Key Individual in Canonization Dies

Michael Flanigan, whose recovery from cancer led to the canonization of St. John Neumann, the first U.S. male saint, has died at age 29, it was reported Monday.

Flanigan died Oct. 20 and was buried at St. Mary’s Cemetery in Cold Spring.

Panels of theologians and physicians had declared Flanigan’s recovery from cancer at age 6 miraculous, the last step before the formality of papal canonization in 1977 of Neumann, a 19th-Century Philadelphia bishop.

Doctors had said Flanigan had little hope of recovery from Ewing’s sarcoma, a usually fatal form of cancer, but the disease disappeared after a visit to Neumann’s tomb in Philadelphia and contact with a relic of the bishop.

It was the third miracle attributed to Neumann, who oversaw the Roman Catholic Church’s Philadelphia Archdiocese from 1852 until his death in 1860.

“A parish priest blessed the boy and touched his body with a crucifix containing a relic of the bishop: a chip of bone from the bishop’s remains,” said Marie Kelly, a spokeswoman for the Philadelphia Archdiocese.

She said another chip of bone, encased in glass, was pinned to the boy’s clothing. Six weeks later, all traces of the disease disappeared.