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Millionaire
Gives It All Away After Seeing The Blessed Virgin At Medjugorje
Written by Michael
H. Brown.
[See
here] image of painting Ferdinand did titled Our Lady of Compassionate
Protection that wept Rose scented oil.
Reported in
Spirit Daily.com
online newspaper. His name is Ferdinand Roccanti. He used to be
a multimillionaire. He used to be in trouble with the law. He is
now an evangelist. It was in 1992 that he traveled for the first
time to the apparition site of Medjugorje and there witnessed what
he describes as a huge manifestation of the Virgin Mary.
Once a car dealer
in New England and then Florida, where he amassed a small fortune
of $5 million, Roccanti and his wife Barbara were going up Apparition
Hill on September 12, where one of the seers, Ivan Dragicevic, was
to receive a message. "Barbara had some candles and we climbed
Apparition Hill and I knelt by this pile of rocks where they said
Mother Mary first appeared -- not to think that she was going to
appear, but just because it seemed like the place to kneel -- and
at nine o'clock we started to pray," he says. "It was
dark and I prayed this prayer, I don't even know where it came from:
'God, God of Abraham and Jacob and Isaac and Moses, do You know
I'm here?' "I had my head bowed and my hands folded together
in prayer.
I didn't see
this hand but I felt a hand come under my chin and lift my head
up and the heavens opened and He sent His mother. When I say the
heavens opened up, it was daytime to my eyes. She was all white
and as big as the heavens. I went to point my finger up and say,
'Look!' but my hand froze halfway and now I couldn't talk. I couldn't
move my hand, I couldn't talk, and I couldn't take my eyes off her,
so I touched my wife with my left hand and I could only whisper.
When I touched her she looked and in a whisper I said, 'Look up
and tell me what you see,' and she said, 'I see her!' Mother Mary
didn't talk to either one of us, but there was something that happened
deep in our hearts and souls that would change our lives forever.
I really believe that once you see the Mother of God -- I don't
know how someone could describe something so incredible."
When Ferdinand
told a priest, the priest later heard the exact same testimony from
another pilgrim. Flying back, Ferdinand was sitting on the end of
the fifth seat on the middle row of a plane when a woman, another
pilgrim, came and sat on the arm of his seat as the flight attendant
was wheeling a cart in the area, reached in her purse, pulled out
a Pieta book, and put it in front of his eyes, asking, "Have
you seen her?" The question was a shock. It had come out of
the blue and was a confirmation to Ferdinand, who says the Virgin
he saw on Apparition Hill did look "a little bit" like
the picture, "but she was as big as the heavens, enormous.
And when she left there were these shooting stars. I thought everyone
had to have seen it, but nobody did but Barbara and one other person.
It was a white or light-blue sky like heaven's light. And it was
just her face." For Barbara, it was similar. "The sky
was pitch dark, we could hardly find our way up the mountain, but
when the vision appeared, I saw her face and it looked all white
and she was up in the sky and it was just huge and when I looked
down and looked back she was still there," Barbara recalls.
"She was sort of transparent and all white and all bright.
It was very clear."
In 1993, Christ
allegedly spoke asking Ferdinand to be a victim soul. "There
were three things Jesus said to me," claims the former businessman.
"My mom, my wife, and my sister were there. He said, 'Ferdinand,
would you be blind for me?' Immediately I closed my eyes really
tight like a little kid and started crying. I couldn't talk. I was
choking. I thought, no way, I'm not saying yes. Then He said, 'Ferdinand,
would you be in a wheelchair? ' I'm crying and choking and my poor
mom, she thought I was going to die. And then He said, 'Would you
give away all your money?'
Now my mind
is racing. This is the worst news I've ever heard, so I cried more.
I'm choking, crying. I could not say yes. Everyone laughs when I
say it, but I wasn't laughing. I was crying like a person who just
lost his whole family. My mother was really upset. I was crying
and choking. She thought I'd die. But Mother Mary came and said,
'Take a tear and touch your mother's arm.' My mother became calm,
and she had been really hysterical. I touched my sister and wife
also and they became calm and relaxed like on a sunny day. Mother
Mary said, 'Little Ferdinand, I'm giving you my heart,' and I felt
this incredible infusion of power and I said, 'Jesus, do with me
what You want.'"
It was then
that the former car dealer developed ailments that indeed temporarily
took away his sight and sent him into a wheelchair. It was a neuromuscular
disease called myasthenia gravis. He went blind on September 16,
1994, and a month later -- on October 13, 1994 -- experienced another
vision, this time of Mary as Our Lady of Fatima. She also appeared
to him during 1993 in St. Peter's and Paul's Church in Chicago.
As for the money,
by now this businessman who had once sold BMWs and Volvos had about
$1.4 million left and began to give this away "to whoever Mother
Mary lead me to" individuals, churches. He bought new
cars for people. He kept only enough to pay a fine he owed over
a financial transaction (which had sent him seeking refuge at Medjugorje
to begin with), buy a small house, and pay legal fees. For a long
period he and his wife traveled, living out of the trunk of their
car. Today he relies on selling inspirational paintings. This was
another miracle for a man who didn't previously know how to paint!
Before a talk
at St. Michael's College in Vermont, dozens of evil spirits attacked,
Roccanti told Spirit Daily. "I was punched, threatened, and
bounced around the room," he says. "I would spray them
with Holy Water and you could hear it like a sizzle." And in
this too is a message. "Every time you pray a mystery of the
Rosary, you hit the devil right between the eyes, and in these times
that we're living in, you need to hit him 15 times," urges
Ferdinand. "Because if you whack him in the forehead with those
mysteries, by the end of the day he's dazed and he can't get you.
But he'll start again tomorrow if you don't pray."
Now a resident
of Grange, Indiana, Roccanti feels the United States will suffer
for next four years. On September 11, while in church, he says Jesus
spoke to him, repeating a sentence three times. "He said, 'This
is the beginning of the punishment against the killing of the innocent,'"
recalls Ferdinand. "'This is the beginning of the punishment
against the killing of the innocent.' He said it three times. Some
people don't want to hear it -- you know, 'God wouldn't do this.'
And I say, well, the God Who sent the serpents into the desert to
kill the Israelites because they were disobedient is the same God."
Visit Ferdinand
Roccanti's website.
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