They recognize the 71st miraculous healing attributed to the Virgin of Lourdes

The Archbishop of Liverpool (United Kingdom), Bishop Malcom McMahon, proclaimed that the healing of John Traynor in 1923 “must be recognized as a miracle wrought by the power of God through the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes.”

This is the seventy-first time that the Catholic Church officially declares a miraculous healing through the intercession of the Virgin of Lourdes.

This certifies it in a letter dated on December 8, the day of the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, in which it details the details of the investigation that led to the declaration of the miracle more than a century after it occurred.

It was precisely in 1923 when the first pilgrimage to Lourdes was made by the Archdiocese of Liverpool, to which John Traynor joined, and since then the faithful people have always considered his recovery as supernatural.

Traynor, who had been seriously wounded during World War I, suffered from epilepsy, paralysis of the right arm, lack of voluntary movement in the legs and loss of sensation, lack of body control, and an opening in the parietal region of the skull covered with a plate. metallic.

However, the archbishop details, “there was never an official ecclesiastical declaration in this regard.” Nor was it achieved when in 1993 an unsuccessful attempt was made to produce the declaration, because “it was considered that there was not sufficient contemporary evidence.”

Last year, on the occasion of the 100th archdiocesan pilgrimage, the president of the Office of Medical Confirmations of the Sanctuary of Lourdes, Dr. Alessandro de Franciscis asked a member of the International Medical Committee to review the file.

Thus, the English doctor Kieran Moriarty discovered a reference to the extraordinary events in the Cave Journal December 1926. In it, the then president of the Medical Assurance Office, Dr. Vallet, gives an account of how he examined John Traynor before and after his cure, along with three other doctors named Azurdia, Finn and Marley.

Bishop McMahon explains in his letter that the report concluded by saying: “We recognize and proclaim, together with our Brotherhood, that the process of this prodigious healing is absolutely outside and above the forces of nature.” However, this report was never sent to Liverpool.

According to the archbishop, Dr. Moriarty has compiled an extensive dossier of evidence that the Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes, Bishop Jean Marc Micas, sent to Liverpool last summer.

“It was clear that there was now sufficient medical evidence to reconsider the possibility that John Traynor’s healing could be declared miraculous,” continues Bishop McMahon, who decided to convene a canonical commission whose fruit is the declaration of supernaturality of the events.

The Archbishop of Liverpool has announced that in February 2025, during the jubilee year, “an appropriate celebration will take place in the Metropolitan Cathedral to mark this significant moment in the history of our archdiocese.”