Valeria says she recovered from cancer in a single weekend. On Friday, she had several tumors, and by Monday, when she returned to the hospital to begin chemotherapy, the doctors could no longer find the lesions.
She was just over 20 years old when she was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Devastated, she returned to her parents’ home and ended up sleeping in her grandmother’s old room, where there was a small altar dedicated to Ceferino Namuncurá.
That was when she began asking for the intercession of this young Argentine of Mapuche descent, the son and grandson of chiefs, who wanted to become a priest and died of tuberculosis in 1905, at just 18 years old. That same weekend, Valeria also went to Mass and received the Anointing of the Sick.
When she underwent tests again before starting treatment, the doctors found none of the tumors they had detected days earlier. Her case was investigated by the Catholic Church for years, and a medical board involved in the process concluded that her recovery had been sudden, complete, lasting, and inexplicable according to the medical knowledge of the time.
In 2007, the Vatican officially recognized her recovery as a miracle attributed to Ceferino’s intercession. That recognition paved the way for his beatification, and Valeria was present in Chimpay to see the young man she had turned to years earlier declared blessed. 🥹
