When Arthur Boyle, one time president of Cargo Worldwide in Boston, was told there were three nodules in his lung, it came with a sense of doom. Boyle, 46 and the father of 13 children, already had undergone major surgery for cancer of the kidney.

That was in December of 1999. The nodules were found in his right lung about eight months later. With kidney cancer, that’s often where it spreads, along with the brain. And all the danger signals were there: Boyle was weak, was losing his memory, and his skin felt like it was afire. Surgery was set for last September 14. A tremendous sense of doom set on the normally upbeat, athletic businessman. hen his brother-in-law, Kevin Gill, was playing golf when a mutual friends asked how Boyle was doing and suggested a trip the Medjugorje, the village in Bosnia-Hercegovina where the Virgin Mary has been appearing since June 24, 1981 and where many healings have been reported. Within a week the three men were on the way to the remote village.

It was just ten days before the scheduled surgery. “While we were over there all kinds of things happened,” Boyle told Spirit Daily. “Our guide, Zeljka, was supposed to set us up with Vicka [Ivankovic, one of the six seers], but she said, well, I have some bad news for you. Vicka’s gone. She went to Rome to visit a sick nun.”

It was bad news because the seer is known to have a gift of healing. The men went to Mass the next morning, came out of church, and went to buy some religious articles for their families. “We stopped at a jewelry store and we were shopping in there for at least 45 minutes,” says Boyle, who knew that as unusual. “Guys like us go in, buy something, and leave, so something was keeping us there. I was staring down at these crosses. I had just bought all my daughters, five of them, these rosary-bead bracelets and I have eight boys and I was going to buy them all gold crosses and chains and I’m saying, `Man, this is going to cost me a fortune.’ So I’m looking at it and I say, “You know, if I can waste the money I spend on sports, hockey sticks, equipment, I can spend it on Jesus.’

“The minute I said that there was this commotion to my left and standing right to my left was Vicka. Zeljka got excited and explained to Vicka what my situation was and she prayed over me right then and there. Apparently her plane was cancelled the night before and she was stopping at this particular jewelry store to buy a rosary ring for this sick nun and she was on her way to the airport.”

Afterward, the men did what most pilgrims there do: visited the hill of the first apparitions, climbed a mountain that has a cross at the top, and took pictures. Photographs afterwards showed symbols and inexplicable forms of the Blessed Mother and we’ll be trying to bring those to you shortly. “We had Rosary beads turn to gold, we saw the sun spinning,” says Boyle, referring to the common phenomenon there of sun miracles [see story earlier this week].

After attending confession there, the depression — the gloom — left and Boyle began receiving his healing (a healing that may actually have originated months before when he was prayed over by a Massachusetts priest named Ed McDonough, who, as it happens, was also visiting Medjugorje).

Boyle knew something was going on because of a strange sensation, a pain, in his lung. “I called up my wife — I had a satellite phone — and I said, `Get on the phone with the oncologist and arrange for another C-T scan, because something’s going on. I don’t know if it’s worse or better or what. But before I go in for surgery, we have to have another scan.’

“She called up the oncologist and the oncologist’s secretary called back and said, `We know you want the doctor to give you a C-T scan, but listen, you have cancer, it’s not like it’s just going to disappear or anything, and we’re going to go right ahead and have the surgery done. We’re not going to give you another C-T scan.’

At that point Boyle changed oncologists, was given another C-T scan on September 12 — two days after returning from Medjugorje — and the scan showed that the large nodule they were most concerned with had “completely disappeared.” Meanwhile the other two were very small and insignificant and all they would have to do was watch them. “I went to meet the oncologist,” says Boyle. “I hadn’t met him before. He said, `We’re going to cancel the surgery’ — and in his office was a picture of Medjugorje on the wall.”

[According to the Boston Globe, when he was asked if Boyle could have been miraculously healed while in Bosnia, his oncologist replied, “I don’t have a problem with that.”]

[resources: Spirit Daily pilgrimage to Medjugorje and books about Medjugorje]