This story hits home for me. My aunt, Sister Mary Susan Boyle, worked with the late Sister Zita, at the Sister Miriam Theresa League House at Convent Station New Jersey. So, I knew all about Sister Miriam Theresa from the time I was in my late teens. I read her great work, Greater Perfection, which were actually meditations she gave to her spiritual director under obedience. Michael Mencer, three years younger than I, was cured of certain blindness by Sister Miriam Theresa, now a Blessed. I have to add Michael to my prayer list, for the repose of his pure soul and for his intercession. He suffered so much and seems to me, reading about him to have been one of Our Lady’s hidden treasures in a age of corruption.
National Catholic Register, Joseph Pronechen: Michael Mencer, the “Miracle Boy” whose miraculously restored eyesight led to the beatification of Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich — the first ever such ceremony to take place in the United States — died in December in Lincoln, Nebraska, from complications after surgery. Days earlier, he had celebrated his 61st birthday.
The miracle took place when he was eight years old and his family was living in Teaneck, New Jersey. Young Michael had been diagnosed with juvenile macular degeneration, an incurable and irreversible condition. His vision was so poor he was already legally blind.
Sr. Jane Culligan of the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth explained that Michael’s third grade teacher in St. Anastasia School, Sr. Marie Augustine, sent home with him a prayer card and relic of Sr. Miriam Teresa who had died in 1927. The Sisters of Charity were working on her cause for sainthood. Read article here.
