An uncontested miracle

By Renzo Allegri

A Permanent Prodigy

The readers of this magazine will remember that we have already spoken about the lives of Padre Pio and Mother Teresa in a series of articles. We shall now be recounting the life of Pope John, with the conviction that this will please a great number of people. But before we get down to the details of his biography, we would like to tell the story of the miracle that was chosen as proof of divine approval for his beatification.
The protagonist of this miracle is an Italian religious, Sister Caterina Capitani, originally from Cosenza, who belongs to the Congreation of the Daughters of Charity. Today she is 56 years old. She was the subject of this miracle in 1966, when she was 22. I met her several years later and since then I have continued to stay abreast of her health, because her healing is not a fact that had a definite end in time, but is an ongoing, permanent prodigy, which is repeated every day. Sister Caterina suffers from an extremely particular physical condition. She has no stomach, no pancreas, no spleen. According to doctors, this is an emergency situation, which cannot last, and the Sister should live an extremely prudent life, stay rested, in a very orderly manner, and observe a rigorous diet. But for the last 34 years, since she has been the subject of this miracle, Sister Caterina is a dynamic cyclone. She serves her apostolate in the service of the sick in hospitals with total dedication, working from 16 to 18 hours per day, at a pace that is absolutely unexplainable in her physical condition.
I always feel like I’m in perfect health, says the sister, flashing a smile that speaks of efficiency and satisfaction. Except for a cold now and then, I have no other problems with my health. The doctors in the various hospitals where I have worked over the years after the miracle, being aware of my physical condition, have always been prepared for the final collapse. But up till now, it hasn’t come. And I must say that I hold back nothing. We sisters of the Congregation of the ‘Daughters of Charity’ always have to be available to help the sick at any time, and I believe very much in my vocation.

No warning symptoms

Caterina Capitani started having problems with her health several months after having donned the sisters’ habit. It was in 1962, at 18 years of age, when Lina Ravaschieri of Naples was working as a nurse at the Ospedali Riuniti for children, that she began to feel a constant intercostal pain between her stomach and heart. Until that time her health had been very good, so she ignored the pain. She thought perhaps she had knocked against a piece of furniture or something. The pain continued for a couple of months, and one night she had a hemorrage that frightened her. She was in her room. She felt like vomiting, ran to the sink and found her mouth full of very red blood. Since they had taught her during nursing school that very red blood came from the chest area, she thought she had contracted consumption. With a sickness like that, her life in the convent was finished.
The rule of our Congregation says Sister Caterina, is for all aspiring religious to be healthy in order to face the sacrifices and work that a hospital rrequires. If a nun is ill, she is sent home before pronouncing her vows. I had passed the stage of aspirant, the postulate, and a few months prior to this incident I had donned the religious habit, but I still had to pronounce my vows. So if my superiors had discovered I was ill with phthisis, they would have been obliged to send me home.
She decided not to say anything to anyone. For several nights she could not sleep, but then, seeing that the hemorrage failed to return and the persistent intercostal pain had disappeared, she thought the danger had passed and took up her normal life again.
Nothing happened for seven months. Then suddenly, with no warning symptoms, there was another terrible hemorrage, followed, after a few hours, by a second, even more abundant hemorrage, which left the sister absolutely drained of all energy.
This time the situation could not be hidden. There were doctors’ visits, clinical examinations, check-ups. The most celebrated specialists in Naples were consulted on the case: Professors Piroli, Capozzi, Ruggero, Grassi, Doctors Caracciolo, Cannata, Maisano. There were x-rays of the chest and stomach and stratigraphs. No one succeeded in finding the reason for those hemorrages.
In 1954, since the doctors at the Ospedali Riuniti had declared there was no explanation for her illness, Sister Caterina was transferred to Ascalesi Hospital, under the care of Professor Alfonso D’Avino, director of the otorhinolaryngology department. An esophogascope revealed a hemorralgic area in the chest area. It seemed that all of the sister’s troubles came from there. So Sister Caterina was taken to the Pellegrini Hospital, to Professor Giovanni Bile, a famous hematologist, but he, too, was unable to improve the situation.

