VATICAN CORNER
According to Catholic doctrine, God is the ultimate source of all miracles, but in heaven, someone who lived a heroically virtuous life and is a prospective saint may be able to intercede (plead) with God and have miracles delivered. Two miracles are required from a prospective saint for the Church to canonize (declare) them a saint. The vast majority of modern Catholic miracles are medical cures. Following criticisms of the Reformation (the great religious revolt of the sixteenth century) the Vatican instituted stringent guidelines for what constitutes a miracle. A cure must be sudden, complete, lasting, and most importantly inexplicable by contemporary science. Medical testimony is favored by the Church in miracle determination since doctors are meticulous record-keepers. The Church has its own doctors, mostly renowned Italian (and Catholic) professors of medicine, who scrutinize the evidence by claimants and only a very few alleged miracles make it all the way through the professor’s examination. A cure is assumed to be natural and not a miracle until proven otherwise by a lengthy process of elimination. By September of 1998, Audrey Toguchi a retired Hawaiian school teacher needed a miracle. An x-ray revealed three wispy masses in her lungs, metastases from a tumor originally found near her hip. The doctors told her that surgery was impossible, and that chemotherapy might extend her life a few months at most. Her surgeon, Dr. Walter Chang, told her there was nothing he could do and that cancer would take her life. Mrs. Toguchi declined the chemotherapy and turned exclusively to prayer. She had been deeply devout and prayerful from an early age, prevailed on the Holy Spirit, or the Blessed Mother, or Saint Joseph, or many other saints for help in matters great or small. When her sister Velma found out, she called on the nuns of Regina Pacis, the priests of the St. Patrick Monastery, and children of Kapahulu Pre-School, to all pray for her sister. She also asked Father Christopher Keahi, who she knew for advice. He suggested praying to the man who had loved and cared for afflicted Hawaiians – Father Damien de Veuster, the Belgian missionary who for 16 years from 1873 to 1889 cared for the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of the people with leprosy (Hansen’s disease) that were quarantined on the island of Molokai. Father Damien had died of leprosy and was described as a martyr of charity, and was slowly progressing towards sainthood with one miracle to his credit. The idea of praying to Father Damien resonated with Mrs. Toguchi. Her own aunt, uncle and grandfather had been banished to Molokai and she remembered when she was eight years old, that Father Damien’s coffin was paraded in Honolulu, passing many tearful observers………. to be continued …
Sources: Atlasobsura.com, catholic.org