MEDJUGORJE MIRACLES -- CHIARA ZOCCANTE

[Articles relating to Italian girl Chiara Zoccante appear all over the web, mainly in Italian. I have found the following on andamazinggrace.blogspot.com.au. It has only been slightly edited by me]:

10 year old Italian girl Chiara Zoccante suffered from a pituitary tumour when she attended visionary Mirjana Dragicevic-Soldo’s apparition on 02 January 2006.  Afterwards, Mirjana told Chiara’s parents that the Virgin Mary had put her hands on their girl. One month later doctors discovered that the tumour was gone.

The cure must be immediate, permanent and unexplainable by medical treatments. When the Catholic Church investigates claims of miraculous healings, these three criteria must be met before a cure can be declared a miracle.

And so, when the medical experts assigned by the Vatican Commission charged with investigating the events in Medjugorje sift through the more than 400 case files of claimed healings, they might set aside Chiara’s case, now in her seventh year of good health.

At age 10, Chiara was diagnosed with a pituitary tumour. She was first hospitalised on 24 June 2005, on  the 24th anniversary of the Medjugorje apparitions.

“By chance, at the hospital we met a friend who told us about the apparitions,” Chiara’s parents, Patrizia and Mariano, told the weekly Italian magazine Oggi in June (this year — possibly 2012). We promised to take Chiara to Medjugorje as soon as she felt good enough physically. And we kept our word.

“On 31 December 2005 we arrived in the town of the Virgin. We were excited by the grace of the place where everyone invited us to pray. Meeting with Father Jozo (Medjugorje’s parish priest at the time of the first apparition) was a balm, but the most touching moment  was the meeting with Mirjana during her monthly apparition.

“On 02 January 2006, Chiara was taken near the visionary. After the apparition Mirjana told us that he Virgin had put her hands on Chiara.  Exactly one month later, on 02 February 2006, we went to the hospital for a routine MRI. The cancer had completely disappeared. And not only that: her hair also came back though the doctors told us that Chiara would remain bald, as a consequence of chemotherapy.”

Though Chiara’s story is only now breaking in English, it has been known for a while in Italy. On 18 April 2010 Chiara testified before about 20,000 people gathered for a Medjugorje prayer meeting in Milan.