- The sick and desperate come by the thousands because
they have heard stories of miracles.
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- They line up for hours at Cleveland Catholic church altars
for the touch of a 50-year-old Bay Village man who says that from the time
he was a boy, he knew he would do something great for God.
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- Dr. Issam Nemeh is not surprised by the turnout.
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- "Even as a small child, I saw thousands coming,"
he said in short, quiet phrases that carry the accent of his native Damascus,
Syria.
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- "I always knew this was my calling."
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- Nemeh (pronounced Name-y) will minister tonight at a
healing service that begins at 9 at St. Bernadette Church in Westlake.
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- Who is this balding father of four who says he wants
to help God heal people physically and spiritually before he achieves his
goal - "to die for Jesus"?
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- He rejects the label of faith healer.
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- "The only healer is the Holy Spirit," Nemeh
told The Plain Dealer in his first public interview. He says he is nothing
special, that anyone can be an instrument of God's healing.
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- "I offered up my life to God in total surrender.
When I say, 'your will be done,' I mean it fully," he said.
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- Nemeh is an acupuncturist with a modest office in Rocky
River who charges his patients $250 per office visit. In his healing ministry,
he says, he takes no offerings at services. Church officials don't know
of him taking offerings.
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- He is also a physician who does not practice. Nemeh holds
medical licenses with a specialty in anesthesiology in Ohio and Illinois.
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- Nemeh uses no needles in his acupuncture. He guides a
painless electrical stimulation device along his patients' bodies, but
his chief instrument is prayer.
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- "I pray over every one," he said.
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- Dr. Scott Frank, who teaches a course in faith, religion
and medicine at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, said
a large body of research shows a positive relationship between health and
religion. But no scholarly study proves single-event services cause long-term
healing, and many diseases can have spontaneous remissions.
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- Church and medical officials agree that faith should
not be a substitute for medical attention. Diocesan officials say suffering
is a theological mystery and that people who are not healed should not
think it was because they lacked sufficient faith.
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- Nemeh graduated in 1980 from a medical school in Zabrze,
Poland. From 1995 to 1999, he was part of a now-disbanded alternative medicine
program at Southwest General Health Center in Middleburg Heights.
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- Before that, Nemeh said, he served for several years
as an anesthesiologist at Richmond Heights Hospital. Neither the hospital
nor University Hospitals Health System, which now owns it, could locate
records to confirm or deny that.
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- Word of Nemeh began spreading through the Cleveland Catholic
community five years ago as he began participating in small healing services.
Spurred on by recent television reports, the services have grown. Organizers
said that on March 12 at SS. Peter & Paul Church in Garfield Heights,
they turned away about 7,000.
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- "We never discussed having Masses. These things
came by themselves," said Nemeh, who ministers with his wife, Cathy,
48; Sister Monica Marie Navin of the Sisters of the Incarnate Word in Parma
Heights; and with priests, including the Rev. Robert J. Welsh, former president
of St. Ignatius High School.
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- Daniel Stancu of Medina, once paralyzed, said he is a
walking miracle, in part because Nemeh prayed over him. Stancu's primary-care
physician agrees.
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- Stancu, 23, said a vertebra in his neck was shattered
and two others were damaged in a car accident when he was 19. He said he
lost the use of his arms and legs and steered his wheelchair by puffing
into a tube.
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- Dr. Olga Kovacevic, who treated Stancu once before the
accident, saw him after his injury on Jan. 26, 2001, just after his hospital
release. "I thought, wow. The chances of this young man ever walking
again are almost none," she said.
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- Nemeh treated Stancu in his office with electrical device
and prayer.
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- "Almost instantaneously, I had feeling in my arms
and my legs," Stancu said. He returned to Nemeh several dozen times
for treatments over the next two years. He walks with a crutch now, and
said he frequently walks in private without assistance of any kind.
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- Can he pin his success on Nemeh's touch? "I think
he played a pretty big role in my recovery," said Stancu.
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- Kovacevic, however, is convinced that Stancu was healed
by faith. "God along with Dr. Nemeh restored his ability to walk,"
she said.
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- The Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, while careful not
to authenticate or deny any healing attributed to him, has taken a generally
positive approach to his ministry.
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- Bishop Anthony M. Pilla, who attended a healing service
in February at St. Ignatius High School, said Nemeh and his healing team
have acted appropriately, forgoing sensationalism or personal rewards.
"They are just doing this as part of their faith commitment and their
belief that God can heal . . . and that every person can be an instrument
of that healing if you want to commit yourself to it," Pilla said
in a statement released by the diocese.
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- Auxiliary Bishop Roger Gries encourages Catholics to
come to the healing services with the "anticipation God is going to
touch them in whatever way God deems it appropriate."
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- Crowds like the one at SS. Peter & Paul are only
the beginning, Nemeh insists.
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- "It will start here." And it will grow. "This
country will become a stronghold of Christianity," said Nemeh. Eventually,
"it will be all over the world."
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- - News research director Patti Graziano and reporter
Bill Lubinger contributed to this report.
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- © 2005 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.
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- http://www.cleveland.com/living/
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