The Irish Times

This is a long wait for the requisite miracle from a man who died in 1890. "I had to tell [ Pope] John Paul that the English are not very good at miracles," explained Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor. "It's not that we are not pious, but the English tend to think of God as a gentleman who should not be bullied." As it happens, the Vatican didn't need the Boston miracle, because the Cardinal was miraculously writing to this very newspaper, on the very same day, in a letter infused with tractarian piety.