A JPII Miracle?

AP: Possible Miracle Tied to Pope John Paul II---

ROME - A nun's apparently inexplicable recovery in France from Parkinson's disease, the same affliction suffered by Pope John Paul II, looks very promising as the miracle needed to beatify the late pontiff, a Polish cleric said.

But Vatican officials cautioned Monday that any decision about the healing would take time.

Late last year, John Paul's longtime private secretary told reporters that officials were focusing on the case of the nun in France.

The comments Sunday by another Polish clergyman, Monsignor Slawomir Oder, about Parkinson's were the first public indication of what disease the woman had.

A miracle is required for beatification, the last formal step before a person is considered for sainthood. A second miracle is needed for someone to be declared a saint.

"I don't want to speak yet about a miracle because it is something too important," Oder, the postulator, or official champion for the cause, said on an Italian state radio program.

But the nun, Oder said, "has been cured of an illness, an illness that was so visible even in the last part of John Paul II's life."

His words were a clear reference to Parkinson's disease, a degenerative condition which plagued the Polish pontiff in his last years, making it difficult for him to walk, talk, and in the final weeks, even swallow. There is no cure.