Testimony of Dr. Manuel Nevado

Dr. Manuel Nevado Rey

"I live in Almendralejo, in the province of Badajoz. For many years I have worked in a small hospital which I myself started and which is run by the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Mercy, at other Social Security Health Centers, and in private practice. At present my main work is at the Medical Care Center in Zafra, where I carry out many surgical operations.

Towards the beginning of November 1992 I had to go to the Ministry of Agriculture to deal with some questions of farming. While we were trying to find the person we had an appointment with, we providentially met Luis Eugenio Bernardo Carrascal, an agronomic engineer who works at the Ministry. He kindly looked after us while we waited for the person we were meant to see.

While we were talking about various matters related to the Ministry, Luis Eugenio noticed my hands, and asked me what had happened to them. I explained briefly to him that I had advanced chronic radiodermatitis, and that it was an incurable disease. He gave me a prayer-card of Blessed Josemaria Escriva and recommended that I seek his intercession.

I did so straight away. A few days later, I went to Vienna to attend a medical conference. In Vienna I was very impressed to find prayer-cards of Blessed Josemaria in all the churches I visited. This made me invoke his intercession more often, as I had been recommended to do. I prayed in my own words, commending myself to his intercession, without sticking to the words on the prayer-card. But I did also use the prayer on the prayer-card sometimes.

As I have mentioned, I had suffered from chronic radiodermatitis for many years. I think I already had the first symptoms, such as loss of hair and erythema on the back of the left hand, in 1962 when I got married. Since then the condition grew worse, because for many years I had to operate on bone fractures using poor quality radio-diagnostic equipment with very limited protection.

In November 1992, when I went to the Ministry of Agriculture, the fingers of both hands were very badly affected. On the left hand it was the index, middle and ring fingers, and on the right hand mainly the index and middle fingers. In particular I had hyperkeratotic plaques and ulcers of different sizes on those three fingers of my left hand. Some of them measured up to 2 centimeters in diameter at the widest point. There were more on the back of my left hand and on the proximal phalanxes and the back of my right hand.

The condition of my hands made them quite painful and I had to stop operating. Not many people noticed them because I did my best to keep them covered. No doctor suggested I should get treatment, as it is well known that nothing can be done for radiodermatitis. Some told me to use Vaseline or lanolin to soothe the skin, which I was already doing.

From the day I was given the prayer-card, from the moment I placed myself under the intercession of Blessed Josemaria, my hands began to improve and, after approximately a fortnight, all the damage caused by the disease disappeared and my hands were perfectly healed, as they are now.

It is evident that this cure cannot be due to natural causes. I have already said that there is no cure for radiodermatitis, and that I did not use any medication. It had crossed my mind to ask a dermatologist to do a skin transplant to try closing the ulcers, but I never actually got round to it. Although I tried to hide my hands, there are many people who can testify as to the state they were in. Among others, there is obviously my wife, one of my sons who is a doctor specializing in anatomic pathology, and two other doctors who are dermatologists who I had sometimes asked to have a look at my hands. These were Isidro Parra and Ginés Sánchez.

I have put down here exactly how my radiodermatitis was cured. I was very much afraid that a metastasis might develop, which would have left me with no possible hope of recovery. But that did not happen. Quite simply, the radiodermatitis has been cured, and I can only attribute it to the intercession of Blessed Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer.

Since my recovery I have gone back to work normally and I am again doing general surgery."

Almendralejo, 30 June 1993