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Five days on, the identity of the guardian angel priest of Missouri's Highway 19 remains as mysterious as his appearance on the roadside was miraculous.
Friends and family of Katie Lentz, along with rescue workers still want to thank the unidentified man whose prayers they credit with bestowing a supernatural calm as EMT's battled to cut the Illinois teen from her mangled car wreck.
But with no one coming forward to claim credit, and over 70 photographs of the crash scene yielding no images of the priest, some have suggested that the divine intervention of one of the Catholic Church's most beloved modern figures could have been at work.
Indeed, Carla Churchill Lentz, the mother of Katie said that her daughter's car was so twisted that rescuers said no one should have been able to survive.
'I do believe he certainly could have been an angel dressed in priest's attire because the Bible tells us there are angels among us.'
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Some have speculated online that the priest could have been the Catholic Saint Padre Pio, who died in Italy 35 years ago.
He has a huge global following, with celebrities such Sophia Loren and the Italian Andrea Bocelli devoted to the humble man from San Giovanni Rotondo.
Padre Pio was said to have suffered the stigmata - the wounds of Jesus Christ on the cross - throughout his adult life and those who knew him said that he exuded a blissful smell of violets, had persuasive powers of conversion and could heal the sick.
However, most remarkable of all, it is believed that Padre Pio had the gift of 'bilocation' - the ability to be in two places at once.
Prayer: When emergency workers could not free her - Katie Lentz asked them to stop so that a prayer could be said
Indeed, the man who appeared at the crash site was said by those who saw him to have an olive complexion, facial hair, a foreign accent and carried an old wooden rosary - which he prayed with while the emergency workers battled to free Katie Lentz.
It is his seemingly miraculous powers that have led some of his followers to believe that the man who blessed Lentz and her rescuers was indeed, Padre Pio.
Pio's real name was Francesco Forgione and he was born in 1887 to peasant farmers living near Foggia on Italy's east coast.
A poor scholar, he entered a Capuchin monastery as a novice at the age of 15, already suffering from ill-health aggravated by self-imposed penances.
By the age of 23, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, only for the disease miraculously to leave him.
But it was when the bleeding stigmata appeared overnight on Padre Pio's body that he became a true 'celebrity'.
On October 22, 1918, he wrote to his spiritual adviser, describing how this happened to him.
'On the morning of the 20th of last month, in the choir, after I had celebrated Mass, I yielded to a drowsiness similar to a sweet sleep. I was suddenly filled with great peace and abandonment which effaced everything else and caused a lull in the turmoil.
All this happened in a flash.
'While this was taking place, I saw before me a mysterious person....his hands and feet and side were dripping blood.
The sight terrified me and what I felt at that moment is indescribable.
'I thought I should die and really should have died if the Lord had not intervened and strengthened my heart, which was about to burst out of my chest.
'The vision disappeared and I became aware that my hands, feet and side were dripping blood. Imagine the agony I experienced and continue to experience almost every day."
Padre Pio's wounds continued to bleed till the end of his life, the liquid exuding a sweet smell akin to violets.
The cuts refused to heal and he lost as much as a cup of blood a day.
While the world waits to see if indeed the guardian angel of Highway 19 is revealed, a Tucson-based artist who works for a facial recognition software firm has created a sketch which he hopes will lead to the mans identification.
Sands explained in an e-mail to FOX 4 that he based the sketch on mostly on media reports. He also said he has a brother-in-law who is a priest and he just had a sense based on his experiences and the reports of what the unidentified priest may look like.
It was on Sunday that Katie Lentz, a sophomore at Tulane University, was driving from her parents' Quincy, Illinois home to Jefferson City, Missouri, where she has a summer internship.
Her Mercedes was hit head-on by another vehicle, driven by a drunk driver and the accident crushed Lentz's car in a mangled wreck that left her with multiple broken bones, a ruptured spleen and damaged liver.
Workers from across the county battled for over an hour and a half to extricate Lentz from her car - but she was fading fast and their equipment was not heavy duty enough.
It was then that she asked to pray and at that moment the priest appeared to offer his blessings to Lentz and the emergency workers.
The silver haired priest was reportedly in his 50s or 60s and was wearing black pants, a black shirt and black collar and seemingly stepped forward to answer Lentz's plea from nowhere.
Raymond Reed, the New London fire chief said that it struck him as odd from the start as Highway 19 was blocked off for two miles in each direction and no one from the close-knit community recognized the man.
'We're all local people from four different towns," Reed said. "We've only got one Catholic church out of three towns and it wasn't their priest.'
Immediately after the 6ft tall priest gave his blessing, the emergency workers righted the car, stabilized Lentz's vital signs and cut her out once the jaws of life appeared from a neighboring town.
She was put in an air ambulance and is now recovering in hospital.
But when they turned to thank the priest, he was gone.
Some have pointed out that Sunday just happened to be the feat of St. John Vianney, the patron saint of priests.
Others have said that the mystery priest could be be Father Toribio Romo González - the patron saint of immigrants.
