Lourdes papal warning

AT a special audience in the Vatican last weekend, Pope John Paul II reminded doctors from the Lourdes sanctuary in France of the need for "prudence" before proclaiming miracle cures.
"You have a mission to recognise cures, to dissipate what could be an illusion and to assess what the church could acknowledge as an effect of Pope told the doctors from the sanctuary which attracts more pilgrims than any other Marian shrine in the world.
"Your skills have prepared you to be circumspect so that prudence prevails," John Paul added. The Pope said that "scrupulous" medical investigation was indispensable in any eventual "miracle" cure so that the pastors of the church could pass spiritual judgment.
Insights of youth at Lourdes, page 8
One of the most recent Lourdes cures, now officially
• • IN ••• • • 1 •
young Sicilian woman diagnosed 11 years ago as the victim of a rare bone cancer.
After just one visit to the sanctuary in 1979, her condition improved. The woman, now married and a mother, bears no traces of the disease today