TRES RIOS, Costa Rica — On a warm spring day, Floribeth Mora was in her bed waiting to die from a seemingly inoperable brain aneurysm when her gaze fell upon a photograph of Pope John Paul II in a newspaper.
“Stand up,” Mora recalls the image of the pope saying. “Don’t be afraid.”
Mora, her doctors and the Catholic Church say her aneurysm disappeared that day in a miracle that cleared the way for the late pope to be declared a saint April 27 in a ceremony at the Vatican where Mora will be a guest of honor.
For Mora, the church-certified miracle was the start of her metamorphosis from an ill and desperate woman into an adored symbol of faith for thousands of Costa Ricans and Catholics around the world.
Mora, 50, has been greeting a stream of visitors in her modest home in a middle-class neighborhood outside the Costa Rican capital. She accepts invitations to as many as four Masses a day. The faithful have given her so many letters to deliver to current pontiff Pope Francis that she has had to buy an extra suitcase.
Mora says speaking about her experience has become her calling. “I’ve got so much to do that I’m going to dedicate myself above all to telling the world the story of God’s greatness and what it’s done for me,” she said.
