Diocesan tribunal revisiting alleged Blessed Damien miracle completes its investigation
By Lisa Benoit
Hawaii Catholic Herald
A diocesan tribunal to further investigate an alleged miraculous healing attributed to the intercession of Blessed Damien, which could advance his cause for canonization, was officially closed May 10 at the diocesan chancery in Honolulu.
During the closing ceremony, documents were signed and sealed in a box to be sent to the investigators at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints at the Vatican.
The tribunal was initiated in January to complete a previous tribunal on the miracle case opened in 2003.
Late last year, the Vatican congregation informed the postulator, the primary promoter of Father Damien’s cause in Rome Sacred Hearts Father Emilio Vega Garcia, that the 2003 report needed further documentation and clarification. He returned to Hawaii earlier this year to assist in the new tribunal.
The cure in question involved the unexplainable disappearance without treatment of cancer from the lungs of a Honolulu woman eight years ago. The case was documented in an article about “complete spontaneous regression of cancer” published by Dr. Walter Y.M. Chang, in the October 2000 issue of the Hawaii Medical Journal.
The doctor’s wrote that, over a period of several months following prayers to Blessed Damien and pilgrimages to Kalaupapa on the part of the patient, the “lung metastases disappeared with no therapy at all.”
Father Garcia came to Hawaii in 2003 to direct the documentation of the healing to submit to the Vatican as the “miracle” needed for Blessed Damien’s canonization.
The process of gathering testimony about the cure from the patient and her doctors, relatives and spiritual directors was completed on April 16, 2003. Father Garcia delivered the documents to Congregation for the Causes of Saints on April 24, 2003, and they were formally opened for examination on Sept. 11, 2003.
If this miracle is authenticated by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and approved by the pope, Blessed Damien could be canonized a saint.
On June 13, 1992, Pope John Paul II approved the 1895 cure of a Sacred Hearts Sister in France as the miracle needed for Father Damien’s beatification.
In that case, Sister Simplicia Hue of France began a novena to Father Damien as she lay dying at age 37 of a lingering intestinal illness. The pain and symptoms of the illness disappeared overnight on Sept. 11, 1895, and Sister Simplicia lived for another 32 years.
Pope John Paul II beatified Father Damien on June 4, 1995, in Brussels, Belgium.