“At present there is no cure for Parkinson’s Disease,” says the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

A French nun named Sister Marie Simon-Pierre knows what it’s like to read those words, as she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease when she was just 40.

It was 2001, and Pope John Paul II was already visibly shaking from the disease, so Sister Marie knew where she was headed, and it wasn’t pretty.

John Paul died in April of 2005, and Sister Marie began praying that he intercede for her. So did other nuns in her congregation, the Petites Soeurs des Maternites Catholiques.

Then, she says, she woke up on June 3 cured, healed from one day to the next. The Vatican had its medical specialists look into the nun’s condition and determined that it was in fact a miracle.

While there have been other miracles reportedly worked through the intercession of the late pope, this is the “official” one that allows Pope Benedict to beatify John Paul, or declare him blessed, on May 1.

With another miracle, John Paul can be canonized, or made a saint. The miracles are frequently medical cures, inexplicable scientifically. They have to be sudden, complete, and lasting.

While John may have done a great deed for Sister Marie – a miracle, really – she’s repaying the favor by coming forward and letting everyone know what happened.

She doesn’t look someone who likes the limelight, and you probably won’t be seeing her on the late-night talk shows.

But Sister Marie seems to be ready to go through what she has to in order say thanks to her miracle worker. John Paul needed a miracle to get through this point of his sainthood process; in a certain sense, she provided it.