This is the story of John Connolly Fagan, which is certainly one of the most confounding and possibly the best documented case of a miraculous cure this century. As usual, we leave it up to the reader, on the balance of evidence, to decide what really happened here. Enjoy!

The story begins when John was born, in 1914, to a working-class family in the Scottish city of Glasgow. Times were tough in those days in the slums of that great city, and it was to be 12 years before John was to see his first inside toilet and bathroom. Like many young men of the time he left Scotland to fight in the Second World war. Five years later he returned to Glasgow and found regular employment as a shoreman at the many docks along the Clyde River.

In 1965,at the age of 51, though still in good physical shape, John began to experience tiredness and stomach pains, which he ascribed to indigestion due to his advancing age. Then one morning he awoke early vomiting blood. This was to be the start of an incredible and sometimes nightmarish journey. At the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, John was found to have a large tumour intruding into his stomach wall. Just days later he underwent a long operation to remove the tumour. It had destroyed much of his stomach and much of his bowel and intestines. A small piece was taken for analysis and was found to be malignant; an aggressive adenocarcinoma of the stomach. The surgeons repaired the damage as much as they could, bringing the end of the colon out to a temporary opening, or colostomy, to empty into a bag at Johns bedside. The prognosis was not good. Tests showed that cancerous cells still remained, and that the cancer was spreading to the lymph nodes, meaning that cancer cells could be carried throughout the body to form secondary tumours in other organs. John's wife Mary Fagan was given the terrible news that her husband had just six to twelve months to live. A few months later, John's bowel had healed enough for the colostomy to be closed and he was allowed to return to work, performing 'light' duties. Mary was forced to seek work at a local factory to make ends meet, but for the next year or so things went well at the Fagan household. Amazing as it seems, John was not told he had cancer, so he was unaware that he had outlived those 6 - 12 months the surgeons had given him. However, in late 1966 John was sick again. He started vomiting again and the stomach pains returned. His doctor reported that he could palpate a mass in John's abdomen. Just before Christmas John was readmitted to the Infirmary for X-Rays which confirmed that the tumour had invaded what was left of John's stomach. Doctors decided that it was pointless to intervene further and prescribed pain control medication. Two months later, John was bed-ridden and in constant pain. He knew he was dying and begged his wife to be allowed to die at home. In a Catholic family, when someone is dying, it is over to the family priest to administer to the parishioner and pray for divine intervention. Father John Fitzgibbon, an assistant parish priest at the Church of Blessed John Ogilvie, came to see John at the beginning of March. Prayers were said at Mass for John's recovery but he became weaker and weaker, and the priest was summoned to perform the last rites. As he left for the last time, Fitzgibbon pinned a devotional medal of Blessed John Ogilvie on Fagan's bedclothes, and a group of the faithful began to pray to the martyr on John's behalf.

John Ogilive was a Calvinist who converted to Catholicism whilst studying in Europe. Catholics in Scotland at that time were forced to practice their religion in secret, and priests were regarded as traitors to the Crown. Ogilvie returned to Scotland and set up a network of safe-houses where Catholics could take Mass in secret. He was reported to authorities by an informer, and was brought to trial for his 'crimes'. By law, he was given the chance to renounce Catholicism and take an oath of allegiance to the English monarch, or be tried for treason. He chose the latter and was executed in 1614. The young priest's heroism did not go unnoticed and was rewarded with beatification in 1886. This is the first step to canonisation as a saint, the requirement being miracles performed in his name.

At the beginning of 1967, the Fagan household was preparing for the inevitable. John was increasingly weak and he hadn't eaten solid food for seven weeks, and now he could not even keep liquids down. When the family doctor, Archibald MacDonald visited John on Saturday 4 march, he was appalled to see what appeared to be parts of John's stomach in the sick bucket beside the bed, which filled the room with the stench of putrefaction. Informing Mary that John would surely die within hours, he did what he could and left, intending to return on Monday to sign the necessary papers. Heavily drugged, John slipped into a final sleep while Mary moistened his lips with a piece of cotton soaked in water. This is how he remained all day Sunday, while members of the Legion of Mary prayed beside his bed, beseeching John Ogilvie to intervene on the dying man's behalf. In the early hours of Monday morning, John started awake to tell Mary he had seen his dead aunt Annie in a dream, and she beckoned to him asking, "Are you coming John?". Later that morning, Mary awoke to find her husband not breathing and with no heartbeat. She noted the time on the mantle clock and sat weeping for the next few hours. Suddenly, she heard a voice, and it took some time to realise it was John. He was sitting up in bed and was asking for something to eat! She made him a boiled egg, and while he sat eating it she called the doctor who would not believe the news until he visited the house and saw for himself.

The recovery of John Fagan became the most investigated miracle of the twentieth century. In October 1967 several priests took statements from all involved. After considering these statements, the Archbishop of Glasgow, Monsignor James Scanlen, gave his permission for a panel of doctors to be set up to investigate the medical side of the cure. The panel met for 2 years, and enlisted the help of experts in every field before concluding that there was no medical explanation of John Fagan's cure. There was one dissenter, a Doctor Crean, a gastroenterologist, believed that the condition could have resulted from an intraperitoneal abscess. More on this later.

