Vatican: Healing of Colorado Springs boy a miracle

Now miracles, what's next for the Vatican and Peter the Roman.....

Vatican: Healing of Colorado Springs boy a miracle


POSTED: 04/13/2013 01:40:13 PM MDT
UPDATED: 04/13/2013 01:40:14 PM MDTBy ELECTA DRAPER Denver Post



DENVER—The wheels of canonization grind slowly, but a German nun who lived 100 years ago could be named a saint because the Vatican believes a Colorado Springs boy experienced a miracle in 1999.
Mother Theresia Bonzel, who founded the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration in Olpe, Germany, in 1863, is scheduled for beatification in November—a step toward sainthood—as a result of the boy's miraculous recovery.

Two Colorado Spring nuns prayed to Bonzel on behalf of 4-year-old Luke Burgie, and the events that followed—over the next 14 years—have been closely scrutinized and investigated by church officials and doctors.

Just before Easter, Pope Francis affirmed that Bonzel was responsible for the miracle required for her beatification. Two miracles are required for canonization, or sainthood.

Luke, now 18, doesn't remember being ill and doesn't remember suddenly getting well. He doesn't like to talk about any of it, his mother said. He has been self-conscious about the event throughout his life.

"He didn't like being singled out as the miracle boy," Jan Burgie told The Denver Post on Friday.

In 1998, Luke had just completed one day of preschool when he fell ill with a severe gastrointestinal condition his doctors couldn't relieve or even diagnose.

He suffered for six months. He experienced violent episodes of diarrhea eight to 10 times a day, Jan Burgie said.

Luke couldn't go to school. He stopped growing, his mother said. He was wasting away. And his doctors were at a complete loss. They began to suspect a tumor in his colon.

"He was the sickest child or person I'd ever been around," Burgie said.

But the test was never conducted because the illness vanished suddenly on Feb. 22, 1999, just as two members of Bonzel's order finished praying a novena. Sister Margaret Mary Preister and the late Sister Evangeline Spenner had just recited a series of prayers over nine straight days asking Mother Bonzel, who died in 1905, to intercede for Luke.



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