A French nun has for the first time revealed details of her sudden recovery from Parkinson's disease in an alleged 'miracle' that is expected to help speed John Paul II on the way to sainthood.
The nun said the trembling in her left hand, the rigidity throughout her body and all her pain vanished during the night exactly two months after the pontiff's death on April 2, 2005.
"I woke up at 4.30 in the morning, amazed that I had been able to sleep. I jumped straight out of bed, because my body was no longer rigid and painful. I was not the same as before," she said.
The nun, whose name is being kept secret until next week, allowed her account of the inexplicable healing to be published in a newsletter produced by officials working on John Paul's beatification process.
She said she had been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, the degenerative disorder of the nervous system that also afflicted the Polish pope, in 2001 when she was in her late thirties.
"By Easter 2005 the symptoms had got worse: there was more trembling, rigidity and pain and I had trouble sleeping".
Because of the paralysis in the left side of her body and the weakness of the rest of her body, she said she lacked the strength to watch John Paul on television on Easter Day as she would have liked. Six days later she learned he was dead.
The nun's condition continued to worsen and by June 1 she said she "couldn't even stand up."
The mother superior of her religious community comforted her and asked her to write John Paul II on a slip of paper, saying "John Paul has not yet completed his work".
"It was five o'clock, I wrote it with difficulty and it was almost illegible. I remained in silence and then the day passed as normal."
That same evening the nun said she had a sudden urge to write but thought little of it and went to bed as normal. A few hours later she awoke from her first bout of untroubled sleep in many weeks and found that all her pain had gone.
Feeling an urge to pray, she went to the convent chapel and stayed there for some time "with a deep sense of peace and well-being".
On June 3 "my left hand no longer trembled, I could write again and I stopped taking my medicine". On June 7 the neurologist treating her confirmed the disappearance of her Parkinson's Disease.
VETTING PROCESS.
To qualify for sainthood in the Catholic Church a candidate must be shown, among other things, to have been responsible for two miracles after his or her death. To reach the intermediate stage of beatification, one miracle is required.
Details and doctors' reports on the alleged miracle described by the French nun have been collected in a dossier which will be examined soon by officials in the Vatican.
The same Vatican department is also to begin studying the huge dossier which has been assembled over the last two years on the life and work of John Paul II.
The first stage of the beatification process, consisting of the gathering of material and testimony, is scheduled to close on April 2, exactly two years after the pontiff's death.
A ceremony will be held in Rome after which all the collected material on the pope's life and the alleged miracle will go to the Vatican saints department. If it is all approved, John Paul's beatification can go ahead.
Recently, the archbishop of Warsaw said he would like to see John Paul made a saint without going through the beatification stage first.
But the official in charge of the beatification procedures said on Tuesday that this was impossible and that Church law "must be respected".
