More than 80 years after her death, a New Jersey nun credited with curing a boy's eye disease is set to be beatified on Saturday.
Sister Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, who died in 1927 at age 26, is scheduled to be beatified in a ceremony led by Cardinal Angelo Amato at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark.
Sister Miriam Teresa is credited with curing a boy's macular degeneration in the 1960s, according to the Archdiocese of Newark. The boy, Michael Mencer, was given a lock of the sister's hair and prayed to her. The effects of the eye disease soon began to fade, church officials say.
"Within a period of six weeks, it was totally reversed," said Sister Mary Canavan, vice postulator for the Sister Miriam Teresa League of Prayer in Convent Station.
The beatification comes nearly 10 months after the event was certified as a miracle by Pope Francis.
The archdiocese expects more than 1,500 people, including members of the sister's family and Mencer, to be on hand for the beatification Mass.
Attendees also will include a "whole slew of nuns," priests and more than 20 bishops, including one from Poland, said Jim Goodness, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Newark. During the ceremony, a procession will be held carrying a relic from Sister Miriam Teresa and a portrait of the sister, Goodness said.
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Saturday's ceremony is the third step in the canonization process.
Beatification requires evidence of one miracle that happened after the candidate has died and as a result of a specific plea to the candidate. Sainthood requires a second miracle, though candidates deemed martyrs need only one for canonization.
