When Kathleen Evans arrives at the pearly gates, she will have a simple question for St Peter: ''Why me?'' The 66-year-old mother of five and grandmother of 20, who identified herself yesterday as the recipient of the second miracle bestowed through the intercession of Mary MacKillop, has no idea why she was ''chosen'' to be cured of cancer.
She only knows that 17 years after a non-small carcinoma was found on her right lung, followed by secondary growths in her glands and brain, she is free of cancer.
When she was diagnosed in 1993, her doctors gave her two months to live and she received no medical treatment because they said there was little point.
''I'm not one to be on my knees all the time,'' Mrs Evans said yesterday. ''I'm just an ordinary person and if I miss a Mass I don't think I'm going to go to hell or anything like that.''
Nonetheless Mrs Evans, who smoked from the age of 16 until 46, prayed to Mary MacKillop throughout what she thought were her final weeks.
Mrs Evans's family, friends and members of her Newcastle parish joined her in prayer, and she wore a picture of Mother Mary with a small piece of cloth from the nun's garments pinned to her nightie.
Yesterday, as she spoke to the media while holding her husband Barry's hand under the table, she was wearing it on her bra.
In the course of a few months of 1993, the volunteer worker went from being bedridden, convulsed by uncontrollable shaking, and being unable to care for herself, to being well enough to attend a weekend church retreat.
Mrs Evans, who was also accompanied by two of her children, Annette and Luke, said doctors were ''blown apart'' when they saw X-rays showing her cancer had disappeared, with only scarring remaining.
She has absolute faith it will never return. ''I'll never get cancer,'' she said yesterday. ''I'll die of a heart attack.''
Several years after her recovery, Mrs Evans went to church authorities, one of thousands of believers who have approached Mary MacKillop's order, the Sisters of St Joseph, saying they have experienced a miracle after praying to the nun. Her life would never be the same.
Church investigators interviewed doctors, a file of medical evidence was collected, and in 2008 a tribunal decided the miracle had occurred and the case was sent to Rome. In December the Vatican recognised the miracle.
Mrs Evans and her husband fled their government housing home in the small town of Windale on Lake Macquarie when news of her miraculous cure began to circulate among their parish.
''We knew that we had to get out of Newcastle,'' she said. ''We have been at Lightning Ridge hiding out for the last two years.''
Her next big trip, with luck, will be to Rome. Although no date has been set for the canonisation ceremony, the Sisters of St Joseph hope it will be in February or March.
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