Miracles In The Making

Woman Wakes from coma, credits Kateri Tekakwitha

Woman Wakes From Coma, credits Kateri Tekakwitha

• Albuquerque, N.M. (AP) - Believers credit a 17th century American Indian who is a candidate for Sainthood with the reawakening of a nursing home patient who spent 16 years unconscious.

By Unknown Writer

Amsterdam Recorder

     Archbishop Michael Sheehan is among those proclaiming the awakening of Patricia While Bull, 42, a possible miracle.  Ms. While Bull's of Cochiti Pueblo lapsed into unconsciousness about 16 years ago - no precise date is given - while giving birth to her fourth child.

     She reawakened Christmas Eve in an Albuquerque nursing home.  "It seems to be a very good sign that this is a miraculous intervention by God." Sheehan said Tuesday.  "I certainly hope that it is."

     On Dec. 18, Sheehan had urged Roman Catholics to pray to the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha for some medical miracle.

     "And this event takes place on Dec. 24. less than a week later." Sheehan said.  "It seems at this point to be unexplained by any medical explanation."

     In 1676, Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk woman, became on of the first American Indians to be baptized.  She also was among the first to take a vow of chastity.

     "She wanted to be a nun, but of course at the time that was unheard of - an Indian joining a European religious order." says the Rev. Kevin Kenny, director of the National Shrine of Kateri Tekakwitha, located where her village once stood, near Fonda.

     Kateri Tekakwitha died in 1680 of smallpox at the age of 24.  In 1980, the pope decreed her blessed, a preliminary step toward sainthood.  And Pope John Paul II has urged Catholics to pray for Blessed Kateri's intercession in a medical miracle, the final requirement for sainthood.

     White Bull's relatives say they prayed to the Blessed Kateri for her recovery.

     "I'm so grateful." said Gloria Fiddler, White Bull's former mother-in-law.  "It's so wonderful for the grandchildren to hug their mom again."

     Fiddler, mother of White Bull's ex-husband, Mark, began taking care of her grandson in Rapid City, S.D., five days after he was born.

     As many as 20 members of the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha Circle, including herself, have gathered for years at St. Isaac's, a Catholic church in Rapid City, offering prayers to the prospective saint for White Bull and others, she said.

     Doctors said Ms. White Bulls conditions was caused by a blood clot that lodged in her lung and caused her to stop breathing while her son Mark Jr. was being delivered by caesarean section.  She suffered brain damage from lack of oxygen.

     Fiddler said her granddaughter, Cindi, a college senior, telephoned on Christmas with the news of her mother's reawakening.

     Cindi, Mark Jr., 16, and Ms. White Bull's other children, Floris, 17, and Jesse, 19, were raised by their father on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in South Dakota.