French woman hopes sharing mystical encounter with Minnesota Benedictine helps sainthood cause

STACY, Minn. (OSV News) -- In the early night of Oct. 25, 2024, Claire Souilliart, a devout 32-year-old living in Calais, France, experienced an intense pain in her chest.

"I thought I was about to die," she said.

She cried out in silent prayer to Sister Annella Zervas, a long-dead Minnesota Benedictine known for holiness for whom she had developed a personal devotion. "Would you come? Would you help me?" she begged.

And to her amazement, Sister Annella, Souilliart claims, appeared at her open bedroom door. Dressed in a traditional Benedictine habit, with her black veil and well-waxed shoes, the religious sister approached Souilliart.

Souilliart lives according to the Rule of St. Benedict and has long aspired to join a Benedictine community in Paris. Although it has rejected her application in the past, she remains hopeful of one day becoming a sister. She said she was observing the order's practice of silence following night prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours, and that she spoke to Sister Annella in her thoughts.

Souilliart had already been suffering from a blood disorder that caused her considerable weakness, but the pain in her heart was something new and unexpected. "Will I die?" she asked the religious sister.

"No," Sister Annella replied, also in Souilliart's mind. She approached Souilliart and placed her hand on Souilliart's chest over her heart, a ring on Sister Annella's finger clinking against Souilliart's large Benedictine cross.

"I saw my heart as if there was a hole in my chest," Souilliart said. "My heart was violet in color and there was a yellow circle of light around my heart."

Immediately the pain disappeared, along with Sister Annella, Souilliart said.

The experience was the first of two back-to-back encounters Souilliart said she had with the Benedictine sister, a woman of deep prayer and heroic suffering who died in 1926 at age 26 in Moorhead, Minnesota, of a terrible, mysterious illness that caused her body to atrophy and skin to decay.

Souilliart recounted her experiences June 14 at a kitchen table in Stacy, Minnesota, seated across from her mother, Martine, as the pair neared the end of a 10-day trip to visit Sister Annella's grave in St. Joseph, Minnesota, and nearby shrines in Wisconsin.

In the room, more than a dozen people had gathered to listen to her story, one many of them hope will help move Sister Annella closer to sainthood.

In November 2024, Bishop Andrew H. Cozzens of Crookston, Minnesota, the diocese that includes Sister Annella's hometown of Moorhead, requested and received his fellow bishops' approval to proceed with opening a canonization cause for Sister Annella, citing revived devotion in Minnesota. The effort has submitted initial documents to the Holy See's Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, but has yet to receive permission to officially open the cause and declare Sister Annella a "servant of God."

According to Souilliart, Sister Annella returned to her room the following night, Oct. 26, also after the Benedictines' "great silence" had begun. A bright light appeared on Souilliart's wall, and Sister Annella seemed to enter it. After a time, she said, the light revealed a vision of Jesus seated on a gilded throne, and Souilliart said she sensed the presence of the full Trinity. With him was Mary and Sister Annella, surrounded by the communion of saints.

In that vision, she said, she saw herself in front of Jesus. Sister Annella asked her if she still desired to be the bride of Christ -- referring to her desire to enter religious life.

"I understood that forever it was Jesus who was asking me this question, and I said, 'Oh yes, Lord, I do. And he came closer to me … and gave me a crown" with precious gems, she recalled. "In my vision I was very happy, but after I was sad, because I realized I was alone. And I said to Jesus, 'And where are my sisters -- my religious sisters?' He said, 'They are going to join you.'"

Then she saw in her vision members of the religious community she hopes to join, which she described as a "foretaste of heaven." And Sister Annella told Souilliart she would be cured, that she would be filled with joy and that she would profess religious vows in 2026. The sisters sang "Alleluia," and the vision ended.

With both encounters, Souilliart said she has no sense of how much time elapsed. However, when she woke up Oct. 27, she said she no longer felt ill. Her mother noticed immediately.

For a while -- Souilliart declined to disclose how long -- she had experienced weakness that prevented her from independently performing daily tasks, such as dressing, relying on her mother's assistance. In early October, Souilliart's doctor had identified an abnormal white blood cell count, her skin took on a strange hue, and she was extremely tired. Even small movements felt taxing.

In the weeks that followed, she grew weaker -- so weak that at least on one occasion she missed daily Mass, which is very important to her, because she could not muster the strength to walk to the church entrance. On the morning after the vision, she said, "I felt all of my symptoms (had) disappeared and they never came back." She said her doctor signed a certificate in May attesting to her normal white blood cell count.

Souilliart drew a distinction between her experience of Sister Annella, which she said was in the flesh, and of Jesus, which was a vision. "Sister Annella was really there," she said. "(Her) blue eyes are her most beautiful thing," adding in French that the eyes were like a reflection of her soul.

Souilliart's Minnesota hosts included Patrick Norton, who also claims to have encountered Sister Annella in 2015 when he was painting lampposts in the central Minnesota Benedictine cemetery where she is buried. Norton is largely responsible for renewing interest in Sister Annella's story and reviving local devotion, which was robust in the years following her death.

Souilliart said she first learned of Sister Annella while watching a YouTube channel about holy men and women. Because Sister Annella was Benedictine, she wanted to know more. That led her to a YouTube video of Norton's testimony and his efforts to advance her candidacy for sainthood.

Souilliart began to ask for Sister Annella's intercession and felt a closeness to her. When the chest pain began, she felt compelled to reach out to Sister Annella because "when a sister is in need, she asks for the assistance of another sister," she said.

"It's a communion of saints," she added, "and my sister from heaven came to visit."

While their shared physical suffering did not initially inspire Souilliart's interest in Sister Annella, her own illness made it possible for her "to fully understand what does it mean to offer my life" and "think I must live the offering just as Sister Annella did to maybe become a saint someday," she said.

Souilliart considers herself a "small, small instrument" in spreading devotion to Sister Annella, and said she always felt her experience was something she was meant to share. She does not know why Sister Annella appeared to her, and is happy only to share her story, which she dreams of one day relaying to Pope Leo XIV.

But Norton said he believes Souilliart's testimony relates to something St. André Bessette wrote to Sister Annella's father, Hubert Zervas, when he requested the Holy Cross brother's prayers for his daughter's healing.

Brother André, who founded St. Joseph's Oratory of Mount Royal in Montreal and was renowned for the efficacy of his prayers, reportedly responded, "She is to suffer for the whole church." According to a 1957 biography, Sister Annella told her loved ones she had a "secret with God" about her suffering that brought her great joy.

Both Norton and Souilliart have shared their testimonies with church officials involved in potentially opening a cause for Sister Annella's canonization.

Souilliart hopes Sister Annella "can be recognized for what she is," she said, "because we all believe that she is already a saint, because you become a saint by your life, not by your death."