THIS Easter weekend Ireland's self-proclaimed holiest man has risen from the dead just as his doubters believed he was gone.Since his self-imposed media blackout last year, Joe Coleman said he has been subjected to drug raids by gardaí, a bill for €45,000 from the Revenue and he has lost his healing room.
There has also been a court injunction against a tabloid newspaper, his failing health and the death of his close friend and confidant Keith Henderson in a car crash last month.
Now, following months of relative obscurity, the self-proclaimed visionary has come back into the light with news of yet more divine apparitions. May, he said, will be the biggest yet.
"It will be huge. Knock better have security on because they are the ones responsible," he said in an interview from his home in the west Dublin suburb of Ballyfermot.
"The crowds died down because I don't go public anymore. I believe I still have people all over the country who follow me."
Coleman went to ground after a notorious interview on the Joe Duffy Show last year.
"It went very, very wrong for some reason on Joe Duffy. It's the way the media took hold of it," he said. He claimed his messages from Mary were misinterpreted by the public and press alike as a predetermined desire for financial profit.
"I have 101 papers here with all the stories that ran like I had collection boxes in Knock and I stayed in all the top hotels, but I didn't," he said.
"Some girl rang in and said I was charging €40 to have a hearing, but I never charged for a healing. I accept donations but someone told them I made loads of money.
"Then the Revenue got on to me and said I owed them €45,000 and so I lost my healing room.
"I used to have people coming to me from all over the country and they would come in and I would heal them and pray with them and they might leave me €5."
It was this whirlwind of accusations and reports on the life of 'Joe the Visionary' that cast suspicion on his holy message.
It is also the reason, he said, why his house was raided for drugs and why he claims ill-treatment in Knock where his presence has caused mixed feelings.
"My house was raided twice by the guards," he said. "They came one morning and ransacked the house and I complained to the sergeant and I was told that they had a tip that my house had drugs in it. I said this has to stop. I am a member of the community here. I was one of the people who got the community watch set up.
"There was something similar again. I was down in my healing room and I got a call to tell me to come home and the police were everywhere and I was kept hostage in my own house. But it's part of my work that I get tormented."
Although Coleman has been back to Knock on a few occasions since Christmas, it is only last week that he decided to once again go public.
"Despite the fact that Joe Coleman has not been in touch with the media since December, a total of three separate apparitions have taken place in Knock (between January and March)," a statement circulated by an assistant claimed last week the resulting messages received relate to the second coming of Jesus.
"According to witnesses (contact details available on request) they happened exactly as predicted by Joe Coleman," the statement said.
Now he has been told that Mary's people "must gather in multitudes at the Holy Shrine in Knock on Tuesday, 11 May 2010."
Coleman is convinced there is a conspiracy in Knock to drive him out by the authorities, the gardaí and Satan himself.
"They had the guards there in early January with handcuffs waiting to arrest me but I didn't stop going to Knock," he said.
"I believe they can't arrest me on consecrated ground and I just stay in the church. We know the devil is in there [Knock] because he attacked me. He does everything to stop me going there.
"My family has been a great support but my health is on the way down and then I had the shock of my life with Keith only a month ago."
His friend and co-worshipper Keith Henderson (34), who has been with him throughout his visions, died tragically last month in a car crash, "seven hours after his child was born. He only got to hold her once," said Coleman.
Coleman said he has more options to spread his message than through the media alone. He said he recently completed a documentary for RTÉ, which will depict not just his religious gifts but his preference for a simple life, a life far removed from the gross excesses he believes are depicted in news coverage.
And there is also a book. "The holy mother told me I had to get a book out to get her message out," he said. "Again there is no money in that for me. I agreed to RTÉ because there is a guy who works there who is a very religious man and I wouldn't have done it only for him.
"I am sitting here today and, I am not messing, I think I have about €6 in my pocket."
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