Strange Visions in Shamokin

"Grandma--on the cloth. See?

There is God's face."

A little girl named Iris Reigle spoke those words at the end of a prayer meeting at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Shamokin, Pa. The 25 worshipers looked at the white brocade cloth covering the altar tabernacle where consecrated bread is kept. On the cloth, in use for. 15 years, they now saw a pattern of shadows that seemed to them to resemble the face of Jesus. "We called some of our friends and told them they had to come immediately," recalls Housewife Violet Burrows. "We were afraid it would go away."

On Their Knees. It has not. Since that prayer meeting on the Wednesday after Easter, busloads of people from as far away as Texas and California have flocked to the humble coal town of 12,000 to gaze at the Christ of the tabernacle cloth. One day a band of bejeweled gypsies roared up in a red Rolls-Royce, crawled on their knees to the altar, and left 13 dozen red roses as they departed. By last week the number of visitors had passed 60,000 (including repeaters), even though news accounts of the "miracle" cloth have been spotty. On weekends the line waiting to get into the modest blue stone church stretches a block or more. Five priests are on duty to anoint people in search of healing, and every 30 minutes lay readers pray for thousands who make written requests. Four pilgrims claim to have been cured of serious maladies.

"Do you see him?" "Can you see the eyes?" "Just where the fold is--that's the hair." So run the hushed comments as cloth watchers stand three deep before the altar. "This is my fifth visit," says

Mrs. Pat Kovaleski from nearby Mount Carmel, who suffers from Hodgkin's disease. "I see it differently each time, but my reaction is always one of awe."

The miracle cloth is moved periodically, and while most see what they consider to be the face of Jesus, others discern two kneeling figures or Jesus standing with a staffer the Virgin Mary. TIME'S Marion Knox, during a visit to Holy Trinity, observed "a vague impression of two eyes, a jaw line, a nose and possibly hair. It's perfectly visible, just as you can spot a horse in a cloud after someone has suggested it is there."

Spectacles are nothing new for Parish Priest Frank R. Knutti, 70, whose parish is involved in both the Anglo-Catholic and Neo-Pentecostal movements. Before entering the ministry late in life, he was variously a jazz saxophonist, a member of a barnstorming aviation troupe, and a manager of several radio stations. Accompanied by his blind cocker spaniel Taffy, he zips around his parish in a TR-6.

But Knutti is not applying any show-business touches to the cult of the cloth. He vetoed all proposals for concession stands and bumper stickers. "Whatever it is, it's good and people have gotten a tremendous spiritual uplift from it," he says. "I want to share it but I don't want it to become a side show."

One of the early visitors to Shamokin was Knutti's bishop, Dean Stevenson of Harrisburg, who also saw the face. He says that he was "aware of a presence which strengthened me. We don't have a lot of experience with such things, and there's no procedure in the diocese for it. I have no idea where this might lead."

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