Case file · Apparition / miracle
Saint Paulina of Nova Trento
In 2002 Pope John Paul II canonised Mother Paulina, an Italian-born nun who worked in Nova Trento, Santa Catarina, making her the first saint to have lived in Brazil.
2002 CE · -27.29, -48.93 · status: official
The account
The two miracles accepted were cures of a girl and a baby in Santa Catarina. Her shrine at Nova Trento is a major pilgrimage site.
The researched reading
Two genuine recoveries in serious medical situations. They are remarkable, but rare survivals within medicine explain them better than a miracle.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A known natural phenomenon | 40% | The two accepted cures were Eluíza Rosa de Souza’s recovery from severe haemorrhage and shock in 1966 and the survival of baby Iza Bruna Vieira de Souza, born in 1992 with an occipital meningoencephalocele; both conditions have variable outcomes, and some patients do survive with surgery and care. |
| A cultural story | 25% | Two favourable outcomes were chosen out of decades of petitions to a beloved regional saint; the canonisation process looks for successes, not failures. |
| Undetermined | 15% | The share a generic explanation had beyond what has been shown for this case: it fits many cases like this one, but has not been demonstrated for this one. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 10% | Church medical boards found the recoveries unexplained; that is a real finding, though made decades after the first event and without independent review. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 7% | Prayer and hope comfort families but cannot by themselves stop a haemorrhage or correct a brain malformation. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 3% | No indication of fabricated records. |
Official position: John Paul II accepted both cures as miracles in 2001 and canonised Mother Paulina in 2002.