The Franciscan monk who will become Brazil's first native-born saint has been credited with 5,000 miracle cures and his canonization by Pope Benedict XVI at an open-air mass tomorrow will surely please the more than 1 million Catholics who are projected to attend.
Doctors remain deeply skeptical and even a former Brazilian archbishop laments the "cures" as superstition and fakery.
But the Vatican has officially certified the medical cases of two Brazilian women as divinely inspired miracles that justify the sainthood of Antonio de Sant'Anna Galvao.
Both of the women spoke of their faith to reporters, claiming that their children would not be alive today were it not for the tiny rice-paper pills that Galvao began handing out two centuries ago.
Although the friar died in 1822, the tradition is carried on by dozens of Brazilian nuns who prepare thousands of the Tic Tac-sized pills distributed free each day to people seeking cures for all manner of ailments.
Each one is inscribed with a prayer in Latin that says: "After birth, the Virgin remained intact. Mother of God, intercede on our behalf."
Sandra Grossi de Almeida, 37, is one such believer. She had a uterine malformation that should have made it impossible for her to carry a child for more than four months. But in 1999, after taking the pills, she gave birth to son Enzo, now 7.
"I have faith," Grossi said, pointing to her son. "I believe in God and the proof is right here."
Nearly 10 years before that, Daniela Cristina da Silva, then 4 years old, entered a coma and suffered a heart attack after liver and kidney complications from hepatitis A.
"The doctors told me to pray because only a miracle could save her," Daniela's mother Jacyra said. "My sister sneaked into the intensive care unit and forced my daughter to swallow Friar Galvao's pills."
A few days later, Daniela was discharged from the hospital.
"That was no miracle," said Roberto Focaccia, an infectious disease expert at the hospital where Daniela was treated. "Statistics show that an average of 50 percent of these patients die and the other 50 percent recover completely. She was lucky to be among the 50 percent who survive."
"It worries me," he added, "that so many people think that these small pieces of paper can replace the treatment available in any decent hospital in Brazil."
Even the church has skeptics.
In 1998, after Galvao was beatified as a key step toward sainthood, former archbishop Aloisio Lorscheider of Aparecida do Norte ordered the nuns to stop making what he called "small pieces of paper that foster superstition."
But his ban fizzled and the pills remained as popular as ever.
"Those pills are like the fake medicines that miracle workers claim could cure all diseases," Lorscheider said by telephone from southern Brazil, where he lives in retirement.
"If I were archbishop today, I would ban those pills again because all they are good for is to fool the people," he said. "But like in 1998, I don't think anything I could say would stop their production."
Thousands of believers flock to the 18th-century Luz Monastery every day to receive the pills, three of which must be swallowed over a nine-day period, which is known as a "novena."
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