Live From Friar Field: A Blessed for Detroit

It's like deja vu – this time, just bigger. Much bigger.Less than two months since the first-ever beatification of a priest on US soil, today in Detroit brings an even more massive moment, as the Church takes over the city's NFL field and a crowd of 75,000 witnesses the rites elevating the beloved local Capuchin Fr Solanus Casey to the step before sainthood.While early reactions saw the choice of Ford Field for today's Mass as something akin to "crazy," as happened at September's Oklahoma City raising of Blessed Stanley Rother – when 5,000 more pilgrims converged on the convention center than could fit in the 15,000-seat venue – the Motor City crowd actually showed uncanny judgment. Tickets for today's event were gone within hours of their public availability last month, and the last-minute logistical hurdles required the coordination of drop-off and pickup spots across downtown for some 400 buses coming in from across the Midwest. And as weather's always the going concern for November in Michigan, even that ended up cooperating, staying above freezing with a touch of rain.One of sixteen kids raised on a Wisconsin farm, Barney Casey entered the Capuchins after being deemed academically insufficient for Milwaukee's diocesan seminary. Eventually ordained in 1904, the future Blessed was prohibited by his superiors from preaching or hearing confessions, finding his niche instead as the compassionate doorkeeper of his community's houses over a half-century – a ministry from which miracles would come to be claimed in his life and attributed to his prayers.His cause for sainthood opened within a decade of his death at 81 in 1957, the miracle which secured today's beatification involved the inexplicable cure of a pilgrim to Solanus' Detroit shrine who was healed of a genetic skin disorder after praying at his tomb. (Above, Archbishop Allen Vigneron is seen at the burial site on the miracle's confirmation earlier this year.)With the Vatican's Saintmaker-in-Chief Cardinal Angelo Amato again acting as papal legate and celebrant of today's Mass, here's your worship aid......and – from 4pm Eastern (2200 Rome) – the livefeed: According to the Michigan Catholic, Blessed Solanus' feast is slated to be declared for July 30th, the day before the anniversary of his death.As beatification only affirms local devotion to a Blessed, the celebration is restricted solely to the 1.4 million-member archdiocese of Detroit and the wider Capuchin order, unless and until the US bishops vote to petition the Vatican for its wider observance.-30-