Pope Francis certifies miracle performed by our friend!

ACTUALLY, the Pope and the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of the Saints recently certified not just one miracle, but four . . . . . . four miracles performed by two friends of Sophia Institute Press: two miracles apiece! Better yet: the Vatican has accepted their four miracles as confirmation of their holiness, and has declared both saints! (How’s that for friends in high places?) You see, when in the 1980s these good Catholics—a man and a woman—came to know of our work for the Faith, they each took time from their grueling schedules personally to write letters praising and encouraging us—letters I recently found in the files of our founder, John Barger. Next April (just five months from now), Pope Francis will officially canonize the first of these friends of Sophia Institute Press, from whom we received some years ago a hand-typed letter letting us know that he prayed that God would grant success to one of the new books we had just published. Praise of our work by this miracle-working saint continues to help us sell copies of this and other books. I also found in John Barger’s files a number of handwritten letters from another friend of ours, the other miracle worker who has already been declared a saint. In one of them, she says to John: “I am convinced of the good that the books published by Sophia Institute Press can do in helping people grow closer to God.” Now we have published Nothing Short of a Miracle, a remarkable book that, in great and fascinating detail, brings you the story of these two good souls as well as stunning details about each of their four miracles. Packed into its 295 pages are carefully documented reports of scores of other recent Vatican-approved miracles, most of which were performed in your lifetime and many of them even in North America! Miracles. Hundreds of modern miracles!   Frankly, as a convert who entered the Church a little less than a decade ago, I found this book to be an eye-opener. On the one hand, before reading it I’d not known how rigorously—even skeptically—the Church investigates the thousands of reports of alleged miracle cures She receives each year. Few survive the first glance. Those that do must then fulfill seven severe medical criteria, providing, among other things, incontrovertible evidence that the cure wasinstantaneous, complete, and permanent. Moreover, the reliability of the evidence is not decided by prelates, but by scientists and physicians, among whom there are often atheists, serving together on panels whose task is to root out any claims that are tainted in the least by gullibility, confusion, error, or fraud. (These investigations of proposed saints and alleged miracles can fill many file cabinets in many countries: testimony for the canonization of St. John Bosco amounted to more than 30,000 pages!)   Few civil trials consider evidence as rigorously as do these examinations of evidence for miracles. That’s why, after learning of the seven criteria, I was stunned to learn from the pages of Nothing Short of a Miracle about the countless cures each year that fulfill all seven, yielding hundreds of cures that the Vatican is compelled to acknowledge as medically and scientifically inexplicable.   Even more surprising: of these hundreds of certifiable miracles each year, you and I generally hear nothing – except when we encounter rare books like Nothing Short of a Miracle. For with a caution that exceeds by far that of the most skeptical of atheists, the Sacred Congregation for the Causes of Saints simply refuses to declare miraculous over 99% of the cures it finds inexplicable. Instead, it submits to the Pope for his approval only those that are beyond the shadow of any doubt nothing short of a miracle. Those are the ones that fill the nearly 300 pages of this remarkable new book by veteran Catholic author/investigator Patricia Treece. Generations of Catholics are familiar with her lifetime of articles and books that document for skeptics and for believers alike the evidence for miracles and the holiness of the modern saints who perform them. In those works—as in this one—she delights readers with the care with which she proceeds and the richness of details she provides. Of all her many books, this is the greatest, and the most important:   Almost 300 pages of rigorously documented miracles occurring in our time: that’s good news if ever I heard it, for if our age needs anything, it needs miracles, and lots of them . . . which is what you’ll find reported HERE, by the hundreds and in great detail. Thank you, and may God bless you, Charlie McKinney President P.S. Oh, and our friends who performed miracles? I put them on the front cover of the book: he’s the handsome fellow in the center and she’s the lovely lady next to him. Click HERE to see them both.