IF God had a reason for choosing Windale grandmother Kathleen Evans as the final miracle woman behind Australia's first saint, Blessed Mother Mary MacKillop, he hasn't told the miracle woman herself.
The reformed smoker who was 49 and had two months to live when her lung and brain cancer disappeared in 1993 after prayers to Mother Mary had no answer to the question "Why you?" at a media conference yesterday.
"When I finally do get upstairs [to heaven] that'll be the first question I'll ask, then you'll have to find me to find out," she said.
A buoyant Mrs Evans, mother of five, grandmother of 20 and great grandmother of two, spoke to the media for the first time after Pope Benedict XVI confirmed her cancer "cure" was considered a miracle by the Church, brought about because of prayers to Mother Mary.
The Windale grandmother's dramatic recovery without any medical treatment was the second miracle required so that Mother Mary can be canonised as a saint as early as next month.
Mrs Evans's husband of 31 years, Barry, their daughter Annette and son Luke were tearful as Mrs Evans recalled how doctors gave her no hope of surviving aggressive lung cancer that quickly spread to her glands and brain in 1993.
Told that chemotherapy would not help and radiotherapy would give her only a couple of more weeks to live, "I said 'Thanks, but no thanks.' I went back to my doctor and asked him to see me through until the end".
Then "all I had left was prayer".
A friend from the Hunter Valley gave her a picture of Mother Mary with a piece of the nun's clothing attached to the back which she wore on her nightie.
"It never left me," she said.
At the media conference yesterday she laughingly admitted she still kept it with her, attached to her bra.
Mrs Evans said despite being "in a bad way" as prayers were said over her, she felt peaceful and, surprisingly, very happy.
"There was a sense of peace in the house and I was very happy, and I'm not a person to be happy when I'm sick," she said.
She began to feel better and two weeks later, attended a weekend retreat at the Sisters of St Joseph, Lochinvar, where a priest prayed over her to Mother Mary.
It was 10 months after she was told she would die that tests revealed all of her cancer had gone and only scarring remained.
"My response was 'Oh wow. That was wow'," she said.
Kathleen and Barry Evans left Windale four years ago to travel Australia and live at Lightning Ridge to keep their secret until last month's Catholic Church ruling of a miracle was confirmed.
Mrs Evans told the media conference yesterday she had "absolute faith that I'll never get cancer" again.
"I'll die of a heart attack," she said.
Email a friend