Evangelist Kelly’s car crash survival is good news

   Boston’s Frank Kelly, who has had a full-time healing ministry since 1990, wants everyone in New Orleans to know that he is improving and recuperating from a serious automobile accident.
    “I am doing a lot better,” he said in a telephone interview from his son’s home in Boston. “I am walking. I went through rehab and doing so much better and only have to do the exercises now.”
     Kelly was injured Nov. 14 after a three-day healing tour at three parishes in the Archdiocese of New Orleans. From what he remembered, Kelly said he was driving home on Hwy. 59 in rural Alabama with passengers Gerry Gouthro and Rose Patek when he noticed a car approaching on his left. He looked down for a split second and then spun the wheel to avoid the guard rail. He quickly realized he had spun the wheel too fast and was in the middle of Hwy. 59 and flew over the highway into an embankment.
    “A voice came down and said get out of the car as fast as you can,” he said, and he was able to exit. “Thankful to God, I was able to miss the car on the left. I know my angel guided the poor guy. God cleared the road.”
Doctors surprised
    Kelly ended up shattering his lower lumbar and is now wearing a back brace but said he should be all right. Gouthro had two black eyes, and Patek broke her shoulder and her heel, completed rehab and is now recuperating in Kentucky, he said. Gouthro  was amazed Kelly wasn’t more injured, considering the way he was flipping around in the car.
    When he was admitted to the local hospital, the doctors asked Kelly, “Were you walking before the accident?” When he said yes, the doctors answered, “I wouldn’t believe it.” The X-rays indicated how bad his rheumatoid arthritis was, and doctors were astonished he could walk at all by what the X-rays showed.
    As has been his lifelong practice, Kelly prayed constantly, especially the rosary, in the hospital after the accident. As bad as the accident was, Kelly said he ended up where he needed to be to touch lives. Only 2 percent of the population in the area around the hospital was Catholic.
    “By the time I left, all the people taking care of me had rosaries and were saying the rosary,” Kelly said. He even led his physical therapists in reciting the rosary.
    Kelly said he’s not sure when he will return to his ministry. Doctors don’t want him to cause permanent damage.
    “That’s up to Father (Ronald) Tacelli (his spiritual director) and God,” Kelly said. “I’ll have to wait and see. I have to go see a doctor and exercise and mend more.”
    He only asks for prayers, knowing that more than anything will help him heal. But, he hopes to return to New Orleans sometime in 2014.
    “I never know where God is bringing me,” he said.
    Kelly’s account of his 1985 electrocution and miraculous recovery is in the book, “Short Circuit to God,” by David Lang. He travels the country teaching and sharing his life-changing experiences, conducting healing services, spiritual seminars, confirmation instruction classes, retreats and conferences. He can be reached at frankkelly.org.
    Christine Bordelon can be reached at cbordelon@clarion herald.org.