Four years ago, The Rev. Ronald P. Pytel’s doctors took one look at his severely damaged heart and said he could die at any time. Months later, in a recovery doctors struggled to explain, he was found to be problem-free, taken off medication and sent home. Yesterday, Pope John Paul II declared that his cure was a miracle.
And he decreed the miracle happened through divine intervention of a deceased Polish nun, Blessed Faustina Kowalska. The decision means she will be canonized a saint in April.
The much-anticipated decision actually came last month, when Pytel — pastor of Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Fells Point — and Baltimore Archdiocese officials traveled to Rome to hear the vote at the Vatican.
“We literally danced back [to America] when we got the news,” Pytel said yesterday. “It was quite a feeling.”
The decision comes after years of research, repeated medical examinations, numerous sworn depositions — and prayer. In all, a team of priests and Archdiocese officials submitted more than 1,000 pages of documentation to the Vatican to support the nomination.
Vatican verification of miracles is “a very involved process,” said Monsignor Jeremiah F. Kenney of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, who headed research on the case. “They try to find every reason to shoot it down, you know?”
In his 21 years as head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II has named 295 saints. About 600 people have been canonized saints, said Raymond P. Kempisty, a spokesman for the archdiocese.
The Vatican requires that at least two miracles be associated with a person before he or she can become a saint. Kowalska’s first miracle was verified in 1993, when the pope declared that she had healed a Massachusetts woman of lymphedema, a chronic condition in which fluid backs up into the tissues.
In June 1995, doctors told the parish priest he had severe heart disease. Days later, Pytel underwent open-heart surgery to receive an artificial heart valve. Through complications of the surgery, he held on through the summer, but made no significant improvement.
His Johns Hopkins Hospital cardiologist, Dr. Nicholas Fortuin, told The Sun in 1996 that the priest had been in “very real danger of sudden death.” He had not been expected to recover enough to resume his full-time duties at Holy Rosary.
On Oct. 5, 1995, the feast day of Blessed Faustina, Pytel spent 12 hours praying in the Chester Street Church. At one point, he lay on the floor, receiving the prayers of fellow parishioners.
It was then, he said, that the miracle happened.
Within days, he was able to cut back his medication and began feeling better. A few weeks later, after another medical examination, his doctors, stunned, declared him cured.
A year later, Pytel, Kenney and the Rev. Lawrence Gesy began submitting documentation to the Vatican to have the incident declared a miracle — and Kowalska, whose diary “Divine Mercy in My Soul” has won her an international following, declared a saint.
Asked yesterday whether there is any indication in Pytel’s heart that it had been diseased — other than the artificial valve — Fortuin said, “If you covered up that valve, you would see his heart as perfectly normal. He has been looked at by many physicians, and they have all been as surprised as I about this.”
The recovery, though not unheard of, is highly unusual, Fortuin said.
Kenney said the miracle rests on the fact that the cure was complete and happened so quickly.
In 1997, Holy Rosary parishioners dedicated a shrine to Kowalska. After she is canonized April 30, they will alter it only slightly — to include a new halo around her head.
Recovery deemed work of a saint; Pope declares miracle when priest is cured after prayer to sister
Baltimore Sun
Erin Texeira
Dec 21, 1999
