French nun speaks of "miracle" healing through John Paul II

Mar 30, 2007, 11:47 GMT

Aix-en-Provence, France - 'I was ill and now I am cured,' French Catholic nun Sister Marie Simon-Pierre said Friday as she recounted how praying to the late Pope John Paul II helped cure her of Parkinson's disease in 2005.

'I am cured. It is the work of God through the intercession of John Paul II,' the 46-year-old woman told journalists in the southern French city of Aix-en-Provence. 'It is something very powerful, very difficult to put into words.'

Sister Marie's recovery from the degenerative disorder of the central nervous system, for which no known cure exists, is to be described as a miracle that the late pope performed, two months after his death, and could be used as a basis for his eventual beatification.

On Sunday, an announcement to that effect is scheduled to be made in Sister Marie's diocese of Aix-en-Provence.

Sister Marie, who is a member of an order of nuns working in Catholic maternity hospitals, was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2002. She said Friday that her disease worsened after Pope John Paul II's death, on April 2, 2005.

She went on to say how she and her entire order then prayed for her continuously, using the late pope as an intermediary, and how she was suddenly cured on the night of June 2, two months after John Paul II died.

'It is up to the Church to make a declaration and to acknowledge that it is a miracle,' Sister Marie said.

After John Paul II's death and at his funeral, many Catholics in St Peter's Square in Rome had called for him to be named a saint immediately, chanting the Latin phrase 'santo subito.'

The process of beatification is strictly regulated in the Roman Catholic Church. Proof of at least one miracle is required and investigated thoroughly by the church authorities.

Nearly all miracles are healings that occur after death, when sick people pray to the dead person to be cured of their affliction.