Two new miraculous cures at Lourdes?
According to the French daily Le Parisien, two women, cured of cancer contrary to all expectation in the mid 1990s, could be officially recognised as miracles of Lourdes, by the end of 2003 or the beginning of 2004.
Le Parisien quotes Dr. Patrick Theillier, in charge of the medical office at the Lourdes sanctuaries, who admits that two cures were registered at the last meeting of Cmil4 last October. But he emphasised that the specialists reports were still being compiled.
According to official procedure, the twenty-five doctors who sit on the council, will vote on the issue at their annual meeting next October. Co-president of Cmil1, Mgr. Perrier, bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes, talking to Le Parisien, stressed We want to prevent these women falling prey to the media. Media pressure is such that people are pestered for about ten years following the official proclamation . The most recent miracle to date was that of Frenchman Jean-Pierre Bély, who was cured of multiple sclerosis in 1987, and subsequently hounded in by the television and the press from all over the world.
An exacting procedure
Up to the present day, more than 7000 cures have been registered with the Lourdes medical bureau. Since 1858, only 66 have been officially declared miraculous. This recognition assumes that the illness be known and indexed by the medical profession, that it be serious, lesional and organic, diagnosed by objective medical examinations, based on biology, radiology, etc. It is also necessary that the cure may not be put down to any form of treatment, that it be sudden and instant, that the recovery of faculties be complete, without convalescence, and that the cure should be lasting. The deadline for recognition is up to ten years from the date of the miracle.
By a two-thirds majority vote, Cmil recognises the exceptional and medically inexplicable character of the miracle. It is then up to the bishop of the diocese where the person concerned lives, to canonically proclaim the cure to be miraculous.
