Two Amazing Miracles Attributed to St. John Paul II

It is not easy to be a saint. It is also not that easy to be declared a saint by the Catholic Church.

Not too many people are aware of the fact that in order for a person to be declared a saint, two documented and verified miracles attributed to that person are required by the Vatican. Those miracles need to have happened after the person’s death, and they need to be verified as authentic miracles by doctors and independent experts.

In the case of St. John Paul II, two amazing miracles, attributed to his intercession, led to the formal declaration of his sainthood.

The first miracle performed by St. John Paul was on a French nun who suffered from Parkinson’s disease - the same disease that St. John Paul himself suffered. It happened in June 2005, just several months after St. John Paul’s death.

Sister Marie Simon-Pierre of the Congregation of the Little Sisters of Catholic Motherhood was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2001. It worsened in subsequent years.

"I was finished; I struggled to stand and to walk," she wrote in her testimony. "[Later] I went to find my superior to ask her if I could leave my work. She encouraged me to endure a bit longer... and she added: 'John Paul II has not yet said his last word.’”

Her Mother Superior gave her a pen and told her to write: “John Paul II.” With great effort, Sister Pierre wrote: “John Paul II.”

The next morning, at 4:30 a.m., Sister Pierre woke up, and to her surprise, she said she “leapt out of bed.” Her body “was no longer insensitive, rigid, and interiorly I was not the same.” She then felt a strong interior call to pray before the Most Blessed Sacrament. There, while praying before the Most Blessed Sacrament, she said she felt a “profound peace and a sensation of well-being; too great an experience, a mystery difficult to explain with words.”

Later, before the Most Blessed Sacrament, Sister Pierre said she meditated on John Paul II’s Mysteries of Light.

She said: “It feels as if I had been reborn.”

Four days later, she went to her neurologist, who was shocked with the sudden disappearance of all her symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Ten months after the miracle, Sister Pierre said: “I am working normally again, I have no difficulty in writing and I also drive long distances. It feels as if I have been reborn: a new life, because nothing is as it was before.”