Heroic Fireman Vaults Communion Rail
How slim are the chances of an Altar Server’s surplice catching fire during Mass?
Even slimmer is the chance that, at the moment his vestment ignites, a fireman is at the Communion rail receiving the Blessed Sacrament.
The “breath-taking happening,”1 occurred in 1937 while seventeen-year-old acolyte Charles Rannaghan was assisting Father Aloysius Finn as he distributed Holy Communion at Saint Catherine Church in Somerville, Massachusetts while hundreds attended morning Mass.
As young Rannaghan walked backwards, he brushed against a stand of votive candles, igniting his surplice, “the flames enveloping him.”2 Across the country and Canada, newspapers reported on their front pages that “like paper, the lacy vestment became a mass of flame.”3
Immediately, Edward Donovan, a first lieutenant with the Somerville fire department who had just received Communion, vaulted the rail and raced to the spot as Father Finn set down his chalice and hurried to his side.
The two tore the burning vestment from Charlie and beat out the fire.
All escaped without serious injury, including Charlie, and Mass resumed.
Though not reported, the present writer likes to believe that when Mass continued it was without one grateful acolyte who recused himself to the sacristy, whispering prayers of thanksgiving.
Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader, February 26, 1937, 25.
Ibid.
Bangor Daily News, February 22, 1937, 1.