Spiritual healing: Miracle or myth?

A friend from her church recommended the Charismatic Renewal healing service in Glasgow, less than an hour's drive from her home. "It might as well have been the Himalayas," she explains. "I was so weak I wasn't worth a button." Nevertheless, she decided to go. Exhausted and in pain, she says she was "barely hanging on" through the hour-long ceremony before the healing started and she was led to the front.

"The healer came to me, made the sign of a cross on my head and said, Be healed in the name of Jesus of Nazareth.' I fell straight backwards. My husband was panicking, saying, What's happening? Help us! What's happening to my wife?' "I was euphoric. But as I was lying there I felt this terrible pain that seemed to go through my tummy button, into my back and out through the floor. Then I didn't have any pain any more. I felt completely different."

At her next hospital appointment she pleaded with surgeons to take another scan. When they finally relented, she claims they found that the cancerous tumours had shrunk away. They were delighted that the chemotherapy had finally worked. "But I truly believe I was healed at that service," says Anne.

As she speaks, her voice trembles with emotion. To many minds faith healing is a tricky business, and most scientists would dismiss such stories as the realm of cranks and crackpots. It is for this reason that Anne prefers to be identified only by her first name.

But whatever you make of her extraordinaryaccount,itisfarfromunique.A reminder of the still persuasive pull of the miracle cure came in March when Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, 46, a member of the Congregation of Little Sisters of Catholic Motherhood, held a news conference in Aix-en-Provence to tell the world that the spirit of John Paul II had cured her of Parkinson's disease.

Her claim, which made front page news across the globe, looks likely to be key to the canonisation of John Paul II, allowing him to join a growing army of modern-day saints.

Faith healing is said to have begun before the earliest recorded history and there is evidence it was practised in almost all ancient civilisations. In the West, Christianity was founded on the principles of faith and healing - the New Testament gospels are packed with stories of the healing powers of Jesus.

But today the words are more likely to conjure up US evangelists, praying on the vulnerable and pocketing the spoils. They bring to mind Benny Hinn, the flamboyant showman who, with his sharp suits and Miracle Crusades, attracts flocks totalling hundreds of thousands, who dig deep to keep him in lavish style.

In contemporary Britain, the options for those seeking faith healing have never been more plentiful - from the rapidly expanding Pentecostal churches, fed in part by the growing Afro-Caribbean community, to the supernatural energies of the spiritualist churches, or the networks of healing prayer groups across the country.

Though church attendance has fallen, it seems we are more open-minded than ever before. A recent study suggested that 72% of Scots would prefer to see a "spiritual healer" than wait on a list for NHS treatment.

AtStPatrick'sCatholicchurchin Edinburgh, where in 2003 the remains of thevenerableMargaretSinclair-a compassionate factory worker-turned-nun who died in 1925 - were reburied after exhumation from the city's Mount Vernon cemetery, Father Ed Hone claims many people are seeking something to believe in.

"It's one of those ironies that when you stop believing in religion you don't believe in nothing," he smiles. "Instead you are more likely to believe in anything." And, he adds, that might be angels, crystals or even faith healing.

Here, people place their faith in Margaret - known as Sister Mary Francis of the Five Wounds - who has been said to have healing powers. Sir Jimmy Savile's mother insisted that only her prayers to Margaret saved her then two-year-old son who was so ill the doctor had already issued the death certificate.

At the shrine, the faithful light candles, place flowers and leave prayers, typed or handwritten,inasimplewoodenbox marked for her attention.

Sir Jimmy remains a loyal visitor his signature offering thanks is a bold flourish in the guest book. Others from all walks of life come here - a student requesting prayers for a dying grandmother, the family of an eight-year-old girl with a brain tumour. "Blessed Margaret, please pray for a young husband that a bone marrow transplant will besuccessful,"readsonepetition,while another in childish script is achingly simple: "Please pray for my papa who is very sick."

Thoughmanyclaimtheyfindgreat comfortandpeaceinofferingthese prayers, so far Ms Sinclair, who the church hopes will be granted sainthood, has not been particularly forthcoming.

"Even the priests wonder if it is true or not,"admitsHone."Ihaveprayedfor people who are desperately ill who have not recovered." He laughs ruefully. "I've threatened Margaret that if she doesn't cure someone soon I'm going to take her back to Mount Vernon."

At the Zionist Prayer Center International in Kirkcaldy, Pastor Joe Nwokoye does not consider miracles in short supply. The first is that the Nigerian preacher endedupinthisnondescriptFifetownatall.In1983he answered God's call to Scotland, a far-away country where he knew no-one. He chose Kirkcaldy at random and three years later God rewarded him with his own centre, where we have agreed to meet.

Were it not for the sound of the Congo drums spilling like sunshine into the dusk, I might have walkedpastthe doorway, next to an office supplies shop. At the top of a dingy stairway, where the main hall is painted a dirty pink, the simple words "the Lord is our God" arc above the stage where Pastor Joe preaches.

