The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool has officially declared the healing of a paraplegic sailor as a miracle.

John (Jack) Traynor from Liverpool returned home walking after being cured of epilepsy, paralysis of the right arm, and paraplegia during a pilgrimage to Lourdes in 1923.

Archbishop Malcolm McMahon announced the recognition during a Mass at Liverpool's Metropolitan Cathedral on Sunday. It marks the 71st miracle officially recognised at Lourdes and the first involving someone from England.

Traynor was originally injured during his service with the Royal Naval Reserve forces in the 1915 Gallipoli landings, after a bullet severed nerves in his arm, leaving him paralysed.

Following an unsuccessful attempt to validate the cure in 1993, a review of Taynor’s file was requested in 2023, during the centenary pilgrimage of the Archdiocese of Liverpool to Lourdes.

The investigation unearthed a 1926 report by Dr Vallet, a former Acting President of the Lourdes Office of Medical Observations, documenting that Dr Vallet and three other doctors had examined Traynor before and after his cure. It concluded that "the process of this prodigious healing is absolutely outside and above the forces of nature”.

In his statement, Archbishop McMahon said: “Given the weight of medical evidence, the testimony to the faith of John Traynor, and his devotion to Our Blessed Lady, it is with great joy that I declare that the cure of John Traynor, from multiple serious medical conditions, is to be recognised as a miracle wrought by the power of God through the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes.”

The archbishop also hoped for a "fitting celebration" at Liverpool's Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King next year to mark “this significant moment in the history of our archdiocese".