Miracle worker

Now and again someone recommends a programme, and you’re very glad they did because it’s the kind of show that television ought to make often and only rarely does. I Believe in Miracles (BBC2, Tuesday), a This World documentary, was like that — just the right length at 40 minutes, and as packed with good things as a Christmas cake.

The producers followed Ken, confined to his wheelchair by strokes, and his daughter Susan, who had given up work to care for him, but who suffered herself from debilitating migraines. They joined a coach party from Garstang, Lancashire, to Lourdes, where Dad hoped to walk again. The journey was horrible, starting at midnight from home, and Lourdes is a tourist hell, being full of catchpenny caffs and souvenir shops. Susan picked up a gaudy pillbox. ‘Why would they sell pillboxes in Lourdes?’ she asked, reasonably.

Even the Roman Catholic Church admits that in the 149 years people have been coming (at a rate now of 6 million a year) only 67 miracles have been officially credited — though no one was more sceptical than the tour leader from Garstang, the local priest Father David. He took the same view of miracles as most of us take of unicorns — they might exist, but don’t expect to see one this week. ‘Jesus cured an awful lot of people,’ he remarked. ‘They’re all dead now.’

Meanwhile, an American chap from Indiana was going blind, until he was cured by the apparently miraculous intervention of Mother Theodore Guerin. The last pope reduced the number of attested miracles needed for sainthood from four to two, which is how John Paul II managed to canonise more people than all the popes of the previous 500 years.