Thirteen year old Nicola Pacini, who lived with his family near Florence, Italy, had been confined to a wheelchair for five years with muscular dystrophy when his parents decided to take him to visit the local where Virgin Mary had appeared at small village Medjugorje in december 1991.

In spite of the popularity of Medjugorje as a healing shrine, Nicola did not want to go; he told his parents that he would rather have them save the money that such a trip would cost.
Nicola thought that it would be useless to go and that the pilgrimage would only bring all three of them additional heartache and disappointment.
Nicola argued that he was but one of millions of handicapped people in the world, and he would be but one of thousands of pilgrims who would be crowding around the statue of Mother Mary at Medjugorje praying for a healing. Why would the Queen of Heaven choose him before all the others?
But at last, after much discussion and prayer, Nicola agreed to accompany his parents to the holy place where Mother Mary had appeared wearing a crown of twelve stars.
The bus trip was exhausting, but when the Pacini family arrived at the shrine on December 8, Nicola's mother wasted no time in pushing his wheelchair directly in front of Mary's life-size statue. Perhaps
more to please his parents than to get a miracle, Nicola began to pray.
Then, to his astonishment and his parent's great joy, he felt his paralyzed right hand slowly open.
Encoraged by such a marvelous sign of divine energy, Nicola was eager to return to the shrine the next morning. In his prayers, however, he asked that his healing not be done for his sake alone, but also for that of his parent's.
And them, Nicola simply felt like getting up and walking-for the first time in five years.
It was the strangest feeling, Nicola, said later. It was as if something were moving inside of him, and he had an overwhelming urge to get up and walk. An irresistible force seemed to be lifting him up from the wheelchair.
Although he thought that it was impossible, he found himself standing upright and walking!
After he had taken the first few steps, he called out to his mother and heard her cry of joy,as a miracle had occurred. Mrs.Pacini instinctively rushed to her son's side to help him, but Nicola asked her to leave him alone. He knew that he could walkn on his own.
The Pacini family will always remember how the hundreds of pilgrims who were gathered around the shrine burst into appalause when Nicola kept walking.
The boy's mind was filled with the wonder of it all. Mother Mary had heard his prayers and those of his parents.
When the Pacinis returned to Florence, Dr. Rosella Mengonzi, their physician, was shocked when she saw Nicola standing and walking. Dr.Mengonzi had been certain that Nicola would be forced to spend
his life in a wheelchair. After a thorough examination, Dr. Mengonzi told journalist Silvio Piersanti that somehow Nicola Pacini had completely recovered from a incurable disease in a manner that shw could not medically explain. A healing miracle had been performed. From book : <Miracles of healing: inspirational stories of amazing recovery>
Por Brad Steiger,Sherry Hansen Steiger