Hidden rosary saves man from inferno

Italian Giuseppe (or Joseph in English) Torselli should not be alive today.

Torselli worked as an electrical maintenance supervisor aboard the largest oil rig in the Mediterranean off the Libyan coast. As a Christian, he couldn’t pray openly while on the job, so he waited to say his Rosary secretly at night. He had a rosary from Lourdes with him that he had bought on a pilgrimage there, which he wore around his neck hidden under his shirt.

On November 25, 2000, an explosion set the oil rig on fire. Everything was destroyed by the flames. Torselli was assumed to be among the victims and his wife received the news of his death.

Struck by a blow in the chest, he was eventually discovered, the only survivor of the explosion. He had burns over 70% of his body, half of which were third-degree burns. His respiratory capacity was reduced by 55%. As he was unfit to be transported home, he was treated in a Libyan hospital with no burn unit, and stayed with them for 42 days. ...

Incredibly, while everything he wore on him had melted, his rosary was intact. "When I told this story to my wife Barbara," he says, "she was confused because she thought it was in my pocket and didn’t know I had it around my neck. That’s when I grasped the enormous grace the Virgin Mary had granted me and the importance of prayer!"

Torselli came to tell me his story at the Lourdes Medical Office on October 10, 2006. He is still recovering, but he’s alive and immensely grateful to Our Lady of Lourdes.

(1) Excerpt from Dr. Theillier’s book Lourdes, terre de guérisons (Lourdes, A Land of Healing) recently published by Editions Artège.

Dr. Patrick Theillier, former director of the Office of Medical Observations of the Shrine of Lourdes, France