Vatican to consider St. Louis woman's claim of miracle

CREVE COEUR, Mo. -- A St. Louis woman believes her recovery from cancer was a miracle, and now the Vatican will have the chance to decide if the cure can be attributed to a French priest, who's in line for possible canonization.

Rachel Lozano said she attributes her recovery to the French priest Blessed William Joseph Chaminade, who lived from 1761 to 1850. If Rome considers her case a miracle, the pope could one day canonize Chaminade as a saint.

About 3,000 pages of testimony generated by the St. Louis Archdiocese investigative tri-bunal will be sent to Rome, where the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints will examine the evidence.

Chaminade's intercession is credited with one miracle, the curing of an Argentine woman's lung cancer in 1991. The Vatican deemed that a miracle in 1998. Based on that miracle, Pope John Paul II in 2000 beatified Chaminade, which is a step toward canonization.

Lozano attended Chaminade's beatification in Rome while she was ill, and says that was the foundation of her miraculous recovery.

Lozano had survived several bouts with cancer, and underwent a stem cell transplant, but in 2002, doctors found a tumor growing near her heart, lungs and spine.

Doctors said surgery would kill her, but so would the cancer. No one had survived a recurrence of this cancer after a stem-cell transplant.

But she lived, and scans showed her tumor wasn't growing as expected and was eventually found to be dead.

The Marianists order of Catholic brothers and priests presented Lozano's story to the archdiocese as a miracle attributable to Chaminade, the order's founder.