Reflections on a Pilgrimage to Rome on the Occasion of the Canonization of St. John Neumann

Joseph M. Gambescia was born of Italian immigrant parents on 10 June 1919 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as Giuseppe Mario Domenico Gambescia. He was a family man (father of 16 children), physician, professor of medicine at a major urban university medical college, director of medical education at an urban teaching hospital, and a pious Roman Catholic who became a lay Deacon at age 67. Dr. Gambescia participated in two esoteric religious and scientific mysteries during his life. In 1955, he began a lifetime of work studying the Should of Turin reputed by many to have high circumstantial evidence as the burial cloth of Jesus Christ. He gave medical counsel to the many scientists, from a range of fields, to the likely suffering and death of the man of the Shroud. In the early 1960s, he was asked, along with another physician Dr. William Zintl, by the Vatican to examine the body of Blessed John Neumann-an important step toward the naming of a modern day saint. Joseph M. Gambescia was a humble man who had strong devotion to family, God, and country which earned him some 30 medical, civic, fraternal, and religious awards. He died in 1991 praying "O Sacred Heart of Jesus, I implore that I may always love Thee daily more and more."