Woman whose healing is 67th Lourdes miracle tells her story

Published: 2005-12-20

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Anna Santaniello said that after volunteers lowered her into the chilly waters at the French Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in 1952 she was cured of a heart disease and began serving meals to others who had traveled to the shrine seeking healing. Santaniello, 93, recounted her story to Vatican Radio in mid-December, a month after her local bishop announced that hers was the 67th officially recognized miraculous cure to have occurred at Lourdes. Members of the International Medical Committee of Lourdes had agreed in 1964 that there was no natural or medical explanation for her recovery from mitral disease, which affects the heart. The committee forwarded its findings and Santaniello's records to her home diocese, the Archdiocese of Salerno-Campagna-Acerno, Italy, where a special commission studying the cure said it couldn't draw any conclusions. For 40 years nothing happened. Then, after the Lourdes medical officer and Archbishop Gerardo Pierro of Salerno revisited the case, the archbishop agreed that her healing was miraculous.

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