,
Mary, to heal people of many diseases via the use of healing water
blessed by the Blessed Mother. The blessed water was not sold, and
rather, it was distributed freely to clients who arrived to visit
Filomena in person and was also remotely blessed on a daily basis in
the homes of distant clients. Filomena offered both remote healing and
in-person healing. Some clients preferred to visit Filomena V. Dingle
in person, and if they did so, they received blessed water directly
from Filomena for the duration of their visit. There was no charge for
the water or for her healing treatments, although donations were
accepted.
Filomena never asked to become a spiritual healer,
and indeed, spent most of her adult life as a devout Roman Catholic
housewife in Italy, the wife of a medical doctor, never once
anticipating her eventual destiny of offering spiritual healing to all
who asked. However, as years passed, Filomena suffered a stroke in her
later years, and lay in a coma for 40 days and nights -- with no trace
of brain activity -- before finally awakening. However, in the
aftermath of her stroke, she remained paralyzed on the right side of
her body from the effects of the stroke. Within several years after
recovering from her stroke, Filomena was again visited by a divine
being who had first visited her during the time that she was in a coma.
Filomena identified her visitor as the Blessed Virgin Mother Mary, who
told her that she had been with her during the coma and had healed her,
and who now asked her to become a healer. As she pursued her new role
of spiritual healer, Filomena eventually moved from Italy, first moving
to the Philadelphia area of the USA and finally to Hawaii, where she
was to remain for the rest of her life.
In the years in which Filomena worked as a healer,
she remained paralyzed on one side of her body, and thus required some
assistance to travel about the house and to take care of her basic
needs, but nonetheless, she freely offered her spiritual healing to all
who called or visited, and she answered the telephone herself despite
her physical condition. Due to Filomena's disabled condition, her
brother Raffaele lived with her and cared for her, and also helped to
meet and greet and usher the numerous pilgrims from across the world
who showed up at the doorstep of their home in a quiet residential
neighborhood each day seeking healing.
Filomena was quite similar to the "victim souls" or
"victim healers", most of whom who were stigmatics. Stigmata may be
actual physical marks on the body or persistent illness, pain and
suffering, according to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic church, of
which Filomena was a devout member. She has reminded many of several
other Roman Catholic saint/healers over the the past several centuries,
including Padre Pio, who died in the 1960s, and Audrey Santo, the
comatose (unconscious since a childhood near-drowning in a swimming
pool) child in Massachusetts who is reputed to be a "victim soul" who
has great healing powers (please note that there is some controversy
here regarding the veracity of the claims.) Incidentally, Padre Pio was
eventually canonized by the church as a saint under the name Saint Pio,
now known as Blessed Pio. "Victim souls" were a phenomena occasionally
seen in the ranks of the faithful of the Roman Catholic church over the
past several hundred years, and basically, the term denotes someone who
has been asked to take on various afflictions or illnesses in order to
show the Grace and Presence of God and the Blessed Mother via courage
and luminance. Many have felt that Filomena was a victim soul and a
stigmatist because of her persistent paralysis on one side of her body
and attendant difficulties and pain which she endured twenty-four hours
a day.
Filomena's connection with the Blessed Mother Mary
has already been recounted above, and it is very interesting to note
that the two other well-known victim souls who were mentioned above
also seem to have incontrovertible links to the Blessed Mother. Padre
Pio and those around him claimed that he was visited by the Blessed
Mother, and that he was asked by her to undertake what would be his
lifelong mission of being a mystic, stigmatic, and healer, with many
illnesses as his accompaniment; they also claimed that it was She who
healed through him. Much the same with the victim soul Audrey Santo, as
numerous apparitions and visions of the Blessed Mother Mary are said to
have materialized in Audrey's vicinity, and her mother, Linda Santo,
and relatives have claimed repeatedly that Audrey Santo was given her
abilities as gifts from the Blessed Mother, and they also claim to have
received messages from Her through Audrey.
In a way, the victim healers of the past two
centuries may be seen as a kind of religious precursor of the modern
secular concept of the wounded healer so popular in modern psychology.
Another well-known victim soul from recent history in the USA was a
chronically ill woman known as Little Rose, whose full name was Marie
Rose Ferron, also known as the Stigmatized Ecstatic, of Woonsocket,
Rhode Island (strangely, not far from the city where Audrey Santo
lives....). Little Rose became quite popular as a suffering victim soul
in the 1930's, and also seemed to attribute the holy or mysterious
phenomena of her presence to the Blessed Mother Mary as well. Two
famous victim souls from the 19th century include Gemma Galgani
(1878-1903) of Tuscani, a lifelong sufferer and stigmatic, who was
eventually canonized as a saint (as Saint Gemma Galgani) by the
Catholic church, and Sister Josefa Menéndez, a sister of the
Society of the Sacred Heart, and who suffered nearly constant pain and
"attacks" throughout her adult life, dying early at an age of 34. As
with many of the other victim souls, Saint Gemma Galgani and Sister
Josefa Menendez also seemed to have special connections with the
Blessed Virgin Mary.
Please note that there
is also a Filomena Dingle
memorial website, which contains additional information about
Filomena and her healing work.
ed. note: Please note that Filomena's full name was Filomena
Vendola Dingle, but many called her simply Filomena Dingle. I have
occasionally encountered Filomena's first name mis-spelled on the web
as Fillomena, Filomina, and Philomena, and, occasionally, her last name
-- which was Dingle -- spelled as Dingel, Dingl or Dingell. Please rest
assured that these variant spellings all indicate the one and the same
Filomena Dingle, aka Filomena Vendola Dingle, who gained fame for her
Maui miracles by working with the Blessed Mother Mary!
