Miracle Decree in the Cause of Mariano De La Mata Aparicio (April 28, 2006)

On April 28, 2006, the official Holy See record documents an authorized miracle decree concerning a miracle attributed to the intercession of Mariano De La Mata Aparicio. It records Venerabile Servo di Dio as the canonical-status wording used at the time. The archive describes the intercessor as “Sacerdote professo dell’Ordine di Sant’Agostino.”^[1]

This record establishes an authorized miracle decree in the cause. It does not by itself record the later celebration of beatification, and the act date must not be silently replaced with the date of a later ceremony. The cited Holy See bulletin or annual Dicastery page is the controlling source for the act catalogued here.^[1][2]

Because the intercessor was recorded as Venerable Servant of God on that date, the decree belongs to the cause's preparation for beatification; it is not itself the later beatification ceremony. A miracle decree concerns a particular alleged divine intervention attributed to the candidate's intercession; it is distinct from the decree on heroic virtues or martyrdom and from the pope's final liturgical act of beatification or canonization.^[1][3]

In the canonical process, witnesses, documents, and any medical evidence are gathered and examined through distinct competences before the theological and cardinalatial stages reach the pope. The papal authorization to promulgate the decree is a formal positive conclusion within the cause, while the constitution governing causes reserves beatification and canonization themselves to the Roman Pontiff.^[2][3]

The public annual archive does not name a cure beneficiary, diagnosis, treatment, or cure date for this record. Those fields therefore remain unstated instead of being borrowed from an unverified devotional retelling or treating a missing clinical narrative as though no investigation occurred. Fuller evidence belongs only when a competent source for this particular cause supplies it.^[1][2]

A decree concerning a miracle is an authoritative judgment about a contingent event in a canonization cause; it is not a new dogma and does not add a private message to the Deposit of Faith. Miracles are signs of God's action. When one is attributed to a holy person's intercession, the intercessor remains a creature whose prayer depends wholly upon Christ's unique mediation and divine power.^[3][4]