The Brazilian man who received the miracle allowing for Mother Teresa’s canonization says that he and his wife were ordinary believers who received an extraordinary sign of God’s mercy.

“From the beginning, the diagnoses weren’t good and they seemed only worse. (But) from that moment, inside this great suffering, we understood that something had happened,” Marcilio Haddad Andrino said of his miraculous healing.

“I was sure that it was Mother Teresa who healed me.”

Andrino, who comes from Santos, Brazil, was healed through the intercession of Mother Teresa – the miracle that paved the way for her canonization last year on Sept. 4.

He spoke with journalists during the August 2016 Rimini Meeting in Italy alongside his wife Fernanda, who each shared their own perspective of Marcilio’s illness and miraculous healing.

Fernanda, sharing her perspective of her husband’s long, drawn-out illness, explained that Marcilio had been sick for two years and had seen countless doctors, but with no diagnosis.

“It was a wait full of anguish, because he was very sick for two years and we didn’t know what was wrong,” she said, explaining that the first attempt for treatment “was unsuccessful. So the doctor changed therapy, but Marcilio continued to deteriorate.”

She recalled how it wasn’t until Marcilio was hospitalized in October 2008 that they finally received their answer.

After running a series of tests “the doctor looked at the exam and, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, understood that Marcilio had eight brain abscesses,” she said.

“We always prayed to Mother Teresa,” she said, noting that her parish priest had given her a relic of Mother Teresa before the couple got married.

Read more at Catholic News Agency. 

Further Reading: The Secret Life of Mother Teresa

‘Hello. My name is Mother Teresa. I just wanted to give you my card.’