The Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints has reportedly approved a miracle attributed to the intercession of Pope Paul VI.
The miracle was the healing in the United States of an unborn baby from an otherwise incurable illness.
Doctors forecast the baby would die in the womb, or be born with severely damaged kidneys.
Abortion was offered to the mother, but she refused.
Instead, she took advice given from a nun who was a friend of the family and who had met Giovanni Battista Montini (Paul VI).
The mother prayed for Paul VI’s intercession, placing a fragment of his vestments and an image of him on her stomach.
Ten weeks later, medical tests showed a substantial improvement in the baby’s health.
The eventual birth was by Caesarean section.
Witnesses agree the case cannot be explained scientifically.
Andrea Tornielli, writing for La Stampa, forecast that Pope Paul’s beatification will be in October, at the end of the extraordinary synod on the family.
He predicted Pope Francis would promulgate a decree on the miracle soon.
It was Paul VI who established the synod of bishops in 1965, in response to a request from Vatican II fathers.
He was pope from 1963 to 1978.
Paul VI presided over key reforms from the Second Vatican Council, as well as surviving an assassination attempt at Manila airport in 1970 by a Bolivian surrealist painter.
Pope Paul promulgated a new Roman Missal in 1969.
The year before, he published an apostolic constitution reforming the Roman Curia
The late pope was praised for his efforts to seek closer ties with other Christian denominations, but his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae banning artificial contraception was controversial.
Pope Benedict XVI promulgated Paul VI’s heroic virtues in 2012, bestowing on him the title “Venerable”.
Sources