DID POPE CURE JEWISH MILLIONAIRE OF CANCER?

I DOUBT IT. THIS WHOLE THING SOUNDS DUBIOUS. A DYING JEWISH MAN'S LAST WISH IS TO MEET THE POPE?

Pope 'miraculously cured Jewish millionaire'
John Paul II was responsible for the "miraculous" cure of a Jewish American millionaire who was dying of a brain tumour, it was claimed yesterday, as the campaign to set the late Pope on the fast track to sainthood got under way.

Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, the Pope's long-standing private secretary, made the claim in interviews given to the Italian press three years ago on the understanding that they would only be published after the Pope's death. The La Stampa and Il Giornale newspapers reported that Archbishop Dziwisz, a Pole, said that in 1998 an acquaintance had asked him if an American friend dying from a brain tumour could meet the pontiff. The man had three wishes: to see the Pope, to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and to return home to America to die.

What the acquaintance omitted to say, however, was that he was Jewish. The Pope, then staying at his summer retreat south of Rome, said a private mass at which the sick man took Holy Communion. A few weeks later, the archbishop's acquaintance rang him to say that the tumour "had completely disappeared in the space of just a few hours". In his account, the archbishop did not speak of a miracle but of a sign of "the supreme power of God, which surpassed all human understanding".

He added that he had "gently chided" the American for taking Holy Communion, a sacrament reserved for Roman Catholics. In the end, the American decided not to go on to Jerusalem and returned to America to celebrate his cure with his family.