Shrine eyes 'miracle lite'

PARIS - The Catholic pilgrimage shrine at Lourdes may introduce a kind of "miracle lite" category for sudden unexplained recoveries because modern medicine increasingly refuses to declare any disease incurable.

Every year, dozens of seriously ill people leave the site in southwestern France convinced they have been cured, but the Church does not rate their cases as miracles because its rules say doctors must attest their ailments could not be remedied.

Bishop Jacques Perrier said the Vatican need not change the rules for declaring miracles, but could create a new category of "authentic healings" so those who recover can share the story of their physical and spiritual experiences with others.

The Catholic Church teaches God sometimes performs miracles including cures doctors cannot explain. Sceptics reject this as unscientific and explain sudden recoveries as psychological phenomena or the delayed result of earlier treatment.

Unlike in the past, Perrier said, doctors are now very reluctant to say a disease is incurable - one of the strict requirements laid down in the 1700s for recognising miracles - and uncertainty is a key element in modern thinking.

Perrier is working on a proposal to put to the Vatican. He denied the move was to boost pilgrimages to the grotto where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared in 1858.

- REUTERS