The French nun who says she was inexplicably cured from Parkinson's Disease after praying to Pope John Paul II says her life has completely changed and that her sudden recovery was like a second birth. Her case is expected to be used as the needed miracle in the process of beatification for Pope John Paul II. Sabina Castelfranco has this VOA report from Rome.
French nun Sister Marie-Simon-Pierre, 46, on Friday gave details of her extraordinary experience at a news conference in France.
Sister Marie, whose identity was long kept secret, works in a Paris maternity hospital. She says she was cured one night exactly two months after the death of Pope John Paul II, in 2005. She had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2001.
Sister Marie says that that night she heard an inner voice urging her to take up her pen and write and then woke up feeling completely transformed.
She says she immediately called her superior, and said "look, John Paul II has cured me, as I can write again." She says it was very emotional and from that day she no longer has had to take any medicine.
Sister Marie, who comes from Cambrai in northern France, says she always had been an admirer of Pope John Paul II.
She says she was 17-years-old when he was elected Pope in 1978. She describes him as "my Pope, the Pope of our generation." And she says he helped her a lot to live with this disease.
Pope John Paul II also suffered from Parkinson's Disease, a condition that got progressively worse over the years and until his death April 2, 2005.
Sister Marie-Simon-Pierre is now scheduled to attend ceremonies next Monday at the Vatican to mark the second anniversary of the pope's death and the completion of a church investigation into his life.
Her unexplained recovery could be central in the beatification process of Pope John Paul, putting him one step away from sainthood. The Catholic Church demands proof of a medically unexplained healing to give that honor and a second such case to declare him a saint.