Miracle reported; could speed John Paul's canonization

The inexplicable healing of a French nun could be the miracle that paves the way for beatification of Pope John Paul II.

The Roman news agency I Media has learned that a French nun who was dying of cancer experienced a sudden and complete cure in October, after the members of her community prayed for the intercession of the late Pope John Paul. In accordance with Vatican rules, the identity of the nun is not being revealed, as doctors conduct a thorough study of her case. If a miracle is confirmed, it would speed the cause for the Polish Pontiff's beatification.

During a visit to Rome on November 29, Archbishop Stanislas Dziwisz, the longtime secretary to the late Pope, confirmed that the reported miracle in France had been selected for scrutiny in connection with Pope John Paul's cause.

"There is no problem about miracles" in the promotion of John Paul's cause, "because there are many of them-- really quite a few," Archbishop Dziwisz said. He said that the nun's cure was selected for study in part because the facts of the case seemed clear, but also because France is "a country where it wasn't expected."

"The process for beatification is going very well," the Polish archbishop reported. "We are hoping to be finished by March 2006."

Archbishop Dziwisz, who now heads the Krakow archdiocese where Pope John Paul was once the cardinal-archbishop, has opened an investigation there into the life and virtues of the late Pope. "The testimonies are numerous," he said, adding that the challenge is to find "the most accurate, to show the personality of John Paul II." He went on to say that testimony is being collected from many different countries, "because the Pontiff belonged to the whole universal Church, not just to one nation."

The main investigation into the life of John Paul II is unfolding in Rome. (Under the rules for the process, a cause for beatification is opened in the diocese where the candidate died.) The tribunal in Krakow is an offshoot of the investigation in Rome. And a separate inquiry has now been opened in France to study the reported miracle.

The cause for beatification of John Paul II was opened in Rome on June 28 by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the vicar for the Rome diocese. There the tribunal is compiling a complete dossier on the Pope's life, which will be forwarded to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. This dossier will include the work of the Krakow panel.

Archbishop Dziwisz-- who is in Rome with a group of Polish bishops on their ad limina visit-- was appointed in June to be Archbishop of Krakow. Thus he now holds the post that the then-Archbishop Karol Wojtyla occupied when he chose the younger Father Dziwisz to become his personal secretary-- a job he continued to fulfill during John Paul's pontificate. Archbishop Dziwisz regarded the Pope as his spiritual father, and was named by the Pontiff, in his last will and testament, to care for John Paul's private papers and personal property.

"It isn't easy to be the successor of such a great man," said the Polish archbishop. I Media reports that before his death, Pope John Paul left the suggestion that his loyal secretary should be named the next Archbishop of Krakow.

Today, Archbishop Dziwisz said, John Paul II "is not absent; I can tell you that he is even more present than before." The influence of the Polish Pontiff continues to shape the world's thought, he observed. And "Benedict XVI helps with that, because he always recalls him to mind." During a trip to Poland that is tentatively scheduled for June 2006, the new Pope will visit Krakow to pay tribute to his predecessor.

The criteria for a genuine miracle for the purposes of canonization are rigorous. They were set forth in the 1740s by Benedict XIV in response to Enlightenment dogmatic denial that miracles were possible. The criteria are strictly scientific and empirical. There are seven and I'll list as many as I can recall:

1. The cure must be complete

2. the cure must be lasting

3. the cure must be instantaneous (meaning, over a period of hours or a day or so, not over weeks or months

4. the patient must not have been treated for the illness or if any treatment was given, it must not have been intended or expected to have cured the illness--e.g., someone whose was in intense pain and terminally ill might have been given morphine to control pain but then he recovers fully, suddenly and lastingly from the cancer that was killing him

5. the disease must be one for which no cure is known

I don't remember the other two. But the point should be clear--if there's any possbility of explaining the cure by medical or natural means, the supposed miracle doesn't count. For instance, ruling out cures that take place slowly eliminates uncontrolled variables: if someone recovered from cancer over a period of months, even though he was not receiving any cancer treatment, still, there could have been some shift in his diet or in his surroundings or who knows what that hiddenly contributed to his cure. The Church doesn't want any contamination from unknown sources for a cure, so she specifies that the cure has to take place within a few hours so that the time period during which extraneous variables might have acted on the patient is cut down to almost nothing.

To give an example of the completeness criterion: a boy who was blind because of an atrophied optic nerve was taken to Lourdes and bathed in the water. Suddenly he began to see. This meets the sudden/spontenous cure criterion and after his ability to see lasted for years, he met the "lasting" criterion. But when they examined him afterwards, his optic nerve remained atrophied as before. Therefore, this does not count as one of the 60 or so approved miracles of Lourdes (the latest was just approved a day or two ago). Tens of thousands of cures at Lourdes have been alleged and only 65 or so meet all 7 criteria. That the boy with the atrophied optic nerve could see is certainly a miracle in the common understanding of the word, but because it was not complete, because the nerve was still damaged and not functioning (he was somehow able to see without going through the optic nerve), this miracle is not an official one, merely an unofficial one.

In the case of the nun cured of cancer by JPII's intercession, if she was receiving chemotherapy or any other cancer treatment, it won't count. Presumably she was not or the people around her wouldn't be trumpeting this--or perhaps they don't know the criteria.

This is the difference between Catholic official miracles and the charismatic healing ministry claims another poster referred to. There are indeed tens of thousands of alleged miracles reported by Catholics every year. But many of these can never be proven one way or another because no careful, clinical observations before or after or both were preserved--the observations are informal and, while those who saw what happaned may be convinced a miracle took place (and it might have), the Catholic Churc requires, preferably, medical miracles in which a full record of scientific, clinical observations have been recorded both before and after.

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