How Engelbert Humperdinck leaned on his Catholic faith to help his dying wife

The crooner revealed how a trip to Lourdes and prayer circles proved vital for his family.

The singer Engelbert Humperdinck has finally managed to lay his wife to rest six months after her death.

The 85-year-old’s wife, Patricia Dorsey, finally succumbed to Alzheimer’s in February, having also battled with COVID. After 56 years of married life, and four children together, the singer reached out to his fans for his support as he prepared for his wife’s funeral:

“It would be lovely to see friendly faces along the way and so a prayer or a tip of the hat or a wave would be so wonderful. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, please just say a prayer for my beautiful and wonderful wife.”

It’s not the first time the crooner looked to his faith for comfort. Although he only shared that his wife had Alzheimer’s in 2017, for years she’d been struggling with the degenerative disease. Humperdink, whose real name is Arnold Dorsey, did everything in his physical and spiritual power to help his wife:

“When she was suffering with Alzheimer’s I took her to Lourdes and it’s quite wonderful there. I’m sure all these little things I tried to do for her were instrumental in keeping her here longer than she should have been.”

With the help of the family’s prayers, sacramentals like holy water, and visits to a German doctor, his wife made some improvements and even regained her speech.

Although she was making progress, the whole family ended up getting COVID. “It invaded my home in LA and everybody got it including myself and my wife, her carers, one of my sons and my daughter. But Patricia had no COVID when she passed, it was a cardiac arrest,” Humperdinck said as reported by the Daily Mail.

The “Release Me” hit-maker shared; “The problem is that a spouse cannot heal a spouse, for some reason no healer can do that,” he shared. “‘All I can tell you is that our prayer ritual was constant, every night at 8 p.m. I told people 8 p.m. was the time of prayer, and prayers came from all over the world. It was a chain of prayer, and I felt those prayers at 8 p.m.”

Our condolences to the Dorsey family, and may Patricia rest in peace.