French Nun Says Church to Rule on Cure by John Paul II
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
PARIS, March 30 — If the story Sister Marie Simon-Pierre told Friday is true, then Pope John Paul II exercised miraculous powers from beyond the grave. A proven physical miracle is an important qualification on the road to sainthood.
Smiling and strong-voiced, the 46-year-old nun stepped out of her quiet life of prayer and good works and stood in front of a wall of cameras to proclaim that the pope cured her of Parkinson’s disease two months after his death in 2005.
“I have been cured,” she told journalists gathered for a news conference in Aix-en-Provence. “My healing was the work of God through the intercession of Pope John Paul II.”
But she refused to call her recovery a “miracle,” saying such a designation is the responsibility of the Vatican.
“All I can say is that I was ill and now I am cured,” she said. “It is for the church to say and to recognize whether it is a miracle.” The veracity of her story is crucial to making Pope John Paul II a saint.
The pope has already been put on a fast track to sainthood. Only 26 days after the pope’s death, Pope Benedict XVI, his successor, waived the five-year waiting period to begin the process of beatification, the first step toward sainthood.
But John Paul needs one verifiable miracle to be beatified, which means that one has reached heaven and can be referred to as “blessed.” Sister Marie Simon-Pierre’s case has been chosen as the first potential miracle.
A second miracle is generally required for canonization as a saint. Miracles can be waived for those who die as “Christian martyrs.”
The French nun’s case had been revealed during the course of a Vatican investigation on behalf of Pope John Paul’s sainthood, but only on Friday did she publicly recount her story.
Dressed in a white nun’s habit and veil with a black sweater, and carrying a knapsack over her shoulder as she walked through a garden, she seemed slightly overwhelmed by the media attention.
She was told in 2001 that she was suffering from Parkinson’s, a degenerative disease of the nervous system. Over time, she said, her symptoms worsened until she had difficulty walking, writing and driving a car. She could not sleep. Her hands trembled. Her body was racked with pain.
The late pope became an inspiration for her because of his own very public suffering from Parkinson’s disease in the decade before his death on April 2, 2005.
It also became too painful for her to watch him on television, because, she said, “to be honest, I saw myself in the years to come in a wheelchair.”
But her fellow nuns, the Little Sisters of Catholic Maternity Hospitals in Puyricard near the southeastern town of Aix-en-Provence, prayed to the pope for her recovery.
In June 2005, exactly two months after the pope’s death, she asked to be relieved of her duties as supervisor of a 40-bed maternity ward. Her mother superior told her to write John Paul’s name on a piece of paper, but the words were illegible.
Later that night after her evening prayers, she heard a voice from within telling her to pick up a pen and write. She followed her lights, and was stunned to see that she could write legibly again.
When she awoke early the next morning, she said she felt “completely transformed.”
“I felt that my body was no longer the same, and that I was no longer the same,” she said, adding that it was “a bit like a second birth.”
After her recovery, she told one of her fellow nuns: “Look at my hand. It is no longer trembling. John Paul II has cured me.”
She said that her neurologist was astounded when he saw her soon after her transformation. She has not had to take medication or seek treatment since. Last year, she was transferred to another maternity hospital in Paris run by her order.
Only once before has a pope put a candidate for sainthood on a fast track. In 2003, Pope John Paul II accelerated the canonization process for Mother Teresa, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for her care of the poor of Calcutta who died in 1997.
But a grass-roots campaign to make the late Pope John Paul II a saint began immediately after his death. Cries of Santo subito! — Sainthood now! filled Saint Peter’s Square during his funeral.
Msgr. Slawomir Oder, a Polish cleric in the diocese of Rome, has organized an official campaign to push for quick sainthood. He has said he has received reports of more than 130 miracles attributed to the late pope. But he is focusing on the case of Sister Marie Simon-Pierre because other cases may take longer to verify.
“The scientific evaluation of cancer cures would have required a wait of 8 to 10 years,” he said recently.
Pope Benedict has given mixed signals on his approach to sainthood.
In addition to putting the late pope’s canonization on a fast track, he fueled speculation that sainthood was imminent when he expressed hope last May during a trip to Poland, John Paul’s homeland, that the process would conclude “in the near future.”
As a cardinal, however, Pope Benedict said several times that he was not in favor of naming an excessive number of saints. He was believed to have been aligned with conservatives who looked askance on Pope John Paul’s record canonization of saints during his 26-year papacy.
Sister Marie Simon-Pierre and Archbishop Claude Feidt of Aix-en-Provence are now heading to the Vatican, where her case will be presented. They will attend a Mass in Saint Peter’s Square marking the second anniversary of John Paul’s death, when the dossier of documents for beatification will be turned over to the Vatican’s congregation for saints.
A team of doctors and other experts appointed by the Vatican will decide whether her recovery was a miracle.
Described by her fellow sisters as a gentle woman who had intended to keep her identity secret, the nun said Friday that in her decision to speak publicly, she drew inspiration from Pope John Paul II.
“He never shied away from the cameras,” she said. “And I believe today he gives me necessary strength, and I think that today he is with me.”
