Pope prayer ’miracle’

A Costa Rican woman whose brain aneurysm reportedly disappeared after she prayed to Pope John Paul II broke down in tears as she spoke publicly for the first time about the church-confirmed miracle underlying John Paul’s case for sainthood.

The Roman Catholic Church presented 50-year-old Floribeth Mora and her doctor to reporters after Pope Francis approved the miracle needed to canonise John Paul II.

Mrs Mora, who runs a security business with her husband in the middle-class neighbourhood of Dulce Nombre de Tres Rios, said she was sent home with no apparent hope for treatment and thought she was going to die after her 2011 aneurysm diagnosis.

But a photograph of the late pope seemed to speak to her during his beatification, she said, and her doctor says the aneurysm disappeared for no apparent reason.