Ironically, at the beginning of Lent, there are new doubts about the foodlessness of the Resl from Konnersreuth. Of course, such a message has a demotivating effect on all those who are currently struggling with temporarily giving up alcohol or gummy bears. So she didn’t make it either. Well, you can secretly pour yourself a wheat beer or two in the evening and then just continue fasting, such a small slip-up is only human, there is nothing to confess.
With the Resl, however, the case is different. For her, it wasn’t about 40 days of pie deprivation or a Dry January, but about 36 years of starvation in the service of heavenly power. Apart from hosts, the devout is said not to have eaten anything for decades, and there was only a sip of water to wash down, because otherwise the wafers would stick in the back of the esophagus. The stigmata from which she bled are mentioned here only for the sake of completeness. Apparently, the woman didn’t have it easy, if you also consider that after her death in 1962, the doctor certified that she was obese.
While she soon rose to the rank of popular saint, heretics claimed that she could hardly have sustained herself by faith alone. Was Resl possibly just a hypocritical fast breaker?
The Frankenpost reported that the publicist Gerlinde Countess von Westphalen had found a letter from 1938 in the Bavarian Main State Archive. In it, Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli advised Resl’s friends to commit a pious deceit: one should have a doctor who they trust certify their lack of food and deposit the result in a sealed envelope in Rome. If someone wants to take a look, you can tell them: “That’s none of your business.” Incidentally, Pacelli was later called Pope Pius XII. known.
“The life of the Resl was also in harmony with the laws of nature,” von Westphalen sums up. Of course, others before her had suspected it. If the revelations continue, the next work about Resl will be a book with her favorite recipes. Title: My Secret Kitchen.