It wasn’t long before the Vatican became involved. The modern Catholic Church treats cases such as this with the greatest of caution. A doctor, Livio Capocaccia arrived and started his investigation right at the beginning, seeking to ascertain whether there was any possible medical explanation for the cure. He postulated that is was possible that the surgeons had indeed removed all of the tumour in the first operation and that the secondary cancer was simply beaten by the immune system of a hardy Scot. But how would this explain the deterioration and subsequent recovery? Was the primary tumour a Carcinoid, or low grade malignancy of the argenaffin cells of the intestine that spread to the stomach? The medical evidence refuted this hypothesis however, with the biopsies showing distinct cancer invasion. Both the panel and Capoaccia considered that the tumour simply 'died' , so-called spontaneous remission. They concluded this was unlikely, as spontaneous remissions almost never occur at the 11th hour or occur on such an advanced and aggressive cancer. John Fagan was resubjected to more exhaustive tests at different hospitals and institutions. The results corroborated what the panel had already conclude, that there was no satisfactory explanation for his recovery. Dr Capocaccia reported back to the Vatican that the healing was indeed miraculous. Next, a Diocesan Tribunal was formed by the Sacred Congregation for the Causes of the Saints in Rome. A list of questions was compiled, and these were asked to everyone involved under oath (the Interrogatories). The proceedings were translated in both English and Italian to avoid any errors. The report, or Judgement, was placed under seal and taken to Rome. Once there, the documents were incorporated into a 350 page 'Summarium', complete with medical reports, medical history, pathology tests and other charts. At the same time, a separate document, (the Fattispecie Cronologia), containing a chronological summary of the material in the Summarium was prepared and bound. Both volumes were then presented to two independent medical experts who were given eight weeks to render judgement. These experts concurred with the Glasgow panel in that the cure was without medical explanation. The written judgements were submitted to the Vatican's Consulta Medica where they were rewritten in simple language for the theological experts at the Sacred Congregation for the Causes of the Saints.

The theologists agreed with the medical experts and their judgement was submitted to the Promoter-General of the Faith, or the Devil's Advocate. In this case the job fell to Gaetano Stano, well known for his asceticism. He prepared his objections which drew on both medicine and theology to argue against Fagan's cure being miraculous. Across town, Jesuit scholar Father Molinari was forming a rebuttal to Stano's arguments. The resulting 563 page tome (the Responsio) containing all rebuttals and counter objections as well as all documents generated by the investigation were secretly printed and bound and resubmitted to the Congregation. Ten further judgements (the Revista) are elicited from five officials and five Consultors from the theological section. All ruled in favour of the miracle and their printed affirmation, or Positio, was passed to Pope Paul VI who was then free to submit it to his own experts. (Phew!! .... Ed.).

On February 12, 1977, after a period of prayer and consultation, the pontiff issued a decree confirming the intervention of a saint. Five days later, the martyred priest John Ogilvie became a member of the calendar of saints of the Roman Catholic Church. In the face of this, our one dissenter still maintains that this was no miracle. Dr Gerard Crean intended to publish his findings as a form of rebuttal, but decided against it and his files remain locked away forever. Crean's theory was that surgeons did indeed remove all of the initial tumour, but, as a result of the operation, an infective abscess formed in the body cavity which surrounds the internal organs. This abscess is a recognised complication of gastrectomy and may lie dormant for months. As Fagan's body fought the infection, dead bacteria and white cells decomposed to form the yellow pus that was growing inside his body. This in turn resulted in the shock and toxaemia which were the cause of his terrible condition. Finally, the abscess discharged itself through the stomach wall which accounts for the contents of the sick bucket by the bed. This doesn't really gel though, as John's medical records have no record of fever and chills which would surely accompany such a condition. Crean maintains that a doctor may have missed these symptoms due to chills and fever passing and then returning, perhaps when the doctor or Mary Fagan was not there to witness it. Certainly, the panel and Dr Capocaccia strongly disagreed with Crean, and with good reason. But his theory probably raised a few questions that the experts needed to address. One answer that has since been mooted is that if there was an abscess, Fagan's immune system would have been working overtime to try and get rid of it, and some believe that it was this that killed the remaining cancer in Fagan's body. Put simply, it was when he was on his deathbed that John Fagan was closer to a natural cure than at any time previously. It may be that when the abscess burst through his stomach wall the remains of the tumour that the surgeons missed were already 'killed' by his immune system.

So there it is. A true case of a miracle cure. What do you think? Many experts surely concur that a miracle did happen here. Others may agree with the miracle part of the cure but dislike the religious connotation, while others will simply disagree and will go for the 'natural cure' theory. Either way, we cant help but feel for John Fagan and wonder at the second chance he was 'given'. We don't know what has happened to him after all this, but we wish him well!

If you have any miraculous stories, you can submit them here for inclusion on this site. 

Secrets You Should Know. This site is intended for entertainment purposes only.