So John Paul II gets to be a saint. A woman named Floribeth Mora Diaz recalls how John Paul II saved her from an aneurysm:

In 2011, Mora was suffering from persistent headaches and was told by doctors that her days were numbered. They said her aneurism was in a “delicate” area and her only option was treatment in Mexico or Cuba, but her family could not afford it. “The doctors told me there was no sense to continue treatment because they had done everything and there was not much more we could do,” Mora told a packed media conference. “They said I only had one month to live and there was no hope.” Confined to bed, she lay holding a magazine with a cover photograph of the Polish pope in her home in Tres Rios de Cartago, 12 miles from the capital of San Jose. Her husband, Edwin, urged her to pray. “My greatest concern was not dying but concern about what would happen to my children,” she said as her voice faltered. She claimed her prayers were answered when John Paul II appeared to her in a vision on the day he was beatified — the first step on the road to sainthood — after he was credited with his first miracle. “When I woke up in the morning, I looked at the magazine cover which showed Pope Wojtyla with his arms outstretched. “I felt a deep sense of healing. I heard his voice say to me, ‘Get up and don’t be afraid,’” she said, recalling one of John Paul’s signature lines. “I went to my husband in the kitchen and told him I was cured. I realized little by little the illness had been taken away.”

Short story: she was in a hospital reading a magazine with John Paul II on the front, had a dream about him, and wound up not dying. I would ask other Catholics who died from various illnesses if they had dreams of particular popes in the hospital…but I can’t…because they’re dead. But here’s one (with a condition that is not fatal more than half the time, if she was an amputee who grew back a limb that would be something) who lived to talk about it and this time, by jove, it’s a bloody miracle. Because this woman is so special. She needed to be saved while 12,000 other people who die of aneurysms each year (statistically, many of them Catholics and undoubtedly praying night and day in some cases) are expendable in god’s eyes. Hallelujah.

In cases where atheists or Muslims make surprise recoveries (and they do), the Catholic Church is not inclined to take it as any sort of proof for those religions (or lack thereof). But when it happens to a Catholic? Holy shit, can’t you see god’s handiwork?

I wonder how the Church would react to the news that a giant cross dedicated to John Paul II collapsed and killed a man right before his canonization?

A man has been crushed to death after a giant crucifix dedicated to Pope John Paul II collapsed, just days before a historic Papal canonisation in Rome. The 30-metre-high (98ft) wooden and concrete cross fell during a ceremony in the Italian Alpine village of Cevo, near Brescia. Another man was taken to hospital. The structure was dedicated to John Paul II on his visit to the region in 1998.

Oh that? That’s just chance and bad luck. But a woman is among tens of thousands each year who don’t die of an aneurysm and had a dream of the pope and this cannot be explained by anything other than miraculous intervention. It’s not that the Church is selective with self-interest it’s that….shut up.

The standard for miracles seems to be getting lower and lower. By the time I die I might become a saint for eating all of my pudding and not spilling a drop.