ROME (CNS): The Polish priest charged with shepherding Pope John Paul II’s sainthood cause said he believes the healing of a French nun suffering from Parkinson’s disease could be the miracle needed for the pope’s beatification.
Postulator of the cause, Msgr Slawomir Oder, announced on Italian radio late last month that he had chosen the case of the French nun from among the many apparently miraculous healings people from around the world had reported to him.
He told Catholic News Service on January 31 that the case involved a French religious who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s when she was “very young; it was a precocious onset”.
Before Pope Benedict can proclaim that Pope John Paul heroically lived a life of Christian virtue, Msgr Oder must compile all the information collected in a “positio”, a document of multiple volumes explaining who the candidate was and how he or she lived and acted.
A separate report is prepared on the miracle, Msgr Oder said.
While a Vatican panel of historians and theologians will review the “positio”, another panel of Vatican theologians and a panel of Vatican-appointed physicians will review the nun’s medical records.
In Poland, the head of a Polish tribunal gathering evidence for the cause criticised media speculation about witnesses after press reports that the country’s former Communist strongman, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, had been asked to give evidence.
