VATICAN CITY, SEPT. 11, 2002 (Zenit.org).- John Paul II received the signatures of more than 200 journalists who requested the beatification of Manuel Lozano Garrido, a colleague who spent much of his life confined to a wheelchair.
Three journalists handed over the official petition today to the Pope. The three were Paloma Gómez Borrero, Rome correspondent of the Spanish COPE radio network; Alex Rosal, director of the weekly newspaper Fe y Razón; and Jesús Colina, director of ZENIT.
The journalists were accompanied by Rafael Higueras Álamo, postulator of the cause, who handed the Holy Father the «positio» or documented research on Manuel Lozano Garrido’s life and virtues.
Lozano was born in Linares, Spain, in 1920. He began his professional work as a journalist in religious media and in the Associated Press.
In 1942 he contracted spondylitis, an inflammation of the vertebrae, which deformed his body and left him an invalid. For the next 28 years he was confined to a wheelchair. He was blind his last 10 years. He died Nov. 3, 1971.
«Lolo,» as he was known, managed to dictate nine books to his sister Lucy and to his friends. He founded Sinai magazine for the sick.
His cause of beatification is already at an advanced stage in the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
If a panel of theologians and cardinals declares his «heroic virtues,» a scientific commission will study an existing miracle attributed to his intercession. The postulator’s office reports that studies have already been made of the inexplicable cure in 1974 of a 2-year-old Spanish boy, who today is an international tennis umpire.
