SAO PAOLO: Pope Benedict XVI on Friday gave Brazil its first saint, canonizing Friar Antonio de Sant'Ana Galvao, a Franciscan monk still credited with miracle cures nearly 200 years after his death.

Friar Galvao, who lived from 1739 to 1822, founded monasteries and convents throughout Brazil but is best known today because of his reputed healing powers.

A first miracle attributed to Friar Galvao and recognised by the Church occurred at the start of the 19th century when a patient was cured of kidney stones after he had her swallow three small pieces of paper on which he had written prayers for divine intercession.

Two much more recent miracles attributed to Galvao have been recognised by the Vatican: In 1990, a four-year-old girl recovered from what was considered incurable hepatitis, and in 1999 a mother and child survived a high-risk birth in what the Vatican called a “scientifically inexplicable” case.

Both had swallowed the celebrated paper “miracle pills” that have led, according to Sao Paulo's Monastery of Light, to 8,057 cases in which supplicants' prayers to Galvao have been answered since the priest was beatified by Benedict's predecessor John Paul II in 1998.—AFP