Pope 'cured my dying son'
2005-04-05 07:49
Mexico City - A Mexican man said Pope John Paul II performed a miracle when he cured his terminally ill son during a visit to Mexico in 1990 - an event documented by a local diocese.
If confirmed by the Vatican as a miracle, the event could put the late pontiff, who died Saturday at age 84, on the path to sainthood.
The family met the pope at the airport in Zacatecas, in north-western Mexico, in May 1990 thanks to the city's bishop at the time, Javier Lozano Barragan, who is now a cardinal and the Vatican's health minister.
The then four-year-old Heron Badillo was suffering from leukaemia and had been declared terminally ill by doctors, said his father, Felipe de Jesus Badillo.
"But we had the hope that through the pope's intervention he would be cured," Jesus Badillo told AFP on Monday.
"Little Heron changed after the pope touched him, kissed his hairless little head, and spoke to him," the father said. "After that he began eating and recovered without medicine."
"For us it was a miracle," Jesus Badillo said.
Heron Badillo is now 19 and a college student.
Lozano Barragan recalled the story Saturday on Mexican television, describing the event as "marvellous."
He said the family visited the pope at the Vatican last year and John Paul II remembered their encounter in Zacatecas.
Catholic priest Humberto Salinas, the spokesperson of the Zacatecas diocese, said the diocese was willing to testify on the case.
Salinas said that, according to the diocese, "when the pope appeared the boy was cured, and today he is healthy and a student."
"Personally, I believe this was a miracle," he added.
The road to sainthood begins with the attribution of one miracle to the candidate, which if confirmed leads to beatification.
It takes another miracle to achieve sainthood.
But the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of the Saints normally takes decades to complete the exhaustive inquiries it deems necessary to confirm miracles attributed to potential saints.