Healing of Giuseppe Carlo Audino

Audino's sarcoma had spread throughout his body, causing massive liver enlargement. Dr. Philip Rubin injected him with radioactive gold intended only to ease suffering. He was cured nearly overnight. Rubin stated: "There is no clear scientific explanation for his cure."

Giuseppe Carlo Audino was an Italian immigrant living in Rochester, New York. By 1958, he was dying. A diagnosis of reticulum cell sarcoma — an aggressive cancer of the lymphatic system — had reached an advanced, metastatic stage. The disease had spread throughout his body, causing his liver to swell enormously. His physician, Dr. Philip Rubin, chairman of radiation oncology at the University of Rochester Cancer Center, determined that curative treatment was no longer feasible. Audino was given approximately one month to live.

Dr. Rubin proceeded with palliative measures. He injected Audino with radioactive gold — not to arrest the cancer, but to ease his suffering in the time he had remaining. There was no clinical expectation of recovery. Audino's family was preparing for his death.

He had been praying to Brother André for intercession. André Bessette had died in Montreal in 1937, having spent forty years as the doorkeeper of a religious college, directing the sick who came to him toward Saint Joseph. The crutches and canes that lined the walls of his chapel on Mount Royal stood as testimony to thousands who had claimed healing through his prayers. He had never taken credit. "I do not cure," he had said. "Saint Joseph cures."

Nearly overnight, Audino's condition reversed. The tumor disappeared. Dr. Rubin examined him and could not explain what he found. "There is no clear scientific explanation for his cure," Rubin later stated. The man who had been expected to die within weeks was alive and free of the cancer that had been throughout his body.

The Vatican's Consulta Medica reviewed the full record and concluded that the healing was medically inexplicable — spontaneous, complete, and beyond explanation by the natural course of reticulum cell sarcoma or any known effect of the treatment administered. Pope John Paul II recognized the miracle, and it served as the basis for Brother André's beatification on May 23, 1982.

Giuseppe Carlo Audino attended the beatification ceremony in Rome.