(soft upbeat music) - [Bill] Detroit's East Side, the Islandview neighborhood, the St. Bonaventure Monastery, and its Solanus Casey Center built in the longlasting memory of the blessed Solanus Casey.

When he died in 1957 at age 86, 10,000 came.

- I feel like people still feel that way today.

They feel his presence, his oneness with people, and his desire to participate in their life somehow.

- [Bill] Here, perhaps you'll feel Father Casey's presence and you can see where the celebrated Catholic priest is entombed under glass.

If you've heard of Solanus Casey, you probably know he's the closest Detroit's got to a saint, a real saint recognized by the Catholic Church almost.

Casey was born in Northwestern Wisconsin in 1870.

Worked as a bricklayer, prison guard, and a streetcar conductor.

- After, oh, a number of jobs and trying to figure out, basically, what he was gonna do with his life, what he could do with his life, he eventually came here to St. Bonaventure Monastery to join the Capuchin order.

- [Bill] Brother Steven Kropp, a friar at the monastery, also director of the center where more than 100,000 people visit each year.

Solanus Casey came here in 1896, was ordained in Milwaukee, and then went to the East Coast.

- He actually spent about 21 years in our parishes in New York, in Yonkers, and Manhattan and Harlem.

He was sent back here where he spent the next 20 years of his life here at St. Bonaventure Monastery.

He was ordained, but they withheld from him the permissions to do a lot of things that priests do.

- [Bill] The big things like preaching a sermon, or hearing confessions.

- They didn't believe he was intelligent enough to do it, so he got jobs like taking care of the sacristy, or organizing the altar boys, or sitting at the front door and answering calls on the door, which is where he became so beloved to so many.

So instead of being in the confessional for three or four minutes with somebody, he would spend as much time as anybody needed at the front desk.

Anyone who came when they were in front of him, he was their full attention.

Solanus identified closely with the average person.

He said himself his two greatest loves were the sick and the poor.

- [Bill] Detroit then in the midst of the Great Depression.

- Solanus, along with his friend, Father Herman, and the secular Franciscan order here founded the soup kitchen because they said, "We have to respond to this.

This isn't something that's going away.

This isn't going to be a handful of people every day.

This is gonna be an endless line of people who are potentially gonna be starving while they're looking for work."

- [Bill] The Capuchin Soup Kitchen is still going strong today.

In Casey's last years in poor health, he'd retire in Indiana, but near the end he returned to Detroit.

Not long after Casey died almost seven decades ago, the quest for sainthood started.

The pope declared Casey venerable in 1995, a step towards sainthood based on the evidence of miracles attributed to Solanus.

- A panel of of experts and doctors have to agree that there is no possible explanation for why this happened other than through the intervention of God in somebody's life.

- [Bill] One step closer in 2017 when venerable Solanus Casey became blessed Solanus Casey Ford Field packed with 70,000 people for Casey's beatification.

- Brother and sisters, let us repeat together.

Blessed Father Solanus pray for us.

Blessed Father Solanus pray for us.

- There's not a great difference between blessed and saint.

Blessed is more like kind of the local boy, you know, makes good.

He becomes the local saint, but then saint you tend to get to a different level of devotion where the church is acknowledging on a more universal level, the exemplary life of this person.

- [Bill] Part of the Ford Field ceremony, Paula Medina Zarate from Panama, who had a genetic skin ailment cured many believe because of her prayers at Father Casey's tomb.

- She asked that if it was God's will that she could be relieved from the suffering of this disease it was painful.

And she was praying, and through the course of the night, the scales literally from her flesh fell off onto the floor.

And she woke up in the morning with no apparent sign that she had this disease.

- [Bill] Her story heard in Rome, the Vatican.

- That's what the Vatican determines, and they did determine that case was the miracle for Solanus's beatification - [Bill] Blessed, the last step before sainthood.

There are three U.S. born saints, all women.

Will blessed Solanus Casey become the first American-born male saint?

Proof of another more recent miracle is needed.

Brother Steven Kropp says a number of cases have been documented.

- It's not really a competition, although it would be nice to have the title as the first American-born male saint, but, you know, that's unimportant in the greater scheme of things.

I truly believe it's gonna happen, and it will happen sooner than later.

The canonization will not happen in Detroit.

It'll happen in Rome, which is fine.

We'll respond here appropriately as well to get people excited, but, you know, I think just to keep spreading the good news about this holy man who shows us a way of life, who desires still to be one with and pray with his people.

We wanna be ready for them and then take the message with them.

That's what Solanus wanted.

He wanted you to go forth from his presence filled with faith, and to bring the message of faith to others.