Healing of Domenico Sellan

Paralyzed and near death from spinal tuberculosis. A priest brought a relic and prayer card of Pier Giorgio Frassati and prayed at his bedside. Complete recovery on December 28, 1933. Lived approximately 35 more years in good health. Vatican verification process completed 1989.

Domenico Sellan was born in 1892 in San Quirino, a small town in the Pordenone province of northern Italy. By 1933, at approximately forty-one years of age, he was gravely ill with Pott's disease — tuberculosis of the spine, specifically attacking his first and second lumbar vertebrae. The disease had caused progressive vertebral destruction, resulting in paraplegia. Without the antibiotics that would not become available for another decade, his prognosis was considered fatal.

A priest visited Sellan at his home and brought with him a relic and a prayer card bearing the image of Pier Giorgio Frassati, who had died in 1925 and whose cause for beatification was already under discussion in Turin. The priest prayed with Sellan, invoking Frassati's intercession. On December 28, 1933, Sellan recovered. The paraplegia resolved. His tuberculosis of the spine, which had been destroying his vertebral structure, ceased entirely.

Domenico Sellan lived approximately thirty-five more years, dying around 1968 in good health — an outcome his original diagnosis made medically impossible to explain.

Decades later, his case was submitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints as part of the formal beatification cause. The verification process concluded as follows: the diocesan canonical investigation was validated on February 20, 1989; medical experts approved the case on April 26, 1989; theologians confirmed it on June 30, 1989; the Congregation gave final approval on October 3, 1989; and Pope John Paul II signed the decree recognizing the miracle on December 21, 1989. Pier Giorgio Frassati was beatified on May 20, 1990.