He was killed in Mexico's Cristero War but his ghost is said to haunt highways as far north as Illinois, giving people in need water, food and even helping them with directions if they are lost.
Others have pointed to the more plausible guess that the priest who stopped to help is from a neighboring town.
Some have suggested that Father Donardo 'Dandi' Bermejo, the pastor of St Mary's Catholic Church of Shelbina, Missouri could be the mystery priest.
On the church website, Father Dandi posted a link to a news story of the mysterious priest, stating, 'Divine' intervention of a higher power. The Holy Spirit works through all of us.
However, a spokesperson for the Catholic Diocese of Jefferson City said that they had ruled Father Dandi out, because he was saying mass at the time of the crash.
'I think it's a miracle,' said New London Fire Chief Raymond Reed to KHQA.
'I would say whether it was an angel that was sent to us in the form of a priest or a priest that became our angel, I don't know. Either way, I'm good with it.'
The Facebook page of Lentz's mother, Carla Church Lentz, indicates Lentz is on the mend despite suffering two broken femurs, a broken tibia and fibia, broken left wrist, nine broken ribs, a lacerated liver, ruptured spleen and bruised lung.
Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author of My Life with the Saints, has a different theory.
'Most likely the priest will be identified, and people will be able to thank him,' he told The Huffington Post in an emailed message Thursday.
'If he's not found, that may mean he wants to remain anonymous. Could it have been an angel? There are similar 'angelic' stories in the lives of the saints, when a figure inexplicably appears and cannot be located afterwards.
'There are angels, of course, but we tend to ascribe to angels anonymous acts that we find incredibly loving -- when in fact human beings do incredibly loving things in hidden ways every day.'
A spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of Jefferson City said officials are trying to get to the bottom of the mystery.
'We do have several churches and parishes in the area,' diocese spokesman Deacon Dan Joyce said. 'We saw the description information and we have pictures on file of all of our priests, but we haven't heard directly from any of them.'
Source: Mail Online
Five days on, the identity of the guardian angel priest of Missouri's Highway 19 remains as mysterious as his appearance on the roadside was miraculous.
Friends and family of Katie Lentz, along with rescue workers still want to thank the unidentified man whose prayers they credit with bestowing a supernatural calm as EMT's battled to cut the Illinois teen from her mangled car wreck.
But with no one coming forward to claim credit, and over 70 photographs of the crash scene yielding no images of the priest, some have suggested that the divine intervention of one of the Catholic Church's most beloved modern figures could have been at work.
Indeed, Carla Churchill Lentz, the mother of Katie said that her daughter's car was so twisted that rescuers said no one should have been able to survive.
'I do believe he certainly could have been an angel dressed in priest's attire because the Bible tells us there are angels among us.'
Scroll Down for Video
Missouri Savior? Many have speculated online
that Padre Pio who was said to be blessed with many supernatural powers
during his life time was the priest who helped Katie Lentz on Highway 19
on Sunday
Some have speculated online that the priest could have been the Catholic Saint Padre Pio, who died in Italy 35 years ago.
He has a huge global following, with celebrities such Sophia Loren and the Italian Andrea Bocelli devoted to the humble man from San Giovanni Rotondo.
Padre Pio was said to have suffered the stigmata - the wounds of Jesus Christ on the cross - throughout his adult life and those who knew him said that he exuded a blissful smell of violets, had persuasive powers of conversion and could heal the sick.
However, most remarkable of all, it is believed that Padre Pio had the gift of 'bilocation' - the ability to be in two places at once.
Mangled Wreck: Emergency workers were struggling
to save Katie Lentz when she was hit head-on by a drunk driver on
Highway 19 near to Center, Missouri
Effort: The desperate effort to save Katie Lentz
was blessed by a Catholic priest who appeared from nowhere and just as
mysteriously vanished
Indeed, the man who appeared at the crash site was said by those who saw him to have an olive complexion, facial hair, a foreign accent and carried an old wooden rosary - which he prayed with while the emergency workers battled to free Katie Lentz.
It is his seemingly miraculous powers that have led some of his followers to believe that the man who blessed Lentz and her rescuers was indeed, Padre Pio.
Pio's real name was Francesco Forgione and he was born in 1887 to peasant farmers living near Foggia on Italy's east coast.
A poor scholar, he entered a Capuchin monastery as a novice at the age of 15, already suffering from ill-health aggravated by self-imposed penances.
By the age of 23, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, only for the disease miraculously to leave him.
But it was when the bleeding stigmata appeared overnight on Padre Pio's body that he became a true 'celebrity'.
Composite and Saint: A sketch was created from
the recollections of those who were at the scene of the crash on Sunday
to help jog peoples memories - while (right) Saint Toribo Romo has been
suggested as the identity of the mystery priest
On October 22, 1918, he wrote to his spiritual adviser, describing how this happened to him.
'On the morning of the 20th of last month, in the choir, after I had celebrated Mass, I yielded to a drowsiness similar to a sweet sleep. I was suddenly filled with great peace and abandonment which effaced everything else and caused a lull in the turmoil.
All this happened in a flash.
