VATICAN CITY, OCT. 22, 2001 (Zenit.org).- The postulator behind the beatification of Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi says their cause benefited from a miracle attributed to their joint intercession.
Father Paolino Rossi revealed that Gilberto Grossi, a youth who today is a neurosurgeon, benefited from the miracle.
«His invocation to God for the cure of bone alterations, which often obliged him to remain immobile, was directed through the intercession of both spouses,» the postulator said.
Father Rossi had presented to the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints the documentation attesting to the couple´s heroic virtues. John Paul II beatified the couple Sunday, the first spouses to be so honored together.
«There was nothing apparently extraordinary about Luigi and Maria,» Father Rossi told ZENIT. «What singled them out was the extraordinary way in which they lived.»
Maria (1884-1965) was a teacher and writer on educational topics, and committed to groups such as Catholic Action and the Scouts.
Luigi (1880-1951) was a lawyer who became vice attorney general of Italy. Of the couple´s four children, two became priests and one became a nun.
«The two spouses were Christians of conviction, consistent and faithful to their own baptism,» said Father Rossi.
«They knew how to accept God´s plan for them and respected its priority; they were very loving people, with one another, with their children, and with their neighbor, promoting goodness and justice,» the postulator said. «They were people of hope, who knew how to give the right meaning to earthly realities, while always contemplating eternity.»
According to Father Rossi, the two new blessed left the world a «message of hope, consolation and support for the Christian family, assailed today by so many problems and threatened in its fundamental values, its ideal, its genuine configuration.»
He added: «In recognizing their ´joint intercession,´ we can say that the theologians underscored that the spouses are not only united in a human but also in a spiritual dimension.»
