WORCESTER, Mass., Oct. 13 (UPI) -- The Vatican is skeptical regarding a series of alleged miracles performed by a comatose woman in Worcester, Mass., before her death, Catholic scholars say.
Scholars said while supporters of the late 23-year-old woman have requested she be deemed a saint due to her alleged miracles, Vatican officials remain unconvinced the woman made statues weep and hosts bleed, The Boston Globe said Monday.
One scholar also suggests that since Audrey Santo had been comatose from the age of 3 until her death in 2007, the Vatican would cast doubts on her Catholic faith.
"They might be hard pressed to prove that she had this will to embrace Christian virtues and to live them," Monsignor F. Stephen Pedone, who is investigating the reports on behalf of the Worcester Diocese, said of Santo's supporters. "She probably didn't even know what they were."
But a lawyer heading up the sainthood campaign said Santo's condition due to an accident in which she nearly drowned is its own "miracle."
"The fact that she was incapacitated, and yet she was able to achieve this ability to captivate people in her state is a miracle in itself," attorney Robert E. Keane said.
