Countless miracles were performed while Christ still walked the earth, but it wasn’t only Jesus who performed them. He also gave His Apostles the power to heal in His name, and Our Lord still works miracles through His followers to this day.
CatholicVote has compiled a list of miracles that are especially significant: Each of these miracles was the second one attributed to a holy man or woman.
In other words, these are five miracles that made saints!
As CatholicVote’s Elizabeth Kidney explained in this explainer on the process of canonization, when the Church recognizes a second miracle performed through the intercession of a deceased person, it means he or she is set to be officially named a saint.
St. Mother Theodore Guerin – October 15, 2006
St. Mother Theodore Guerin was a missionary to America from France and the foundress of an academy for girls in Indiana. Many miracles have been attributed to her, but the one that led to her canonization was the eye-healing of Phil McCord.
McCord suffered from poor eyesight most of his life and it reached a critical point after a failed cataract removal surgery. His right eye became extremely heavy and it affected much of the right side of his face. Doctors agreed that a cornea transplant was the only solution. The surgery would come with many risks, and though McCord agreed to it, he also worried something might go terribly wrong.
McCord was not a religious man, but he worked as the Facilities Management Director at the college Mother Theodore founded. One day while at work, he was walking past the church and felt a pull to go inside. When he went in he decided to pray about the situation he was facing. “It was not an eloquent prayer,” he later recalled. “I said, ‘Mother Theodore, this is your house. I am your servant, for lack of a better word, and if you have the power to intercede, I would appreciate anything that you can do for me.’”
He felt more at peace after praying. When he woke the next morning, the swelling in his eye had gone down. The doctors determined the surgery was no longer necessary. McCord lived the rest of his life only needing reading glasses. The miracle was approved by the Vatican as the second one attributed to Mother Theodore.
Pope St. John Paul II – April 27, 2014
The miracle that led to his canonization of Pope St. John Paul II was the healing of Floribeth Mora Diaz. Diaz suffered a brain aneurysm in April 2011 and, after many consultations with doctors, was told that her condition was terminal. She was given only one month to live.
Diaz then went home to make herself comfortable. As a wife and mother of four, Diaz wanted to live and began praying for John Paul II’s intercession. Shortly after, Diaz watched John Paul II’s beatification on TV. That night, the pope visited her and said: “Get Up! Don’t be afraid!”
Diaz then got out of bed, surprising her husband, and told him that she felt fine. She explained her encounter with the holy pope. The doctors examined Diaz again and were left in wonder. The Vatican later assembled a committee of medical professionals to examine the case. They all agreed there was no scientific explanation for the woman’s recovery.
St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta – September 4, 2016
Mother Teresa’s second attributed miracle after her death was the healing of Marcilio Andrino. Andrino suffered for many years from an unknown illness that no doctor could diagnose.
When Andrino finally did receive a diagnosis, it was a bleak one: he had eight brain abscesses. Andrino and his wife began praying to Mother Teresa for her intercession, frequently holding a relic of the holy woman to Andrino’s head. A few months after his diagnosis, Andrino awoke with an extreme headache. The pain was so severe that it rendered him unable to speak, and his wife began praying more fervently than ever.
He was hospitalized and prepped for surgery but never made it to the table. He woke up with his pain mostly gone! The doctors postponed his surgery. Soon it was discovered that the abscesses had miraculously disappeared – and Andrino’s pain left along with them.
The couple immediately knew it was a miracle they could attribute to Mother Teresa. But even more than that, they found themselves pregnant with their first child six months later even though they were told they would never conceive because of Andrino’s condition.
St. John Bosco – April 1, 1934
St. John Bosco, also known as Don Bosco, served young boys living on the streets. He saw firsthand the large number of boys who were given difficult life circumstances but didn’t have support to prevent them from turning to crime. He founded a mission to educate and give formation to the desperate boys he encountered.
After Don Bosco’s death, the miraculous curing of Mrs. Catherine Lanfranchi Pilenga was attributed to his intercession. Pilenga suffered from serious chronic arthritic diathesis that prohibited her from engaging in many everyday activities because it practically paralyzed the lower half of her body. She fought the condition for nearly 30 years without any relief from treatment.
After an unsuccessful second pilgrimage to Lourdes, Pilenga began praying for John Bosco’s intercession during a trip to Turin. When she arrived, she had to be helped out of the car as usual. With assistance, she sat in front of the remains of John Bosco to pray, and while deep in prayer she knelt. After a few minutes of kneeling in prayer, she stood up, walked to the altar of Our Lady, and knelt again to continue praying. It was only then that she realized what she was doing. Up until now, kneeling had been impossible for her! She knew she had been cured. It was a complete and total recovery confirmed by multiple doctors and the Vatican.
Pilenga’s healing was chosen from many other miraculous events attributed to John Bosco to be brought to the world at his canonization as an authentic miracle.
St. Francesco Spinelli – October 14, 2018
Fr. Francesco Spinelli was born in Italy. During his childhood, his pious mother taught Francesco to care for the poor. He would later carry on that mission as an ordained Catholic priest.
After seeing a vision of women adoring Christ in the Eucharist, Spinelli founded a new order with St. Geltrude Comensoli: the Sacramentine Sisters of Bergamo.
The healing of a baby is what finally led to Spinelli’s canonization. When the mother of the child was bringing it home from the hospital after giving birth, she tripped and instinctively held tighter to the child. She held on so tightly that the baby suffered a hemorrhage. Back at the hospital, doctors tried to give the baby a blood transfusion, but all of the baby’s veins were too small. At this point, the doctors accepted that the baby was going to die. The sisters who ran the hospital began praying for the child’s survival through the intercession of Fr. Spinelli and placed a prayer card beneath the child’s sheets.
During their final effort, the doctors miraculously found a vein in the baby the size of an adult vein, enabling them to begin the blood infusion. After only a few drops of blood, the baby started kicking and crying. The baby went on to make a full recovery, and the family attributed the miracle to the intercession of Fr. Spinelli. The couple changed their son’s name to Francisco María Spinelli Díaz.
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