An atheist makes a saint
Marie-Marguerite d’Youville
[1701-1771]
Marie-Marguerite d’Youville was the widow to a bootlegger who sold liquor illegally to Canada’s Indigenous Peoples and kept more slaves than most anyone in Montreal. Unlike her husband, she was a prolific donator to the poor. One of her greatest miracles appears to be, in fact, giving life.
A 2016 New York Times op-ed by a hematologist (and avowed atheist) described tests on the bone marrow of a sick woman who had prayed to Marie-Marguerite for help. Presence of little red rods inside the cells, as show above, confirmed that the woman had been living for 40 years with acute myelogenous leukemia, a fatal disease that, when treated, has a median survival rate of only 18 months.
For this woman, being alive was unexplainable by science. The Vatican accepted it as proof of a miracle, and in 1990, they granted Marie-Marguerite the status of the first native-born Canadian saint.