In a world where facts and figures dominate we have come to idolise ever growing masses of data. We may seek our golden calf in the DNA, building block of our physical unity, and await new wonders as the twisted helix of our being slowly surrenders its secrets. Daily life is reduced to empirical facts to be disected and analysed. Mystery awaits. Can listening moments still be found? Could miracles happen?
Theodore Mangiapan is a French doctor of international repute who has served for many years in Lourdes. In a book of scholarly research, he subjects reported cures to rigorous investigation. He takes the case of Delizia Cirolli (born November 17th 1964). Her extraordinary cure of Ewing's sarcoma of the knee was declared in 1982 by the International Medical Bureau of Lourdes as "... a completely exceptional event in the strictest sense of the term contrary to all known information in medical experience and hence inexplicable
Dr Mangiapan tells us about the reality of the malady and the cure, that the healing was prodigious and is of value as a sign of the saving mystery of Jesus Christ. On July 6th 1989, the overwhelming evidence led the Archbishop of Catania in Sicily to accept the cure as a miracle. Photographs show Delizia as a healthy, radiant nurse at Lourdes, and caring for the sick.
The eminent doctor deals at length with two other modern cures accepted as miracles. Vittorio Micheli was born in 1940 in Northern Italy. He entered the Alpine Corps in the army. He developed sarcoma of the pelvis. In May 1963, critically ill and in plaster from head to foot, he was taken on a stretcher to Lourdes. After his visit to the baths, the pain disappeared, his appetite returned and he started to move. A series of x rays revealed the reconstruction and re calcification of the destroyed bone. By February 1964, Vittorio felt cured. The tumour was gone. New bone had formed. Doctors from Italy, France and other countries expressed interest and were in full agreement with the radiological diagnosis. In 1964, Vittorio acted as a stretcher bearer and has often done so since. In 1976 this astounding cure was declared unexplainable from a medical point of view and the Bishop of Trent accepted the cure as a miracle. The international medical journal, Orthopaedic Surgical Review (June 1971), gave a summary of the case and indicated the respect in medical circles for the doctors in Lourdes.
Dr Mangiapan also deals with the healing of Serge Perrin of France. He suffered from organic hemiplegia due to circulatory defects. On May 1st 1970, in the St Pius X Basilica during the anointing of the sick, he was suddenly cured. At one examination 170 doctors were present. They declared his cure extraordinary, certain and lasting. His bishop accepted it as a miracle in June 1978.
Dr Mangiapan concludes his most valuable study with a statement of his own conviction about the cures in Lourdes. "... I am convinced that there have been cures associated with Lourdes which cannot be explained by medical science. In default of such explanation it seems to me logical and coherent to consider the source of these cures, taken in their religious milieu as being the response of a spirit of love to earnest prayer and to indicate an intervention of God, the God of Christianity, who involves himself in his creation and acts in the order of grace, God our creator and father Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth..."