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Decree recognizing a miracle. July 6, 1991

Holy See

Tags: Canonization
The Venerable Josemaría Escrivá was born in Barbastro, Spain, on January 9, 1902. His specific ecclesial charism consisted in the vigorous proclamation of the radical nature of the baptismal vocation as a call to holiness. By divine inspiration, he founded Opus Dei on October 2, 1928. Shortly afterwards, on February 14, 1930, with the grace of God, he understood that Opus Dei had to also develop its apostolate among women. On February 14, 1943, likewise moved by God, he founded the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross. Thus for all faithful - for priests and lay persons, men and women - he opened a way of sanctification in the midst of the world through the practice of daily work and in the loving fulfillment of ordinary duties, without changing one's state in life. At the time of his death in Rome on June 26, 1975, he had a vast reputation for holiness, and Opus Dei, under his zealous guidance, had spread to the five continents.

Throughout the world, his message, incarnated in a solid pastoral institution, produced extraordinary fruit. God enabled him to contemplate how the search for total union with Christ in ordinary activities releases marvelously saving energies for christianizing the world from within.

When he died, countless testimonies, from far and wide, gave witness to the proven heroism he displayed throughout the entire course of his life. Upon completion of all the juridical requirements, on April 9, 1990, the Holy Father John Paul II deigned to issue the decree on the Servant of God's heroic exercise of virtues.

Tens of thousands of favors, both spiritual and material, including some that are patently extraordinary, soon confirmed the depth of his reputation for sanctity and the power of his intercession before God. Outstanding among the prodigious cures attributed to him is one of a 70-year-old Carmelite Sister of Charity, Concepción Boullon Rubio. One night in June 1976, the sister, who had been at the point of death, was cured in a sudden, complete, and lasting way, after the Servant of God had been invoked. Her sickness has been diagnosed by the Medical Council of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints in the following terms: “a multiple calcific lipomatosis tumor in a caucasian subject with multiple areas causing pain and invalidation, attaining a maximum mass of the size of an orange in the area of the left shoulder.” Along with the illness, there was a concomitant pathological condition diagnosed by the Medical Council as follows: “Cachectic state in a patient with gastric ulcer and hiatus hernia, complicated by acute hypochromic anemia.” The second illness also improved unforeseeably and inexplicably at the moment when the swelling disappeared to the point of a definitive cure. The same Council has ascertained that the prognosis was seriously inauspicious quoad vitam and quoad valetudinem (with respect to life and to health).

A process on this extraordinary cure was held in the offices of the Archbishop of Madrid from January 21 to April 3, 1982. This process received the decree of validity from the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints on November 20, 1984.

Following the prescriptions of law, the case was submitted first to the examination of the aforementioned Medical Council. The Council, in its session on June 30, 1990, concluded unanimously that the cure of Sister Concepción Boullon Rubio is not explicable on the basis of natural powers.

Hence the cure was studied under theological examination first by the Particular Congress of Theological Consultants, which met on July 14, 1990 under the direction of Msgr. Antonio Petti, the Promoter - General of the Faith. Then it was examined on June 18, 1991, in an Ordinary Congregation of Cardinals and Bishops, held in the Apostolic Palace, with Cardinal Edouard Gagnon acting as Presenter. Both organisms unanimously gave a positive judgment on the existence of the miracle and its attribution to the Venerable Josemaría Escrivá.

Having received from the undersigned Cardinal Prefect an accurate and faithful account of all that is related above, and having accepted and ratified the vote of the Congregation, the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II ordered that the Decree on the aforesaid extraordinary cure be drawn up.

That order having now been carried out, and the Cardinal Prefect, the Presenter of the Cause, the undersigned Secretary and others according to custom having been convoked today, the Holy Father has declared in their presence: Proofs exist of the miracle performed by God, through the intercession of his Venerable Servant Josemaría Escrivá, Priest, Founder of the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei: that is, of the instantaneous, complete and lasting cure of Sister Concepción Boullon Rubio, Carmelite Sister of Charity, of a multiple calcific lipomatosis tumor in a caucasian subject with multiple areas causing pain and invalidation, attaining a maximum mass of the size of an orange in the area of the left shoulder; and of a cachectic state in a patient with gastric ulcer and hiatus hernia, complicated by acute hypochromic anemia.

The Holy Father has ordered that this decree be made public and be recorded in the Acts of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints.

Given at Rome, on July 6 of the year 1991, A.D.

Angelus Card. Felici, Prefect
+Eduardus Nowak, Titular Archbishop of Luni