Sailor is the first Briton to be recognized as being cured by a MIRACLE at Lourdes after his epilepsy and paralyzed arm were treated “outside and above the forces of nature”.

A First World War sailor has been formally recognized as the first Briton to be miraculously cured at Lourdes, the Catholic holy site.

Liverpool sailor John Traynor suffered paralysis, epilepsy and paraplegia following severe trauma suffered during the First World War.

Traynor, born in 1883, served in the merchant navy before joining the Royal Navy in the First World War.

Just three months after the war began, he was wounded in Bruges in October 1914 and was later hit by machine-gun fire during the Gallipoli campaign in Turkey.

These horrific injuries left him suffering from epilepsy and his right arm paralyzed. A botched operation in 1920 worsened his condition and he became partially paralyzed from the legs down.

Having suffered for years under its conditions, he traveled to Lourdes, in southwestern France, in the hope of a cure.

The town became a sacred place for the Catholic faith after the Virgin Mary was reportedly seen in visions by a peasant woman named Bernadette Soubirous, who asked her to build a chapel and dig in the Pyrenees to release a spring.

This spring became a pilgrimage site for the sick to pray and drink from the spring in the hope that their condition would be cured.

Traynor is reported to have bathed in the waters nine times during his pilgrimage.

It is claimed that he was “instantly and dramatically” cured of his conditions during his journey.

The Most Reverend Malcolm McMahon, Archbishop of Liverpool, told worshipers that Traynor’s healing was “absolutely outside and above the forces of nature.”

McMahon said Traynor’s healing was never officially claimed by the Catholic church.

“There was thought to be insufficient contemporary evidence to establish that John Traynor’s cure could neither be attributed to medical interventions nor explained by medical science,” he said.

But after a review of the records preserved in the Lourdes archives, a reference to Traynor’s healing was found in a 1926 report in the sanctuary diary written by Dr. August Vallet, then president of the Office of Medical Observations of Lourdes.

Vallet declared that “the process of this prodigious healing is absolutely outside and above the forces of nature.”

As a result, McMahon said: “Given the weight of the medical evidence, the testimony of John Traynor’s faith and his devotion to Our Blessed Lady, it is with great joy that I declare that the healing of John Traynor, from multiple serious medical conditions, must be be recognized as a miracle wrought by the power of God through the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes.’

After Traynor returned to Liverpool, he started a coal delivery business, which he ran until his death in 1943.

While an estimated 200 million people have visited Lourdes since 1860, the Catholic Church has officially recognized only 69 healings.

The official recognition process is rigorous.

Of the approximately 35 claims filed each year with the Lourdes Medical Office, the body charged with investigating miracles at Lourdes, almost all are dismissed.

Three to five are investigated further, and the Office examines the patients, case notes and evidence.

If a case is substantiated, it is reported to the International Medical Bureau of Lourdes (ILMB), a panel of 20 experts who examine the case and confirm whether the healing is medically unexplainable.

Although the ILMB cannot say whether a healing was a miracle, it refers decisions to the bishop of the diocese where the healed person lives, who consults with the Vatican and makes a decision on whether the healing is a miracle.