The Massachusetts deacon who was miraculously healed by the intercession of John Henry Newman is talking about the event that has lead to the late Cardinal’s beatification.

Take a look:

A day after Pope Benedict XVI ruled that John “Jack” Sullivan’s recovery had been a miracle, Sullivan, a resident of Marshfield, shared his story with inmates at the Plymouth County jail.

“God doesn’t rise up the mighty. He lifts up the lowly,” Sullivan said.

Pope Benedict’s decision places Cardinal John Henry Newman, a 19th-century theologian and Anglican convert, a step away from sainthood.

Friday’s announcement surprised Sullivan because he wasn’t expecting the the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, the committee of cardinals that reviews the evidence, to discuss the case until later this summer.

Sullivan was studying to become a deacon – a lay minister in the Catholic Church – when crippling pain in his spine interrupted his studies in 2000. He prayed to Cardinal Newman after seeing a program about the cardinal on the Eternal Word Television Network.

Sullivan said he was not seeking to be cured; he just wanted to be able to complete his studies.

The pain went away, then returned almost a year later. Surgery didn’t help, and once again Sullivan turned to Cardinal Newman.

He soon felt “a tremendous warmth and tingling” and recovered in four days, Sullivan said.

“For a miracle to happen, all the laws of nature must stop and something supernatural has to happen,” Sullivan said, who was ordained as a deacon in 2002. The 70-year-old now serves at St. Thecla’s Church in Pembroke.

Sullivan calls his recovery “a gift – an unmerited gift.”

But as he told the inmates during Communion services on Saturday, it is also a sign.

“As difficult as things are and as lowly as we feel sometimes, there is a reality that gives us hope and something to cling to,” he said.

Later this year, Sullivan plans to make his first visit to Cardinal Newman’s former home, at the Birmingham Oratory in England, to take part in observances celebrating Newman’s beatification. Arrangements have been made for him to stay in the cardinal’s old room.

A nice write-up marred by one glaring inaccuracy: the description of a deacon as “a lay minister in the Catholic Church.”

UPDATE: I dropped an e-mail to the reporter who wrote the story, noting his error. He wrote back:

Yours is the second e-mail I’ve had on the subject. I wanted to explain to non-Catholics the role of deacon in the Catholic Church, and how its far from an honorary title. Since I didn’t have a paragraph or two to explain it, I used the word lay to grossly oversimplify it. I expected one word to do too much work. It wasn’t meant as a slight in any way.

It’s good to know I have readers in Brooklyn other than my friends who work for Newsday.

Thanks for writing. An while I know deacons cannot hear confessions, I do expect to avoid this sin in the future.

Fred Hanson

Thanks, Fred! All is forgiven 🙂