LONDON – An American deacon has recounted how he was suddenly
and inexplicably cured from a severe spinal condition after
he prayed for healing to Cardinal John Henry Newman.
Deacon Jack Sullivan, 71, of Marshfield, Mass., told a Nov. 9
press conference in London that he was transformed after
praying to Cardinal Newman, a 19th-century theologian and
former Anglican who died in 1890.
In July Pope Benedict XVI announced the beatification of
Cardinal Newman after the Congregation for Saints’ Causes
decided Deacon Sullivan’s healing was a miracle due to his
intercession. The beatification ceremony is set for May 2 at
the Birmingham Oratory, which he founded after he became a
Catholic in 1845.
Deacon Sullivan said doctors told him he was on the “brink of
complete paralysis” because several of his lumbar vertebrae
were crushing his spinal cord.
Even after surgery in August 2001 in Boston the protective
lining around Deacon Sullivan’s spinal cord was badly torn,
leaving him in “incredible pain,” he said.
He said surgeons told him it would take up to a year before
he could be able to begin to walk again.
Deacon Sullivan said he was upset by the prognosis because he
had trained for three years to be a deacon for the Boston
Archdiocese and wanted to be ordained with his class the
following year. He said he prayed: “Please, Cardinal Newman,
help me to walk, so that I can return to my classes and be
ordained.”
The deacon explained how “suddenly I felt hot all over, very
tense and a tingling over my body that lasted a long time.”
“I also felt a sense of joy and peace that I had never
experienced before in my life and a sense of God’s presence
and I had no willpower of my own,” he said. “I was just
standing there and all these things were happening to me. I
had no control and then I developed a sense of confidence and
determination that finally I could walk.”
He recalled how he shouted to a nurse that his pain had
disappeared even through he had been in agony moments
earlier.
“The pain had left me and I was left with a feeling of entire
joy and confidence that something special was happening to
me,” he said.
Deacon Sullivan said he was not only able to walk unaided but
was moving so quickly that the nurses had to tell him to
“slow down.”
Doctors studying his case in the following months determined
that Sullivan had regained the lifting capability of a
30-year-old man. They were baffled by the his recovery and
after an array of tests in October 2001 admitted they had no
explanation for it.
At that point Sullivan decided to write to Father Paul
Chavasse, postulator for Cardinal Newman’s sainthood cause,
at the Birmingham Oratory.
On Sept.14, 2002, the day of his ordination as deacon, he
received notification that his case had been selected by the
fathers of the oratory as the possible miracle needed to
beatify Newman.
“To my mind that was a sign that this process happened in a
wondrous way,” Deacon Sullivan told the London press
conference.
He spoke to journalists at the start of a visit to England at
the invitation of Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster.
The deacon afterward preached a homily at a Mass in London’s
Westminster Cathedral.
During his visit Deacon Sullivan will tour the oratory and be
shown other sites associated with Cardinal Newman’s life.
