Brasilia, Brazil - As her 8-year-old son, Enzzo, played on the balcony of her apartment, Sandra Grossi de Almeida held up an X-ray picture that she said proved that his very existence was a miracle.
The chemist pointed to a black wedge that she said was a wall of tissue dividing her uterus, a malformation that should have made it impossible for her to carry a baby for more than four months. Yet Enzzo grew for seven months in a space about half the size of a normal uterus until he was delivered by caesarean section.
Grossi de Almeida attributes the miracle of her son's birth to a paper ''pill'' inscribed with a prayer that she ate during her pregnancy. The Vatican agrees, pronouncing Enzzo one of the two miracles needed to declare the creator of the pills, an 18th century Franciscan monk named Antonio de Sant'Anna Galvao, a saint.
The May 11 canonization of Galvao, Brazil's first native-born saint, will be the centerpiece event when Pope Benedict XVI visits Brazil next month. Many say it will also be a watershed in the Roman Catholic Church's battle to fight the loss of adherents to fast-growing Pentecostal churches.
Galvao's pills reportedly have cured thousands of Brazilians of everything from depression to hepatitis. His elevation to sainthood will be a long-delayed recognition of what many believe is an ongoing miracle that has saved -- or bettered -- lives for more than two centuries.
Galvao's pills contain this prayer: ``After the birth, the Virgin remained intact / Mother of God, intercede on our behalf.''
The pills are assembled in five locations around Sao Paulo state, including Galvao's hometown of Guaratingueta, where women gather for that purpose every afternoon in a room above the local cathedral. They are also made by cloistered nuns at the Convent of Light in Sao Paulo, where Galvao died in 1832 at age 83.
`VEHICLE OF FAITH'
Believers swallow three seed-size pills over nine days, during which they recite the prayer printed on the paper.
''It's a vehicle of faith,'' said Grossi de Almeida, who miscarried twice, including the loss of twins, before Enzzo was born. ``You take the pills, and you believe in them, you believe they will make you better, and you become stronger in your faith. You know there's a God that helps you.''
The canonization will cap more than two decades of advocacy by nun Celia Cadorin and other Brazilian church officials who have trumpeted Galvao's story.
The church requires saints to have performed two miracles, and the process of proving them, always after the saint's death, can take centuries. Special cases, such as the ongoing beatification of Pope John Paul II, can be expedited.
The Vatican confirmed the monk's first miracle in 1998 -- the case of 4-year-old Daniela Cristina da Silva, who reportedly was cured of crippling hepatitis in 1990 after eating one of the monk's pills.
The monk's second proven miracle -- Grossi de Almeida's successful pregnancy -- was declared last December, clearing his path to sainthood.
Cadorin said she picked the two cases out of nearly 24,000 miracles attributed to the monk because they were the best documented and most inexplicable.
''It was a very scientific process,'' Cadorin said. ``We had to interview witnesses, talk to doctors and scientists, and document everything. You have to really prove that, scientifically, the events were impossible.''
The church sent Grossi de Almeida to have sonographic images made of her uterus to confirm that it was divided in half. Shown an X-ray image of the uterus by a McClatchy reporter, a Brazilian obstetrician said the 37-year-old woman would have been unable to carry a fetus past the fourth month of pregnancy.
Cadorin sent Da Silva for tests of her blood, urine and feces as well as sonographic imaging to confirm that she had recovered from advanced hepatitis A.
''There was no medical cure for Daniela in her condition,'' said the girl's mother, Jacira Francisco.
Skeptics of religion, however, have questioned the process's science.
''Every time someone gets healed and they don't know why, they say it must be God,'' said Daniel Sottomaior, the vice president of the Round Earth Society, a group of Brazilian scholars who cast a skeptical eye on such phenomena.
``They change the name from ignorance to God. Why not say it was the big alien or the unicorn or the leprechaun?''
''This whole emphasis on magic and practical remedies for everyday problems is a very Brazilian approach to religion,'' sociologist and religion expert Lisias Nogueira Negrao said. ``In a country where a great part of people live in poverty, they look for this dimension of magic that can help them just survive. They're less worried about big issues such as morality.''
CHURCH'S FUTURE
The main question for many Catholics is whether the canonization can revive a church that has lost millions of people to the country's growing Pentecostal congregations. While 125 million Brazilians identified themselves as Catholic in a 2000 census, Brazil became the world's biggest Pentecostal country last year.
Nonetheless, devotion to Galvao is surging before the pope's visit, and tens of thousands of his pills are being hand-made and distributed every day.
At the Convent of Light, dozens of faithful show up every day seeking divine help.
''Sometimes, they've been all we've had when there wasn't any money for medicines,'' said Maria Cicera da Silva, 54, who was picking up pills for a cousin. ``Faith can do a lot, and I have a lot of faith.''