Miracles may no longer be required before someone can become a saint in the Catholic Church, a Vatican spokesman said last night. He also forecast that as many as two million people could attend the canonisations of Blessed Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II in Rome on Sunday.
Speaking to an impromptu group of media Fr Thomas Rosica SJ, who is English language spokesman for the Vatican, was responding to a question from The Irish Times as to why Pope Francis had waived the requirement of two proven miracles before Pope John XXIII could be canonised.
He said that recently at senior levels in the Vatican, people had been asking were miracles really necessary for canonisation.
He referred to April 3rd last when Pope Francis canonised Fr José de Anchieta (1534-97), a Spanish Jesuit missionary to Brazil; Sr Marie of the Incarnation (1599-1672), who introduced the Ursuline congregation to Canada; and Bishop François de Laval (1623- 1708), the first bishop of Quebec. Fr Rosica said Pope Francis “hadn’t explained this. He just got fed up of the bureaucracy”.
"Apostle of Brazil"
Last night Pope Francis celebrated a Mass of thanksgiving for the canonisation of Fr José de Anchieta at the Church of St Ignatius Loyola. Known as the "Apostle of Brazil", Fr de Anchieta is that country's third saint and was co-founder of two of its largest cities, São Paolo and Rio de Janeiro.
Fr Rosica, A Canadian Jesuit, said people were already on the way to attend Sunday’s canonisations, many from Poland to witness the canonisation of Pope John Paul and many from Italy for the canonisation of Pope John XXIII, who remains hugely popular more than 50 years after his death in 1963. He said he believed the total attendance “could be up to two million”.
At a Vatican press conference yesterday, Sr Adele Labianca spoke of her late colleague Sr Caterina Capitani, who died in2010, but whose life is believed to have been saved through the intervention of Pope John XXIII in May 1966, when she was 22.
A nun with the congregation of the Daughters of Charity, she had been seriously ill for the previous four years. In a five-hour operation most of her stomach was removed but her condition continued to deteriorate. She prayed desperately to Pope John, with a relic placed on her stomach.
Complete recovery
Pope John appeared to her, told her not to be afraid and that she was healed. She made a complete recovery which her medical team were unable to explain. This miracle was the basic for the beatification of Pope John XXIII in 2000.
Also yesterday, Floribeth More Diaz from Costa Rica recalled how in April 2011, she was diagnosed with an inoperable brain aneurysm . She was sent home to die, in May 2011, when Pope John Paul was beatified. She “prayed very hard” to him. “Hours later I felt a deep sense of peace, a healing,” she said. She heard Pope John Paul’s voice saying “get up and do not be afraid”. Her doctors were “stupefied” by her recovery.
Fr Rosica said the first Pope John Paul miracle involved “a 48-year-old nun in France, who is very shy”. It is believed that in 2006, the year after he died, Sr Marie Simon Pierre from Puyricard, near Aix-en- Provence in France, was cured of Parkinson’s disease by Pope John Paul. Proof of that miracle led to his beatification
