French nun says late Pope
gave her a 'second birth'
AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France. January 18 (Reuters) - The French Catholic nun who credits the late Pope John Paul with curing her of Parkinson's disease said on Monday her sudden recovery came just as she was about to quit working because of her ailment.
Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, 49, said she woke up in June 2005, two months after the Polish-born pope had died, suddenly cured of the disease she had suffered from for four years.
John Paul's successor, Pope Benedict, approved a decree last Friday declaring her healing a miracle and attributing it to the late pontiff, clearing the way for him to be beatified on May 1.
"When I woke up, I felt I was not the same," Sister Marie told a news conference at the bishop's office in this southern French city. "There was no more heaviness in my muscles, I could move normally. For me it was a new birth, a second birth."
Her superior said the nun had told her the previous evening that she could no longer work in their order's maternity clinic because of her worsening health.
"I asked her to take a pencil and write John Paul's name," Mother Marie Thomas told journalists. "I saw the writing was very messy and illegible. I said to myself there was nothing left to do but hope."
Church-appointed doctors concluded that there was no medical explanation for the healing, although last year there were some doubts about the validity of the miracle.
A further miracle occurring after the beatification ceremony -- which confers the title "Blessed" on John Paul -- must be approved before he can be made a saint.
The beatification ceremony in St Peter's Square is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of people, harkening back to the funeral of the charismatic pope in 2005. Sister Marie said she hoped she could attend the event.
"Since my healing, many requests for prayers have come in from many countries," the nun said. "To all these ill people, I'd like to say they must not give up. At the end of the tunnel, there is always a little light."
Crowds at John Paul's funeral on April 8, 2005 chanted "Santo subito!" ("Make him a saint right now!"). A month after his death, Benedict put him on the fast track by dispensing with a Church rule for a five-year wait after a candidate's death before the procedure that leads to sainthood can start.
The period between John Paul's death and beatification is believed to be the shortest in modern Church history.
Pope John Paul II's blood
to be a relic in Krakow church
CARCOW, Poland, Jan. 18 (AFP) - A vial containing blood drawn from Pope John Paul II shortly before he died will be installed as a relic in a Polish church soon after his beatification later this year, an official says.
Piotr Sionko, the spokesman for the John Paul II Centre, said the vial will be encased in crystal and built into the altar of a church in the southern city of Krakow that is opening in May.
The exact date of the opening is not yet known, but it should be shortly after John Paul's beatification at the Vatican on May 1.
Sionko said the idea came from Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the archbishop of Krakow and the longtime friend and secretary of the late Polish-born pontiff.
The blood was drawn for medical tests at Rome's Gemelli Polyclinic shortly before John Paul's death on April 2, 2005, and is now in Cardinal Dziwisz's possession, he said.
"It was the cardinal's proposal," Mr Sionko said. "He is of the opinion that this is the most precious relic of John Paul II and should be the focal point of the church."
The church in the Lagiewniki district is part of a centre that will be devoted to cultivating the memory and the teaching of the late pope - who was born Karol Wojtyla in Wadowice, southern Poland, and spent decades in Krakow.
Many Catholics in the world are rejoicing over Pope Benedict XVI's announcement last week that he will beatify John Paul on May 1.
The announcement came after a French nun miraculously recovered from Parkinson's disease.
Marie Simon-Pierre was diagnosed with degenerative Parkinson's disease in 2001.
After the death of John Paul II, who also suffered from Parkinson's, her condition quickly deteriorated, and her community began praying for the late pope's intercession to cure her.
The 49-year old recovered overnight in June 2005, two months after the pope's death, an event that doctors could not explain.
"On June 7 I met with my neurologist and when he saw my way of moving, he asked me if I had doubled my dosage of dopamine. I told him, 'No, I stopped everything,'" Simon-Pierre recalled.
"Why me? It remains a great mystery. There are, without a doubt, people, children, who are more sick than myself. I can't answer you. We are in the hands of life."
One miracle is required for beatification and a second one is needed for sainthood.
The process of validating his second miracle cannot begin before John Paul II is beatified. But speculation over which miracle will be chosen has already begun.
In April 2009, sources in Poland and in the United States spoke of two possibilities, one involving a wheelchair-bound Polish boy who walked after praying at John Paul II's tomb ,and the other an American who recovered from a serious head wound after he was given a rosary blessed by the pope.
The idea of displaying the Pope's relics has met with some reservations, even inside the Catholic Church.
"The tradition of relics comes from medieval practices of teaching the Bible through images and symbols," said the Rev. Krzysztof Madel, a Jesuit priest in Nowy Sacz who has publicly questioned the usefulness of displaying John Paul's blood.
"But in today's rationalised world the message should rather come through teaching about someone's life."
After John Paul's death, some Polish officials said they hoped John Paul's heart would be removed from his body and returned to his homeland for burial.
However, Church officials dismissed any possibility of dismembering the body, saying the age had passed for that practice.
Dziwisz said on Friday that he has always been against dividing of the body, but that "relics have always existed and will always exist".
[I would have imagined that Mons. Dsiwisz at the time would have kept some of the late Pope's hair from haircuts, as the most convenient way to keep a 'body part' of a potential saint. I wonder what Gemelli has done with any untested blood samples of the late Pope - it is standard practice in medical labs to keep frozen aliquots (small portions) of untested blood from specific dates and times even with 'ordinary patients' for a certain period of time, for possible future re-testing such as, for instance, to check out some results.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/01/2011 17:17]