By Jesús Colina
VATICAN CITY, DEC. 21, 2009 (Zenit.org).- After Benedict XVI’s approval of a decree recognizing a miracle attributed to the intercession of a Spanish journalist known as «Lolo,» the way to his beatification is opened.
The Pope authorized the recognition regarding Manuel Lozano Garrido on Saturday morning in an audience with Archbishop Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes.
The miracle involved the «scientifically inexplicable» cure of Rogelio de Haro Sagra, who was healed of multiple organ failure from Gram-negative sepsis in 1972, when he was two years old.
Lolo was born in Linares, Spain, on August 9, 1920, and died in the same city on November 3, 1971.
He joined Catholic Action as an adolescent and, during the Spanish Civil War, secretly brought Communion to prisoners until he himself was arrested.
As a journalist, Lolo wrote for the daily «Ya,» the reviews «Telva» and «Vida Nueva» and the Associated Press.
In 1942 he began to suffer from spondylitis, which deformed his body and left him an invalid in just a year. In 1962 the journalist lost his sight.
Despite the illness, he received professional recognitions, such as the prestigious Bravo journalism award.
In 1956 Lolo founded Sinai, a magazine for sick people. He also authored nine books, which he dictated to his sister Lucía and his friends.
Last Thursday the journalist’s remains were transferred to a grotto of the Blessed Virgin in the monastery of the Discalced Carmelites in Linares, in the presence of the bishop of the Jaen Diocese, Bishop Ramón del Hoyo López, Lolo’s two sisters, Lucía and Expectación, and numerous friends.
«The child — now a man — who ‘loaned’ his grave illness to God so that his power would shine through the intercession of Lolo, was also there,» explained Father Rafael Higueras Álamo, who accompanied Lolo at the moment of death and is the postulator of the cause of his beatification.
The data of Lolo’s beatification has not yet been revealed.
