The diocesan tribunal investigating unexplained cure sends its findings to the Vatican

By Patrick Downes

It is Capuchin Franciscan Father Robert Maher’s personal opinion that a miracle occurred.

If the pope agrees, Blessed Damien could be declared a saint.

Father Maher, an associate pastor of St. Elizabeth Church in Aiea, was the delegate judge on the six-member tribunal formed March 12 by Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo to do an investigation of an alleged healing attributed to the intercession of Blessed Damien.

Blessed Damien is the Sacred Hearts missionary priest who cared for Kalaupapa’s Hansen’s disease patients more than a century ago whom Pope John Paul II beatified in 1995. A miracle is the final requirement for his canonization.

The tribunal held its last session April 16 at St. Stephen Diocesan Center during which final documents were prepared and a prayer service concluded its work.

The tribunal’s task was not for itself to determine if the cure was “miraculous,” but to gather evidence that would ultimately help the pope make that decision.

The New Catholic Encyclopedia defines a miracle as “an extraordinary event, perceptible to the senses, produced by God in a religious context as a sign of the supernatural.”

The tribunal gathered medical and personal testimony on the extraordinary and unexplainable nature of the alleged cure and on the corresponding devotion to Blessed Damien on the part of the person cured.

Its findings will be thoroughly examined by the doctors and theologians of the Congregation for the Causes of Saint in Rome, which will then make its final recommendation to the pope. The pope almost always accepts the congregation’s recommendations.

Father Maher, therefore, was careful to point out that his conclusion could only remain a personal one.

It was not only the medical evidence that was compelling, said the priest, but the “professionalism of the doctors and the humility of the witnesses and of the patient herself.”

“I was impressed by the tremendous faith” of the person healed, said Father Maher who is also one of the three regular judges for diocesan Tribunal office. “She has a tremendous devotion to Father Damien.”

“I was honored to be a part of this whole process,” he said.

The month-long process involved seven meetings and interviews with six medical doctors, the former cancer patient, her husband and sister, and two priests who had counseled the patient. Of the doctors, most of whom were not Catholic, five were connected with the care of the patient and one was independent.

The patient’s name has not been released by the diocese.

The tribunal was headed by the diocese’s judicial vicar, Father Joseph Grimaldi, acting under the title “promoter of justice.” Other members were Father Maher, who as the delegate judge represented the bishop; Dr. Philip Jones, expert doctor; John Ringrose, chancellor; and Cathy Sniffen and Netty Peiler, notaries.

Crucial to the process, though not included in the tribunal’s deliberations, were the postulator, Sacred Hearts Father Emilio Vega Garcia, and the vice-postulator; Sacred Hearts Sister Helene Wood.

The postulator is the person appointed to oversee the investigation of the life of the candidate for canonization and to provide evidence needed for the cause. He is picked by the group sponsoring the cause, in this case, Father Garcia’s order, the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts.

The postulator is based in Rome where he can work closely with the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, which directs the overall canonization process.

The vice-postulator represents the postulator at the local or diocesan level.

Father Garcia made two extended visits to Hawaii since late last year to do research on the case. In November he made the formal appeal to Bishop DiLorenzo to open the interrogation of the cure.

Father Garcia helped direct the final April 16 session of the tribunal during which several copies of the 190-pages of concluding documents were duly signed and sealed. That evening, he left Hawaii for Rome with two of the copies packed in a cardboard box that had been secured by packing tape and sealed with wax.

The box will be unsealed at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome, probably the week after Easter. According to the postulator, one copy will be bound and kept in the Vatican Archives and the other will be the working copy.

Bishop DiLorenzo and Father Garcia also have copies.

A larger box containing primary source documentation such as medical reports and x-rays was also sealed at the session and will be stored in the diocesan archives.

Bishop DiLorenzo, at the prayer service ending the final session said, “I ask that we all pray that this come to fruition.”

To the members of the diocesan tribunal, he said. “The process has come to an end. Thank you and God’s will be done.”

At the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the tribunal documents will be examined by a group of medical experts and a group of theologians. If their conclusions are unanimously positive, the congregation informs the pope who makes the decision to declare the candidate a saint.

As for how long this could take, Father Garcia said, “It could be years, it could be one year.”

Spontaneous regression of cancer

The cure in question involved the disappearance without treatment of cancer from the lungs of a Honolulu woman four years ago. The case was documented in an article about “complete spontaneous regression of cancer” published by Dr. Walter Y.M. Chang, in the October 2000 issue of the Hawaii Medical Journal.

According to the article, three malignant lung tumors were discovered by x-ray in September 1998. The cancer was a reappearance of a matching malignancies surgically removed earlier from other parts of the body.

The patient, upon learning of her condition, began prayers to Blessed Damien, including pilgrimages to Kalaupapa, the place were Damien worked and died among Hawaii’s Hansen’s disease patients.

Before therapy could be applied, an x-ray a month later showed that the tumors had decreased in size.

Monthly x-rays revealed further shrinkage until scans in May and October 1999 could find no sign of the cancer. The doctor’s comment was that the “lung metastases disappeared with no therapy at all,”

According to the Spanish-born Father Garcia, the documents for this case rank among the “best” of all the cases in which he has participated as a postulator.

He said that the doctors were professional, cooperative, and “enthusiastic in giving their testimony.” He said that he does not always find this kind of support from the medical community.

Father Grimaldi gives credit to the persistence of Dr. Chang, an Episcopalian, who for several years had urged the diocese to investigate the possibility of a miraculous cure, for the initiation of the tribunal.

The patient had also written to the pope and had received a response, said Father Garcia.

Father Grimaldi said none of the medical testimony was “negative.”

A previous miracle also was required for Father Damien’s beatification, the step before canonization. On June 13, 1992, Pope John Paul II approved the 1895 cure of a Sacred Hearts Sister as a miracle attributed to Damien’s intercession,

In that case, Sister Simplicia Hue of France began a novena to Father Damien as she lay dying at age 37 of a lingering intestinal illness. The pain and symptoms of the illness disappeared overnight on Sept. 11, 1895, and Sister Simplicia lived for another 32 years.

Pope John Paul II beatified Father Damien on June 4, 1995, in Brussels, Belgium.

Canonizations usually take place within a Pontifical Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.