Scottish Catholic Observer

“There was a young girl who was healed from a very serious illness, actually during the Mass,” Deacon Jack Sullivan (above with Archbishop Vincent Nichols) said. “She had reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome, which is perhaps one of the most painful of all diseases, and there’s no cure.”

The girl had been watching the ceremony on television.

“Her mother asked me to pray for her daughter, who has been in hospital for two years,” he told the Tablet magazine.

He prayed for her during the Mass and her mother called him and said during the Mass all of the pain stopped.

“The doctors say all of a sudden the pain stopped and the mother said she could witness the healing take place,” he said.

Deacon Sullivan was suffering from a ruptured spine when he decided to pray to Cardinal Newman after seeing a television programme about him. He then made an astonishing recovery and the healing was confirmed by the Vatican as a miracle following an eight-year investigation by a panel of medical experts. This miracle was crucial to the Vatican’s decision to beatify Cardinal Newman.

Deacon Sullivan was among 55,000 people present when Pope Benedict XVI beatified Cardinal Newman in a ceremony at Cofton Park Birmingham on September 19 of last year during the Papal visit to the UK. A second miracle is required for the Church to recognise him as a saint.