The miraculous cure of Jack Traynor on the first official Liverpool pilgrimage to Lourdes earned official recognition on 8 December.

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by Simon Hart

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The Feast of the Immaculate Conception is always a day of significance in the Church’s diary. For the Archdiocese of Liverpool, it had even greater significance than usual last month thanks to a declaration 101 years in the making.

It was during Sunday Mass at the Metropolitan Cathedral on 8 December that Canon Aidan Prescott, vicar general of the Archdiocese, read a statement from Archbishop Malcolm McMahon officially declaring the case of John ‘Jack’ Traynor as a miracle.

Traynor was a pilgrim on the Archdiocese’s first official pilgrimage to Lourdes in 1923. There, he was cured dramatically of epilepsy, paralysis of the right arm and paraplegia – the legacy of injuries suffered during the First World War.

In his statement, Archbishop Malcolm said: ‘Given the weight of medical evidence, the testimony to the faith of John Traynor and his devotion to Our Blessed Lady, it is with great joy that I declare that the cure of John Traynor, from multiple serious medical conditions, is to be recognised as a miracle wrought by the power of God through the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes.

‘I hope that in February 2025, during the Jubilee Year, we will have a fitting celebration at the Metropolitan Cathedral to mark this significant moment in the history of our Archdiocese, helping us all to respond to the Jubilee call to be “Pilgrims of Hope”.’

Later that same Sunday in Lourdes, the rector of the sanctuary, Father Michel Daubanes, announced the declaration during the French Rosary at the Grotto. Traynor’s is the 71st official miracle to have happened in Lourdes. It is also the first recognised miracle involving a person from England.

Archbishop Malcolm’s statement had begun with an assertion from a previous Archbishop of Liverpool, Derek Worlock, who told the Pic in 1993: ‘There’s no question that people in Liverpool believe Jack Traynor was cured miraculously.’ That was during an earlier, unsuccessful attempt to trace the documentation needed to have Traynor’s case reviewed, during Monsignor John Butchard’s time as pilgrimage director.

The medics involved then were Dr Felicity Knight and Dr Kieran Moriarty – and the latter, as an English member of the International Medical Committee of Lourdes, had a pivotal role again now.

During Liverpool’s 2023 centenary pilgrimage to Lourdes, the president of the Lourdes Office of Medical Observations (BdCM), Dr Alessandro de Franciscis, asked Dr Moriarty to conduct a review of Traynor’s file in the Lourdes archives. This followed a reorganisation of the archives and sufficient medical evidence was now found.

As Archbishop Malcolm elaborated: ‘Dr Moriarty unearthed a reference in the file to a report by Dr Vallet, the then Acting President of the BdCM, which had been published in the Journal de la Grotte in December 1926. Dr Vallet examined John Traynor in July 1926, together with the three doctors [Drs Azurdia, Finn and Marley] who had examined John Traynor at Lourdes in 1923, both before and after his cure.

‘His report concluded that, “We recognise and proclaim, along with our Confreres, that the process of this prodigious healing is absolutely outside and above the forces of nature.” Dr Vallet’s report, which was published in French, appears never to have been sent to Liverpool, and indeed no potential miraculous cures were ever referred from Lourdes to diocesan bishops between 1913 and 1946.’

Dr Moriarty’s dossier was sent to the Archdiocese by Mgr Jean-Marc Micas, the Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes, last summer. ‘It was clear that there was now sufficient medical evidence to reconsider the possibility that the cure of John Traynor might be declared miraculous,’ Archbishop Malcolm added.

Hence the convening of a canonical commission at the St Margaret Clitherow Centre on 29 November. This included Archbishop Malcolm, Fr Sean Riley, and current and former pilgrimage directors in Fr Grant Maddock and Mgr Des Seddon respectively. Canon Aidan Prescott and Bishop Tom Neylon attended online while Fr John Poland sent a written statement. There were testimonies from Dr De Franciscis and Dr Moriarty.

According to Mgr Des: ‘At times Dr Moriarty was visibly moved giving us the evidence. It was always part of his family tradition because his grandparents were on the platform at Lime Street when Jack came home in 1923. It was always something he thought was a miracle.’

Dr Moriarty himself said of Traynor: ‘From having an arm that was held on by catgut and advised to be amputated, within three years he was a coal merchant and could lift bags of coal weighing 200 pounds, so that was clearly medically inexplicable.’

To celebrate the confirmation of this miracle, there will be a special Mass held at the Metropolitan Cathedral on 18 February. For Traynor’s descendants, the Mass on 8 December was already a moment of celebration. Five family members were present, including his great-granddaughter Kath Gavin, who, at 85, can recall meeting Jack as a child. Also there was Alex Taylor, a great-great grandson who has been investigating the story for a documentary film.

‘When I got beyond the family pass-me-down story and started looking at extensive records, we found some amazing photos and medical documents and I’d challenge anybody to be able to explain what happened,’ he says.

Traynor’s tale has previously been told in the CTS booklet Liverpool’s Miracle Man. It describes how he made nine visits to the baths during that 1923 pilgrimage and quotes him saying that, during the last one, ‘my legs began to kick about violently’. Later that day, during the Blessed Sacrament Procession, he received a blessing from the Archbishop of Reims and ‘my right arm, which had been dead since 1915, suddenly shot out … and blessed myself – for the first time in eight years!’

Traynor returned to Lourdes on many subsequent Liverpool pilgrimages, helping as a brancardier. For Mgr Des, a final noteworthy detail comes from his train journey home from that first pilgrimage. It emerged from Dr Moriarty’s research into the diaries of Liverpool’s then archbishop, Frederick Keating. ‘One of the things Dr Moriarty was moved by was the description of when Archbishop Keating went to see Jack, who’d been given a first-class compartment. The Archbishop went in and Jack went on his knees and asked for his blessing. The Archbishop said, “No, I should be asking for your blessing.”’

As for the potential impact of this news, 101 years on, Archbishop Malcolm says: ‘I hope the declaration of the miraculous cure of Jack Traynor will help those with doubts about their faith to come closer to the Lord and maybe even consider a pilgrimage to Lourdes.’

Fr Grant, director of the pilgrimage today, adds: ‘In the context of a world that’s very much dependent on fact and scientific evidence, we arrive at a moment where once all those medical reasons and facts are put into place, no other reason can be given for this man to have experienced this miraculous cure.

‘It means we must question again that gift of the presence and the power of God in our lives, and for the Catholic community in Liverpool it’s an opportunity for us to be renewed and to be able to tell the wonderful story of what God does in our lives through the specific case of Jack Traynor.’