Jesus of Orlu - More Saints in Nigeria?

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Posted by Felix Okoli on September 04, 2010 at 03:47:26:

Did Jesus come from Orlu? Why the sensational stories? Is this another Reverend King or false prophets in the likes of Jesus of Oyingbo and co? Well these were just part of the thoughts coming to my head when I read this piece today on the Sun Newspapers.
The story is about a man who had died in 2002 named Innocent Chima Okorie, a family man who has a wife and children, one of whom is a Catholic priest.
The caption on the from page of the Sun read:
Behold, Jesus of Orlu, worshiped by adherents, even in death
Perhaps, the way they captioned it made it look like the man was claiming to be Jesus, but after reading in detail the whole story, I found out that Chima Okorie was simply a humble mechanic who happened to have experienced the life of Jesus and received signal graces during his life such that people were attracted to his supernatural experiences and some of them were healed.
When things like this happen in Christendom, we say that God is giving us a sign. Initially I thought that the man claimed to be Jesus or a Messiah like Rev. King and was working miracles using some power and at the same time drawing people to himself but he was just a simple man who lived a humble life and prayed with his family everyday except that he experienced the wounds of Jesus as if he were Jesus. This is what they refer in Catholicism as stigmata and he is not the first person to have experienced this.
The story is that during Good Friday and certain feast of the Church, he physically experiences the same whipping of lashes and torture which looks like what Christ experienced and blood is seen coming out of his body by his family, while some invisible forces were torturing him. That is not all, people who were ill or needed a prayer request recognized the presence of Christ in him and sought for miracles which were granted. Till today people still go to his grave to pray because they believe that there is a supernatural power around him.
If Jesus of Orlu or Innocent Chima Okorie lived a holy Christian life, just like Blessed Iwene Tansi, chances are that he would be the second person in Nigeria who will be on the path to Sainthood to be recognized by the church. This does not mean that there are no other Saints in Nigeria, only that these ones have been publicly recognized by the Church.