[Nicolo Pacini’s testimony or articles about his experience appear on various websites and feature in a book by author and theologian René Laurentin’s Ten Years of Apparitions. Nicolo’s case is also mentioned in Miracles of Healing:Inspirational Stories of Amazing Recovery by Brad and Sherry Hansen Steiger. The following is from http://johnbarrysblog.blogspot.com.au with only slight editing by myself]:
Thirteen year old Nicolo Pacini, who lived with his family near Florence, Italy, had been confined to a wheelchair for five years with muscular dystrophy when his parents decided to take him to visit the site where the Virgin Mary had appeared in a small village, Medjugorje, in December 1991.
In spite of the popularity of Medjugorje as a healing shrine, Nicolo did not want to go; he told his parents that he would rather have them save the money that such a trip would cost. He thought it would be useless to go and that the pilgrimage would only bring all three of them additional heartache and disappointment.
He argued that he was but one of millions of handicapped people in the world, and he would be but one of thousands of pilgrims who would be crowding around the statue of Mother Mary at Medjugorje praying for a healing. Why would the Queen of Heaven choose him before all the others?
But at last, after much discussion and prayer, Nicolo agreed to accompany his parents to the holy place where Mother Mary had appeared wearing a crown of twelve stars.
The bus trip was exhausting, but when the Pacini family arrived at the shrine on December 8th, Nicolo’s mother wasted no time in pushing his wheelchair directly in front of Mary’s life-size statue. Perhaps more to please his parents than to get a miracle, Nicola began to pray.
Then, to his astonishment and his parent’s great joy, he felt his right hand slowly open.
Encouraged by such a marvellous sign of divine energy, Nicolo was eager to return to the shrine the next morning. In his prayers, however, he asked that his healing not be done for his sake alone, but also for that of his parents. Then, Nicolo simply felt like getting up and walking for the first time in five years.
“It was the strangest feeling,” Nicolo said later. It was as if something were moving inside of him, and he had an overwhelming urge to get up and walk. An irresistible force seemed to be lifting him up from the wheelchair.
Although he thought that it was impossible, he found himself standing upright and walking.
After he had taken the first few steps, he called out to his mother and heard her cry of joy, as a miracle had occurred. Mrs Pacini instinctively rushed to her son’s side to help him but Nicolo asked her to leave him alone. He knew that he could walk on his own.
The Pacini family will always remember how the hundreds of pilgrims who were gathered around the shrine burst into applause when Nicolo kept walking.
The boy’s mind was filled with the wonder of it all. Mother Mary had heard his prayers and those of his parents.
When the Pacinis returned to Florence, Dr Rosella Mengonzi, their physician, was shocked when she saw Nicolo standing and walking. Dr Mengonzi had been certain that Nicolo would be forced to spend his life in a wheelchair. After a thorough examination, Dr Mengonzi told journalist Silvio Piersanti that somehow Nicolo Pacini had completely recovered from an incurable disease in a manner that she could not medically explain. A healing miracle had been performed.
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