Originally published at crisis magazine
We hear a lot these days about “the miracles of modern medicine.” But, when it comes to true miracle cures, the old ones are still often the best.
I was pleased to hear a dead parishioner has just been recognized by my local archbishop, the Most Reverend Malcolm McMahon, as the first English Catholic to have officially received a miracle cure at Lourdes, the renowned French shrine where the peasant visionary Bernadette Soubirous enjoyed a series of notable Marian visions in 1858.
Here, this formerly sick individual was inexplicably healed through “a miracle wrought by the power of God through the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes,” according to the judgment of Archbishop McMahon, as issued in a celebratory public letter to the faithful issued on December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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The patient in question was John “Jack” Traynor. Born in the north-west English city of Liverpool in 1883, Jack served in Britain’s merchant navy before joining up to fight in WWI. He was hit by enemy machine-gun fire during a bayonet charge at Gallipoli, Turkey, in 1915. Traynor’s injuries were severe: he