'While this was taking place, I saw before me a mysterious person....his hands and feet and side were dripping blood.
The sight terrified me and what I felt at that moment is indescribable.
'I thought I should die and really should have died if the Lord had not intervened and strengthened my heart, which was about to burst out of my chest.
'The vision disappeared and I became aware that my hands, feet and side were dripping blood. Imagine the agony I experienced and continue to experience almost every day."
Padre Pio's wounds continued to bleed till the end of his life, the liquid exuding a sweet smell akin to violets.
The cuts refused to heal and he lost as much as a cup of blood a day.
While a spokesman for the Jefferson City Diocese
attempts to find the identity of the priest - some parishioners have
suggest that Father Donardo 'Dandi' Bermejo is the man
While the world waits to see if indeed the guardian angel of Highway 19 is revealed, a Tucson-based artist who works for a facial recognition software firm has created a sketch which he hopes will lead to the mans identification.
Sands explained in an e-mail to FOX 4 that he based the sketch on mostly on media reports. He also said he has a brother-in-law who is a priest and he just had a sense based on his experiences and the reports of what the unidentified priest may look like.
It was on Sunday that Katie Lentz, a sophomore at Tulane University, was driving from her parents' Quincy, Illinois home to Jefferson City, Missouri, where she has a summer internship.
Her Mercedes was hit head-on by another vehicle, driven by a drunk driver and the accident crushed Lentz's car in a mangled wreck that left her with multiple broken bones, a ruptured spleen and damaged liver.
Workers from across the county battled for over an hour and a half to extricate Lentz from her car - but she was fading fast and their equipment was not heavy duty enough.
It was then that she asked to pray and at that moment the priest appeared to offer his blessings to Lentz and the emergency workers.
Divine Intervention: Katie Lentz was saved after
emergency workers from Hannibal fire services arrived with heavy duty
cutting equipment
The silver haired priest was reportedly in his 50s or 60s and was wearing black pants, a black shirt and black collar and seemingly stepped forward to answer Lentz's plea from nowhere.
Raymond Reed, the New London fire chief said that it struck him as odd from the start as Highway 19 was blocked off for two miles in each direction and no one from the close-knit community recognized the man.
'We're all local people from four different towns," Reed said. "We've only got one Catholic church out of three towns and it wasn't their priest.'
Immediately after the 6ft tall priest gave his blessing, the emergency workers righted the car, stabilized Lentz's vital signs and cut her out once the jaws of life appeared from a neighboring town.
She was put in an air ambulance and is now recovering in hospital.
But when they turned to thank the priest, he was gone.
Some have pointed out that Sunday just happened to be the feat of St. John Vianney, the patron saint of priests.
Others have said that the mystery priest could be be Father Toribio Romo González - the patron saint of immigrants.
He was killed in Mexico's Cristero War but his ghost is said to haunt highways as far north as Illinois, giving people in need water, food and even helping them with directions if they are lost.
Others have pointed to the more plausible guess that the priest who stopped to help is from a neighboring town.
Scene: Dozens of emergency workers battled to free Katie Lentz as she lay pinned in her Mercedes wreck on Highway 19
Chief Raymond Reed said that the Catholic priest
made everyone including Katie Lentz calmer before the jaw-of-life
appeared from Hannibal
Some have suggested that Father Donardo 'Dandi' Bermejo, the pastor of St Mary's Catholic Church of Shelbina, Missouri could be the mystery priest.
On the church website, Father Dandi posted a link to a news story of the mysterious priest, stating, 'Divine' intervention of a higher power. The Holy Spirit works through all of us.
However, a spokesperson for the Catholic Diocese of Jefferson City said that they had ruled Father Dandi out, because he was saying mass at the time of the crash.
'I think it's a miracle,' said New London Fire Chief Raymond Reed to KHQA.
'I would say whether it was an angel that was sent to us in the form of a priest or a priest that became our angel, I don't know. Either way, I'm good with it.'
The Facebook page of Lentz's mother, Carla Church Lentz, indicates Lentz is on the mend despite suffering two broken femurs, a broken tibia and fibia, broken left wrist, nine broken ribs, a lacerated liver, ruptured spleen and bruised lung.
Empty Stretch: The road was closed for a quarter of a mile either side of the crash and there were no bystanders
Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author of My Life with the Saints, has a different theory.
'Most likely the priest will be identified, and people will be able to thank him,' he told The Huffington Post in an emailed message Thursday.
'If he's not found, that may mean he wants to remain anonymous. Could it have been an angel? There are similar 'angelic' stories in the lives of the saints, when a figure inexplicably appears and cannot be located afterwards.
'There are angels, of course, but we tend to ascribe to angels anonymous acts that we find incredibly loving -- when in fact human beings do incredibly loving things in hidden ways every day.'
A spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of Jefferson City said officials are trying to get to the bottom of the mystery.
'We do have several churches and parishes in the area,' diocese spokesman Deacon Dan Joyce said. 'We saw the description information and we have pictures on file of all of our priests, but we haven't heard directly from any of them.'
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Source: Mail Online
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