Miraculous cancer cure in St. Louis could canonize Marianist founder

St. Louis, Mo., Jul 20, 2010 / 03:57 am

Last Friday an evening prayer service marked the Archdiocese of St. Louis’ official closure of its investigation into an alleged miraculous cure attributed to Bl. William Chaminade, founder of the Marianist order.

The archdiocesan tribunal, established by Archbishop Robert J. Carlson to investigate the claim, will now send its findings to the Vatican.

The claim concerns area resident Rachel Lozano, who since her sophomore year of high school has been diagnosed with cancer three times. As treatment, she underwent three different therapies including chemotherapy, radiation, a stem cell transplant and surgery. Doctors told her that no one ever survived her type of cancer after a stem cell transplant.

After joining a group of St. Louisians who attended the year 2000 beatification for the Society of Mary founder Fr. William Joseph Chaminade, Lozano began to pray for his intercession. The first miracle needed for the Marianist founder's beatification was an Argentinean woman's healing from lung cancer, according to the Archdiocese of St. Louis.

But in the months after Lozano returned from her pilgrimage, her cancer aggressively came back.

After doctors told her that her situation was terminal, she had surgery to remove the third tumor but doctors found it was dead. They told Lozano there was no medical explanation for the reversal.

If the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints declares the cure to be a miracle, Blessed William Chaminade can be recognized as a canonized saint, pending Pope Benedict XVI's approval.

St. Louis’ only miraculous cure to be declared authentic by the Vatican took place in the nineteenth century. It was one of the two miracles required for the canonization of St. Peter Claver.