Go to San Alberto Magno on World Alzheimer’s Day

September 21st marks World Alzheimer’s Day, which the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) defines as “progressive and chronic senile dementia.” For this reason we remember the intercession of Saint Albert the Great, who forgot everything he knew due to a prophecy of the Virgin Mary.

The Catholic Encyclopedia points out that Albertus Magno was born in Lauingen (Germany) approximately 1205 or 1206. He joined the Dominicans and was a teacher of Saint Thomas Aquinas, whom he loved very much.

He came to prominence as a scientist, philosopher and theologian. So much so that he was called “the Great” and “Doctor Universalis” (universal doctor).

The website about the lives of saints Corazones.org indicates that Saint Albert is a Doctor of the Church and patron of students of natural sciences. But all the intellectual grandeur he possessed one day was gone.

When San Alberto was young, he had trouble performing in his studies, so one night he tried to escape by climbing a wall with the help of a hanging ladder. When he reached the top, the Virgin Mary appeared to him, who said to him: “Alberto, why, instead of running away from school, don’t you pray to me who am the Throne of Wisdom?”

“If you have faith and trust in me, I will give you a prodigious memory. And so that you know that it was I who granted it to you, when you are going to die, you will forget everything you knew,” he prophesied.

And so it happened. In 1278, while he was giving a class, “his memory suddenly failed and he lost his sharpness of understanding,” says Corazones. He died peacefully on November 15, 1280.