[Acrylic-bob]

Although I profoundly disagreed with many of the pronouncements and policies of the late Pope John Paul II, I do allow that he was a nice old geezer and I am sure that he meant well and that he genuinely sought to do what he thought was best for a troubled and troubling humanity. I was, as many were, moved by his courage in publicly sharing the difficulties of the illness that finally took his life. And I am sure that if his life holds a lesson for any of us it is to be found, not in the reams and reams of papal documents attributed to his reign but, in those final few months when the whole world watched him struggle to speak.

That having been said, I was appalled this week to learn of the case of a French Nun, Sister Marie-Simon-Pierre, of the Little Sisters of Catholic Maternities, in Aix-en-Provence. Sister Marie, we are told, wanted to be a nun from the age of 12 and worked as a maternity nurse for her order. (I will leave aside considerations of the appropriateness of religiously inspired virgins working in maternity wards for discussion at a later date.)

In 2001 Sister Marie was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease which, as most of us are aware, is an incurable degenerative illness. By 2005 Sister Marie could barely move her left side. She could not write legibly, drive, move around easily and was in such pain she couldn't sleep. It happens also that, in common with many of the Catholic fratenity, she found the observation of the late Pope's decline particularly distressing since he also suffered from Parkinson's Disease and in his difficulties she saw the potential of her own future.

Once his late Holiness had died -and this is where I start to get appalled- her Sister nuns decided that it might be a good idea if they prayed to the late Pope for the benefit of Sister Marie. Now let's be quite clear about this, these women who have the responsibility for nursing women during the dangerous business of childbirth and dealing with its potential difficulties, thought that by muttering a few well chosen words they could expect that someone who was dead could be motivated to act in some way to alter the progress of an incurable disease, for no other reasons than that A. it was unpleasant for the victim, and B. because they asked.

This sort of thinking is on a par with believing that the earth is actually flat and that the sun goes around the earth, or that if you buy haddock on a Wednesday it won't rain. In short, it is superstition.

What makes the whole thing even more incredible and appalling is to learn that Sister Marie, following the pray-in, was advised by her superior to write the name of the dead pontiff on a piece of paper to assist the "cure". Considering that the disease had progressed to such an extent that she could barely hold a pen, this would seem to be the height of cruelty and understandably she decided that, rather than display her inability to her sister nuns, she would do this in private. The result, she said, was virtually illegible.

I do not know what to make of what follows in this incredible story. The very next morning Sister Marie said that she felt different. She felt well and stronger than she had for some considerable time. Within hours she was back at work assisting in the delivery of children. Something which she has been doing now for the last two years with no sign of the Parkinson's Disease which had previously disabled her.

The Vatican is taking the matter so seriously, a Postulator has been appointed in the cause for the beatification of the late Pope, to examine the circumstances surrounding this medical miracle cure.

So it now seems likley that John Paul II will be declared "Blessed" pretty shortly and a Saint shortly thereafter and the world will be expected to believe that simply writing his name on a piece of paper is enough to confound medical science and produce a cure where none was previously possible.

What century are we living in again? Can someone remind me?