At the front, dressed in a tracksuit and lost in prayer, is Marvin Andrews, the former Rangers footballer, who last August returnedtoRaithRovers,theclubthat brought him to Scotland from Trinidad in 1997, when he was just 22.

It was in these less than salubrious surroundings that the footballer claims to have been healed of a groin injury, for which doctors said he needed surgery. "In Trinidad my grandmother always taught me to pray every day, but I didn't understand about healing until I came here and Joe explained the scriptures to me," he says.

He can't pinpoint the exact moment the pain left him, but he knows it was God's work. In turn he now performs healing services at the church, under the guidance of the pastor. "God has given us all the authority to heal," he explains. The truth, according to Andrews, is very simple. You just have to believe.

"So many people think the Bible is an old story book," he says. "But the God who raised Lazarus is still the same today. The people who witness miracles know it can happen. If you believe with all your heart, you don't need to be suffering or in pain."

AttheElimPentecostalchurchin Glasgow, Phillip Anderson, the assistant pastor, concedes: "Sometimes people want something to happen so much that they can convince themselves." But he says he has also witnessed healings where "intelligent people, the type who wouldn't get carried away by emotions", have been healed.

Among them is the church electrician, who fell on to concrete and fractured his skull. The doctors said at best he would be severely brain damaged. His wife held a round-the-clock prayer virgil and he pulled through unscathed.

Faith is nurtured, too, at a growing number of prayer groups across the country. The website of the Healing Rooms, an interfaith network with groups from Troon to Orkney, ispackedwithtestimoniesfromthose cured of back-ache, ME or depression.

Sometimes, though, faith can be tested. MikeHarris,anEnglishevangelical preacher who carried out a healing service in Glasgow in February, claims to have witnessed hundreds of healing miracles. "But recently a young lady of 26, from our church, died of cancer," he says. He sounds lost. "We had been praying for 10 months and she truly believed, but she died. It's been hard to work through, to realise I don't have the answers."

Many researchers are also trying to find those answers. Yet according to a report by esteemed medical journal The Cochrane ReviewlastNovember,studiesonthe power of prayer have been for the most part inconclusive. In the majority of 10 studies, involvingmorethan7000participants, prayerwasfoundtomakenoreal difference.

Professor Peter Fenwick, of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, claimsthatanemotionalrelationship between prayer and prayee makes healing more effective. He insists: "There are real effects at work that we've yet to explain."

So what is going on here? Professor EdzardErnst,chairincomplementary medicine at Exeter University, believes we are witnessing the power of the placebo effect. Last year he carried out a study in which 110 chronic pain patients agreed to undergo sessions with healers. They didn't know that half of the healers were actors. "The results were amazing," says Ernst. "Peoplepracticallyabandonedtheir wheelchairs." Strikingly, he noted no difference between the results achieved by the healers and the actors.

Some doctors believe the power of the placeboeffectisatworstharmless. Professor Jonathan Waxman, an oncologist at Imperial College London, said: "I've seen my patients look and feel better as a result. Who cares how it works, as long as it does?" Professor Ernst disagrees. "There might no physical harm," he says. "But vulnerable people are being exploited."

DrSusanBlackmore,aformerparapsychologist turned freelance writer and broadcaster,alsothinkstherearerealdangers. "They are the minority, but some irresponsible healers out there do encourage people to throw away their medicines," she says. "People have died as a result.

"Anotherunderlyingproblemisthe message that goes out that if you have a disease and you don't get better you are in some ways inadequate; if you were truly spiritual, you would be able to throw off the disease. I think that's one of the nastiest aspects of faith healing."

But she also admits that for the sick and dying, healers can offer comfort. "I know therearesomefaithhealerswhoare wonderfully kind and charismatic and can help people cope with death," she says. "That can only be positive."

And even for those who claim to have been cured, death is at some point inevitable.

Three years after Anne's healing, a scan showed cancer had returned to her liver. It might have proved the doubters right, but she didn't give up. When the doctors were unwilling to operate, she prayed that they would. When they were persuaded to try, friends and fellow Christians prayed that it would be a success.

It was. The doctors say Anne was extra-ordinarily lucky. She agrees, but for different reasons - without the power of prayer she is convinced she wouldn't be alive today. Last month, at her five-year check-up, she was given the all-clear. She and her husband both wept a little, then drove home to share the good news with family and friends.

"I've seen my son get married, my grandchild born, celebrated my 53rd birthday," she says. "I believe in Jesus Christ and I believe in miracles. But I think sometimes you have to have your back against the wall before you're open to the possibility."

She laughs in delight because she has survived what everyone said she would surely die of. And whether it was her faith or modern medicine that saved her, there seems little doubt that for her, a miracle has been performed.