An Italian woman whose healing from an incurable neurodegenerative illness has been officially recognised as a miracle attributed to the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes has told her story. Source: CNA.
Antoinetta (Antonia) Raco, 67, was officially introduced to the press on July 25 in Lourdes, France, where her healing was recognised as the 72nd miracle attributed to the intercession of the Virgin Mary since the apparitions of 1858
Diagnosed in 2006 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – a progressive and fatal condition – Ms Raco experienced a recovery that defied medical explanation.
First announced by the Sanctuary of Lourdes on April 16, the recognition marked the culmination of 16 years of medical, canonical, and pastoral inquiry.
Ms Raco, a mother and active parishioner from Basilicata in southern Italy, had been living with the disease for several years when she travelled to Lourdes in 2009.
“I had wanted to go to Lourdes since I was a child,” she said. That wish came true that summer, when she and her husband, Antonio, travelled to the shrine with the Italian pilgrimage association Unitalsi.
The experience, however, was not exactly as she had once imagined: She arrived in a wheelchair, already struggling to breathe and swallow.
On the second day, sanctuary volunteers brought her to the baths. “We prayed together. That’s when I heard a beautiful young female voice say three times: ‘Don’t be afraid!’” she said in the presence of religious and medical authorities.
“At that moment, I burst into tears and prayed for the intentions I had brought with me.”
She described a sudden, sharp pain in her legs during immersion, as though “they were taken away from me.” She did not disclose what had happened to anyone during her stay and returned home in a wheelchair.
It was there, in her living room with her husband, that she again heard the same voice urging her, “Tell him! Call him!” Obeying the voice, she called out to her husband, who had just stepped into the kitchen. “Something has happened,” she told him.
In that moment, she stood unaided for the first time in years. Overcome with emotion, the couple embraced, crying together as they realised she was cured.
The road to recognition took more than a decade of thorough medical evaluation and expert review.
FULL STORY
‘A voice told me not to be afraid’: The story of Lourdes’ 72nd recognised miracle (By Solène Tadié, CNA)
