Delizia Cirolli was twelve years old when, in early 1976, doctors at the University of Catania in Sicily diagnosed her with metastatic Ewing's sarcoma of the right knee — a malignancy of the bone with an essentially zero survival rate at the time without amputation, and with metastases already in the lung. Her parents refused both amputation and further chemotherapy.
Family and parish raised money to send her to Lourdes in August 1976. She bathed, prayed, returned home. The Sicilian doctors expected her death within weeks. Instead, by December 24 the tumour at her knee had visibly resolved; by spring 1977 X-rays showed only normal bone where the sarcoma had been; the lung metastases had also disappeared. She remained well, completed school, married, had children. The cure was examined by the Lourdes Medical Bureau and the International Medical Committee of Lourdes for thirteen years; on June 28, 1989 the Bishop of Catania formally recognised it as the 65th miraculous Lourdes cure.