Tom Zimmer, "The Hermit of Loreto"

If you've read Charisma or my newsletter, you've read about some of the pre-election prophecies that said God had raised up Donald Trump and he would win. I personally know four prophets who said this. I went out on a limb and reported this before the election, knowing if it didn't happen, I would be embarrassed. But it did come to pass.

Recently, a friend sent me a story from the internet about a Roman Catholic priest that is so incredible I hardly know whether to believe it. Since we don't run this type of article in Charisma, I decided to run it here. I am compelled to share it, if only to make you wonder if it might be true and if it's one more confirmation—from a very different perspective—that God somehow raised up Donald Trump.

After the election, the remarkable prophecy came to light that a Catholic "holy man" named Tom Zimmer prophesied in the 1980s that "Donald Trump would lead America back to God." Zimmer, who died on Sept 10, 2009, was known as the "Hermit of Loreto," a town on the east coast of Italy. An American, he moved to Loreto in the early 1970s and lived there until 2008, when he returned to America to die. He was no ordinary Catholic. He co-authored the Pieta prayer book, which sold millions of copies, and is said to have attended Mass many times a day.

The month after Trump's inauguration, an American priest named Giacomo Capoverdi posted a video on YouTube that tells this amazing story. A few weeks later, Catholic blogger Brett Thomas, Secular Order of St. Francis, wrote about it. He tells about the video and how the Rev. Capoverdi says he met the Hermit of Lorento.

Capoverdi said it was around 2000 when a friend of his, an Italian-American doctor named Claudio Curran, told him he had to meet this holy man. He took the train from Rome to Loreto the next time he was there, went to the basilica and saw an old man sitting on the floor hunched over in prayer at the "Holy House"—which Catholics believe was the home of Mary from Nazareth. Capoverdi seems to believe the story that, to save the house from being destroyed by Arabs during the Crusades, angels transported it to Loreto, now a place of Catholic veneration.

Capoverdi asked him in English if he was Thomas [Zimmer], and the two had a delightful conversation. When Trump was elected, Dr. Curran called and told him that, back in the 1980s, Tom Zimmer said he had received a "premonition" and that "a certain man would lead America back to God"—and that man would be none other than Donald J. Trump.

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"The millionaire playboy from New York?" the incredulous doctor is said to have asked Zimmer.

"Yes," the Hermit of Loreto responded, adding he was so sure Donald Trump would become a great spiritual leader of America that he wrote his name on a brick and had it placed in the reconstruction of St. Peter's Holy Door after the Jubilee so Trump would receive blessings from the many Masses that would be said in the Vatican.

Thomas wrote: "After looking into Tom Zimmer, the 'Hermit of Loreto,' I have no reason to doubt Capoverdi's statements that Thomas Zimmer communicated to his friend that he received a "premonition" that Donald Trump would "lead America back to God." He then says what the church says to do in order to determine whether a prophecy is true or false. First: Was the prophet a good and virtuous person? Zimmer was. Next, the prophecy must not contradict Scripture or church doctrine. Here, too, "there is nothing scriptural or in church teachings that would suggest that a political leader cannot lead people to God; on the contrary, Scripture indicates it as a duty," Brett writes.

Finally, Thomas says the prophecy must come true. And of course, there's also the possibility of searching for the brick at St. Peter's door with Donald Trump's name on it—to see if Zimmer really left it there. It does seem extraordinary that a prayerful elderly man would have had such an intuition about Donald Trump as a future Christian leader when Trump was, indeed, living a life quite the opposite. Here we must wait and see if that happens, but I'm sure whether or not Trump leads America back to God will be open to dispute and interpretation.

Watch the video to see if you think the story is valid and let me know your thoughts.

Steve Strang is the founder of Charisma Media and president of Christian Life Missions. He is also the author of the best-seller God and Donald Trump. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Click here to subscribe to the Strang Report podcast, and here to sign up for the Strang Report newsletter.

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