Jul 1, 2009 4:09 pm US/Eastern
Priest May Be Sainted After Woman Survives Cancer
BALTIMORE (CBS) ―
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A woman with cancer throughout her body was told she had just six months to live, but after intense prayer, the cancer was suddenly gone.
CBS
An Annapolis woman with cancer throughout her body was told she had just six months to live, but after intense prayer, the cancer was suddenly gone. Suzanne Collins reports the priest to whom she prayed is being considered for sainthood.
At St. Mary's Catholic Church in Annapolis, Mary Ellen Heibel prayed daily after being told her esophageal cancer had spread and she would soon die.
"Walter Reed said go home and do what you want to do because you have about six months," Heibel said.
She prayed repeatedly to Father Francis Seelos to intercede on her behalf with God. That priest had served at St. Mary's in the late 1880s and was known for his ministry to the sick. That was 2005 and it resulted in a phone message from heibel's surprised doctor.
"And I called him up and said, `What do you mean, congrats on your CAT scan?' And he said, `There's no cancer there. It's all gone.'"
Heibel's husband, a dentist, was skeptical.
"First of all, I don't know if I believed it or not till they gave us more and more facts that it was gone," said John Heibel.
The Johns Hopkins doctor who gave Heibel chemotherapy says the treatment may have stalled death but not likely result in a cure. Now the woman, her doctor and others will testify to a panel of priests in the Baltimore archdiocese. The Blessed Father Seelos, who's been credited for curing someone else of cancer in the past, will be considered for sainthood.
"Is it scomething that can be described scientifically or is it something that fails scientific language and can be described theologically?" said Father Gil Seitz.
Mary Ellen Heibel thinks the small bone fragment she wears from Father Seelos had little to do with the cure. Instead, she believes it's the prayer she made to him and all the other people at St. Mary's made on her behalf.
"I'm very happy. I've had a kidney transplant 25 years," Heibel said. "I've beat the odds."
The local priests expect to determine if it's a miracle by late summer and send the information on to the Vatican.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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