A five-hour operation

They told me that there was another person I could consult in Naples, recounts Sister Caterina Capitani: Professor Giuseppe Zannini, director of the Surgical Semeiotics Institute of the University of Naples and a specialist in the surgery of blood vessels: an important international personality in the field of medicine. To obtain a visit with him was not easy, but when he found out what the case was about, he wanted to see me. He immediately took my case to heart, with an interest and personal involvement that have always moved me.
After a long examination and minute analysis of all the medical reports of his colleagues, Professor Zannini began a new cure that lasted five months. But the situation never changed, so the Professor decided to submit the patient to a surgical intervention.
Sister Caterina was hospitalized and underwent an operation which lasted for five hours. The inside of her stomach was completely covered with a strange and rare form of ulcerous tumours, caused, perhaps, by the improper functioning of the pancreas and spleen. The Professor was obliged to remove her stomach, except for a small piece the size of a prune. He also removed the pancreas and spleen. The esophagus was connected directly to the part of the intestine known as the fasting. It was also necessary to cut the aorta and connect it to the hollow part, making a deviation of the blood circulation. It was a delicate operation and the probabilities for the patient to come out of the operating room alive were quite slim.

The Virgin of Pompei or Pope John?

Before the operation, Sister Caterina tells us, I had prayed to the Holy Virgin of Pompei, to whom I am very devout. The day after the operation, while I was thanking the Virgin for having come through the operation safely, a Sister from our Congregation told me: It was Pope John who saved you. I had placed his image on the bed of the operating room and had continued to pray throughout the operation. She gave me the Pope’s image and told me to place myself under his protection. I admired John XXIII very much, but had never thought of praying to him. I answered: Thank you for what you have done for me, but I am convinced that it was the Holy Virgin of Pompei who protected me, and I will continue to pray to her. I placed the image of Pope John on the nightstand, as if it served no purpose for me. From that day forward my Sister and I continued to argue jokingly: she told me that I had to pray to Pope John, and I continued to say that I had to turn to the Holy Virgin of Pompei.
In the days following the surgery, Sister Caterina’s health, instead of improving, continued to worsen. During the first night, the nun had a collapse; after several days, she had an intestinal block. Professor Zannini was very worried, and thought that another operation was necessary. The sisters continued to pray to Pope John and Sister Caterina to the Holy Virgin of Pompei. Nine days after the operation, the nun’s condition suddenly improved.
An illusion, remembers the religious. Three days later, while I was sipping a bit of liquid, I became cyanotic and lost consciousness. The doctors hurried to provide her with oxygen. They examined me and found I had pleurisy. I was depressed. You have to pray to Pope John my sisters repeated to me. I was convinced and began to pray to the good Pope. Ten days later I was able to leave the clinic.
The improvement was once again short-lived. Two weeks later, Sister Caterrina started to vomit great quantities of gastric fluids. They were so acid that they burnt her skin and the lower part of the Sister’s face was completely sore. Since she couldn’t hold anything down in her stomach, she was nourished through phleboclysis. Professor Zannini was still very worried. He decided to send her home, to Potenza. Perhaps the air of her home town would help her. But two months later Sister Caterina returned to Naples, in worse condition than when she had left. She looked as if she were already dead.
On 14 May 1966, following a serious crisis of vomiting, I felt my abdomen and it was completely wet, recounts the religious. I called a sister to have her look at it: gastric fluids, blood and that little amount of orange juice I had just drunk were flowing out of a hole that had opened on my abdomen. A doctor was called. He said there was a perforation, which had caused an external fistula. There was diffused peritonitis. My fever was very high. The situation was desperate. Professor Zannini was informed, and he had me hospitalized immediately. He ordered some medicines and decided to wait to see how the crisis would devolop, because surgical intervention under those conditions was unthinkable.

