Dr. Manuel Nevado — Josemaría Escrivá

Dr. Manuel Nevado Rey, a Spanish orthopedic surgeon, developed cancerous chronic radiodermatitis after fifteen years of hand exposure to X-rays during surgical operations. By summer 1992, his hands were so severely affected—covered in pre-cancerous and cancerous lesions—that he could no longer perform surgery. The condition was in its third, irreversible stage with a prognosis of no hope of cure. In November 1992, he began a novena to the recently beatified Josemaría Escrivá. Within a fortnight, the lesions completely disappeared. By January 1993, he had returned to the operating room. The Vatican Medical Committee declared the cure 'very rapid, complete, lasting, and scientifically inexplicable.' Escrivá was canonized in 2002.

The case is uniquely well-documented because the patient was an orthopedic surgeon—his condition and healing were meticulously recorded by his medical peers, not by believers. No spontaneous cure from cancerous chronic radiodermatitis has ever been recorded in medical literature. Objective medical examinations in 1992, 1994, and 1997 confirmed the cure was complete and lasting. The Vatican's role was to review evidence that was already independently documented. The Vatican Medical Committee unanimously established the diagnosis and declared the cure scientifically inexplicable. The evidence stands on secular medical documentation.