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Close this window‘Miracles’ boost support for MacKillop sainthood
"drowned boy restored to life'
It is one of several instances of “great favours” people have reported after petitions to Blessed Mary. Sr Maria Casey, vice postulator for Bl Mary MacKillop’s cause for canonisation, says that recent media reports around crash survivor Sophie Delezio and her parents’ prayers to the unofficial saint had an unexpected effect. “Since then I’ve had several other people call in to talk about great favours they have received,” she said. “They are great favours to those people but we won’t know until they are investigated whether they meet the Vatican’s criteria, and the criteria are quite strict.” High on the list of “great favours” is that of the little boy found at the bottom of a pool and pronounced dead by paramedics, who regained consciousness in his mother’s arms after she prayed for the intercession of Mary MacKillop. It may not meet the requirement of the second miracle needed for Mary MacKillop to be made a saint if doctors find it was possible he was in a very deep coma, says Sr Casey. “But that doesn’t take away from the fact that it was a great favour for that family,” she adds. Another caller reported a child with acute leukaemia who was not expected to live but recovered, it is believed, through Mary MacKillop’s intercession. Sydney Bishop David Cremin says hopes are high that a second miracle can be found in time for Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Sydney for World Youth Day in 2008. For a cure to be found miraculous a panel of doctors must find that the person’s recovery goes beyond scientific and medical explanation and was outside the normal healing time frame. The case is then scrutinised by a formal tribunal in the diocese in which the cure occurred, before a panel of theologians and a panel of doctors in Rome make the final verdict. Two cases are under investigation which may meet the requirements for canonisation. One is a woman cured of inoperable cancer who remains well after 10 years, and another of a boy with multiple sclerosis and lymphoma who is now recovering. The latter is a “very complicated and complex case”, says Sr Casey. “I’ve been told there’s no case reported in the medical literature of a child having these two diseases and not dying”. “But there are difficulties with each case that we are trying to resolve. For example, that child had quite a lot of treatment, and we have to determine (for example) whether the treatment treated all the symptoms but not the actual disease.” |