A visit from Pope John

We Daughters of Charity pronounce our vows five years after having donned the habit. The rule provides for exceptions, however, when a young sister is about to die. This was my case. So on 19th May, 1966, I pronounced my vows, and I was immediately administered the Extreme Unction.
On 22 May a sister brought me a relic of Pope John’s from Rome: a piece of the sheet upon which the Pope had died. I placed it on the perforation which had opened on my stomach, and since I was suffering quite a bit, I prayed to the Pope to take me to Heaven. I was slowly dieing. I felt that my strength was leaving me. The temperature was very high. A sister guarded the room day and night.
On 25 May, at around 2.30 in the afternoon, I asked a sister who was guarding the room to close the window a little because the light bothered me. She did so, and then left the room for a few minutes.
I drifted off to sleep. At a certain point I felt a hand pressing the wound on my stomach and the voice of a man saying: Sister Caterina, Sister Caterina. I thought it was Professor Zannini, who came to check on me occasionally. I turned towards the voice, and saw Pope John standing beside my bed: he had the same smile as the image that had been given me. He was the one who was holding his hand on my wound. You prayed to me very much, he said with a calm voice. Many people have prayed to me, but especially one. You have really taken this miracle from my heart. But don’t be afraid now, you are healed. Ring the bell, call the sisters who are in the chapel, have them take your temperature and you will see that you will not have even the slightest temperature. Eat whatever you want, as you did before the sickness: I will hold my hand on your wound, and you will be healed. Go to the Professor, have him examine you, have some x-rays done and have it all written down, because these things will be needed someday.

French fries and roast kid

The vision disappeared, and only then did I begin to realize what had happened. I wondered whether it had been a dream. I was trembling from the emotion and fear. I felt well. I felt no pain, but I didn’t dare call the sisters: they would have thought I was crazy. After several minutes, I had to decide. I did what the Pope had told me to: I rang the bell.
The sisters hurried to my bedside. They found me sitting up on the bed. They looked at me as if they were dreaming. I could no longer stifle my joy, and I almost shouted: ‘I have been healed. It was Pope John. Measure my fever, you’ll see that I have none’. Mother Superior thought I was delirious, as sometimes happens before death.
They took my temperature: 36.8 (C°, n.t.). ‘Do you see?’, I said, challenging them. ‘Now give me something to eat because I’m hungry’. I hadn’t been able to hold anything down in my stomach for many months. Mother Superior, who was almost hypnotized by my state of excitement, ordered the sisters to do as I asked. A sister brought me some semolina, which I ate voraciously, to the astonishment of my sisters. Then they brought me an ice cream, and I ate that too. ‘I’m still hungry’, I said. The sister brought me some meatballs, and I ate those, followed by some soup, and I devoured that as well.
At this point, the Mother Superior, who was still not convinced of what was happening, said: ‘Now we have to change you’, thinking that everything I had eaten had gone out of the fistula that had opened on my stomach, which is what always happened. They lay me down on the bed. A nurse brought gauze and a clean nightgown. They uncovered me. The nurse shouted: ‘But there’s nothing here’. The sisters fell on their knees, crying from emotion. Until a few minutes earlier the skin on my stomach had been one big wound: the gastric fluids that continually flowed out of the fistula had corroded the skin. The wound had completely disappeared. There was no sign of the fistula, not a trace: the skin was smooth, clean and white. So I told them what had happened.
From that day on, concludes Sister Caterina, I haven’t been ill at all. The doctors examined me, did scores of x-rays. There wasn’t a trace of my illness. The day after the miracle I went back to a normal life. My first lunch was french fries, roast kid, tomatoes and ice cream. I went back to eating anything I wanted. That was 34 years ago: I’m well, I have no problems of digestion, and I work with enthusiasm