The Miraculous Conversion Story of Prisoner Claude Newman

Folks, in my forays looking for good iconography sites I stumbled upon the Mount Angel Abbey Icon Gallery. The icons there had been written--like Holy Scripture, icons are "written," not "painted"--by Br. Claude Lane, Benedictine. Within this gallery I found this icon Br. Lane wrote in honor of Claude Newman, a prisoner in Mississippi's death row back in 1944. Newman's story is quite remarkable and deserves your reading. This remarkable story was published in the March 2001 issue of Catholic Family News and was authored by John Vennari.

According to a Fr. O'Leary, a priest-chaplain at that Mississippi jail,

Claude Newman was a negro man who worked the fields for a landowner. He had married when he was 17 years old to a woman of the same age. One day, two years later, he was out plowing the fields. Another worker ran to tell Claude that his wife was screaming from the house. Immediately Claude ran into his house and found a man attacking his wife. Claude saw red, grabbed an axe and split the man's head open. When they rolled the man over, they discovered that it was the favorite employee of the landowner for whom Claude worked. Claude was arrested. He was later sentenced for murder and condemned to die in the electric chair.

While he was in jail awaiting execution, he shared a cell-block of some sort with four other prisoners. One night, the five men were sitting around talking and they ran out of conversation. Claude noticed a medal on a string around another prisoner's neck. He asked what it was, and the Catholic boy told him that it was a medal. Claude said, "What is a medal?" The Catholic boy could not explain what a medal was or what its purpose was. At that point, and in anger, the Catholic boy snatched the medal from his own neck and threw it on the floor at Claude's feet with a curse and a cuss, telling him to take the thing.

Claude picked up the medal, and with permission from the prison attendants, placed it on a string around his own neck. To him it was simply a trinket, but he wanted to wear it.

During the night, sleeping on top of his cot, he was awakened with a touch on his wrist. And there stood, as Claude told the priest later, the most beautiful woman that God ever created. At first he was very frightened. The Lady calmed down Claude, and then said to him, "If you would like Me to be your Mother, and you would like to be My child, send for a priest of the Catholic Church." With that She disappeared...

Please, continue reading here.

- Visit Mt. Angel Icon Gallery.

- Visit Vivificat's Iconography Links