A new miracle has been officially recognised at Lourdes. The unexplained cure of Italian nun, Sister Luigina Traverso, has been officially declared a miracle by Mgr Alceste Catella, Bishop of Casale Monferrato in Italy, the diocese in which the Salesian Sister resides.
The case of a nun who started walking after being paralysed for years has become the 68th miracle to be recognised at the French shrine of Lourdes.
The priest at Traverso's diocese of Casale Monferrato officially recognised it as a miracle at a Mass Thursday, the Sanctuary authorities said.
The incident happened in July 1965, when the nun, Luigina Traverso, started walking during a visit to the holy site. Born in 1934, the nun had been wheelchair-bound despite several operations for lumbar sciatica. She, "was overwhelmed by a sensation of warmth and well-being and warm sensation and felt the sudden impulse to get up," said the Catholic Silesian Sisters order, the Filles de Marie-Auxiliatrice. "She started moving her paralysed limbs."
Sister Luigina Traverso was born August 22, 1934 in Novi Ligure (Piedmont), Italy, the feast of Mary Queen. She did not even feel 30 years when the first symptoms of paralysis of the left leg. After several unsuccessful surgeries on the spine, in the early 1960s, the religious obligation to regularly stay in bed, asks the Mother Superior of the community permission to make a pilgrimage to Lourdes, she hand end of July 1965.
On July 23, when she participates on a stretcher in the Blessed Sacrament procession, she felt a strong sense of warmth and wellbeing that pushed her up. The pain disappeared and her foot regained its mobility.
After a first visit to the Office of Medical Findings Sister Luigina returned the following year and the decision is made to open a file.
Three meetings of the Bureau of Medical Findings (1966, 1984 and 2010) and further examinations were needed before it could attest to the healing of the nun.
On November 19, 2011 in Paris, CMIL (International Medical Committee of Lourdes) confirmed the face that the situation could not be explained in the current state of knowledge of science.
Bishop Alceste Catella, Bishop of Casale-Monferrato, decided October 11, to declare on behalf of the Church, that the unexplained cure of Sister Luigina is a miracle, "a sign that God, the Creator of the world, is our time to invite us to believe in His love.”
Catella Bishop said: "Of course, our dear Sister Luigina is the first recipient of the healing, … and demonstrates that faith can do miracles. Yes, miracles still happen in Lourdes, but the real miracle is that, daily, of loving service offered to those who are suffering in body and spirit. At Lourdes, the human person is loved and accepted as such, with all its dignity as a brother and sister.”
A press statement from the Communication Service of the Sanctuary of Lourdes states, “On the occasion of the opening of the Year of Faith, this October 11 2012, we have great joy in announcing the recognition of the 68th miracle attributed to the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes.”