‘He needs a MIRACLE’
MARTYRED PRIEST NEEDS ONE MIRACLE BEFORE HE CAN REACH SAINTHOOD
Editor’s note: This story is part of “Road to Sainthood,” an ongoing series about the late Rev. Stanley Rother, the first U.S.born male and U.S. priest named a martyr by the Roman Catholic Church. His beatification on Sept. 23 placed him one step closer to canonization. For more on this topic and Blessed Stanley Rother, read the Religion & Values blog at NewsOK.com/ blogs/religion-and-values.
It’s been 25 years since Sandra
Rother McGougan defied the odds and a life-threatening illness.
Stricken by a mysterious brain ailment on July 3, 1992, she wasn’t expected to live through the holiday weekend. And if she did, medical experts predicted she would spend her days in a vegetative state, at best.
Today, McGougan is a busy wife and mother with a fulfilling career and a heart brimming with gratefulness.
By faith, the Piedmont resident attributes her healing to God — and the intercession of martyred priest Stanley Rother.
McGougan, 48, and her family have no doubts that Rother, who is their relative, will eventually be declared a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.
They describe her restoration as a miracle.
And they say through the Lord and Rother’s intercession, a miracle can happen again.
After all, McGougan is considered a living testimony of the miraculous.
“The neurosurgeon said it was a miracle. For what I should have and where I could be and what I could be, it had to be divine intervention,” she said recently. “I’m so thankful and so fortunate and so blessed in my life.”
Miracle needed
Rother was 46 when he was killed July 28, 1981, by unknown assailants in Guatemala. An Okarche native, Rother was an Archdiocese of Oklahoma City priest serving as pastor of the Santiago Atitlan parish in Guatemala at the time of his death.
The Most Rev. Paul S. Coakley, Oklahoma City archbishop, said the determination of Rother’s martyrdom and beatification were critical steps toward his canonization as a saint.
Now, Coakley said, at least one authenticated miracle attributed to Rother’s intercession is required for him to be declared a saint.
The archbishop said the miracle must have occurred after Dec. 1, 2016, the date Pope
Francis signed a decree clearing the way for Rother’s beatification.
“He needs a miracle,” Coakley told members of the media gathered for the priest’s Sept. 23 beatification ceremony at the Cox Convention Center.
This same miracle mandate was required of other individuals canonized in recent years, including those with considerably
higher profiles than Rother, like St. Mother Teresa (1910-1997) and St. Pope John Paul II (1920-2005). Several other people canonized recently have ties to the U.S., including St. Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680), a Mohawk Indian who became a saint in 2012, and Junipero Serra (1713-1784), a Franciscan friar who was canonized in 2015 by Pope Francis during the pope’s first visit to the U.S.
According to a CNN report, the approved miracle for Mother Teresa’s canonization involved Monica Besra, a 30-year-old Kolkata woman who said praying to the nun cured a stomach tumor. CNN reported that a Vatican committee said in 2002 that it could find no “scientific explanation” for the woman’s recovery.
The miracle that propelled Pope John Paul II to sainthood involved Costa Rican Floribeth Mora Diaz, whose recovery from an inoperable brain aneurysm was deemed miraculous by her neurosurgeon and, ultimately, the Vatican in 2013.
It’s worth noting that both Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II, and any other individual who is not recognized by the Church as a martyr, has to have two miracles attributed to their intercession before they may be declared a
saint.
Rother is only required to have one miracle attributed to his intercession because the Church declared him a martyr. Coakley has said medical miracles have been more likely in modern times because they are more easily verified by medical science and the Church.
He said the archdiocese has already received some information about miraculous claims attributed to Rother’s intercession. The clergy leaders said these matters will be checked out to see if they are deemed worthy of further scrutiny by the Vatican.
‘I believe’
McGougan, daughter of Leo and Kay Rother, is Stanley Rother’s cousin. She said her grandfather and the priest’s grandfather were brothers.
She said many people — not just Rothers — believe in miracles, particularly
people in her Okarche hometown where Stanley Rother also was born.
It may help that many of them know about the “medical miracle” that occurred in their midst, McGougan said.
“It has brought so many people closer to God. It has brought me closer to God,” she said.
During a recent brief interview at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Okarche, McGougan’s mother Kay Rother talked about the July 1992 day that changed the family’s lives forever.
She said she got a call telling her that McGougan had suddenly fallen ill at her home and had been taken to a nearby hospital. Kay Rother said the situation was so dire by the time she got to the hospital that medical personnel had pronounced her daughter brain dead, placed her on life support and asked about the family donating her organs.
Instead of doing that, Kay Rother had her daughter taken to St. Anthony Hospital where doctors performed emergency brain surgery. McGougan had suffered a massive hemorrhagic stroke. However, an internist at St. Anthony had found brain activity and doctors agreed to do surgery.
The doctors determined that McGougan suffered from arteriovenous malformation, known as AVM. McGougan said her stroke was caused by an AVM rupture in the brainstem.
Her mother remembers all the details.
She said the Rev. Marvin Leven, the family’s pastor at Holy Trinity at that time, told the family that he had gone to the Okarche cemetery where his good friend and fellow priest Stanley Rother was buried. Leven told the family not to worry because he had asked
Rother to intercede on McGougan’s behalf.
The priest seemed unfazed by the diagnosis although even after surgery, doctors were skeptical about McGougan’s survival. Kay Rother said it was difficult to be optimistic but the family continued to hope for a miracle.
“It was a Friday when the doctor made his rounds at the hospital and he said he didn’t expect her to be there that Monday,” she said. “He said there was a 1 percent change of her making it.”
The miracle occurred three days after surgery.
McGougan opened her eyes and her mother asked her to blink twice if she recognized her and watched in amazement as her daughter’s eyelids fluttered twice in response.
During a recent interview, McGougan said she remembers being paralyzed except for her eyes and on a respirator. She was in different stages of a coma over the next several days but she was alive.
McGougan said she underwent much physical therapy and dealt with other illnesses, including pneumonia, but she eventually overcame all of them to walk and talk again and to lead a normal life.
She said she enjoyed a special friendship with Stanley Rother’s father Franz Rother after it became known that her miraculous recovery was attributed to his son’s intercession. Franz Rother gave her a book of his son’s letters and always had a word of encouragement and a smile for her.
McGougan said she was 12 years old when Stanley Rother died and she didn’t understand all the matters related to his ministry in Guatemala and his death.
However, that changed after her recovery, which was chronicled in a PBS documentary.
She said getting the opportunity to attend his beatification was amazing. “I think what an honor to know about this man and to be saved by him and to be related to him,” McGougan said.
She said she’s sure that there are many people of faith who believe in miracles from the divine.
“We just have faith. It’s not just a Catholic thing. It’s about faith. We believe in miracles,” McGougan said.
“I believe.”