The priest at Traverso's diocese of Casale Monferrato officially recognised it as a miracle at a mass Thursday, the Sanctuary administering the shrine said.

The incident happened in July 1965, when the nun, Luigina Traverso, started walking during a visit to the holy site. Born in 1934, the nun had been wheelchair-bound despite several operations for lumbar sciatica.

She "was overwhelmed by a sensation of warmth and well-being and warm sensation and felt the sudden impulse to get up," said the Catholic Silesian Sisters order, the Filles de Marie-Auxiliatrice.

"She started moving her paralyzed limbs," the order said.

More than 5,000 miraculous cures have been documented but the Catholic church has so far validated a mere 67. Traverso's case was yet to be officially recognised by the church.

The shrine at Lourdes is a destination for sick pilgrims many of whom are reported to be miraculously cured of their ailments after drinking the water there.

On 11 February 1858, a 14-year old peasant girl called Bernadette Soubirous claimed to have experienced a series of apparitions of a girl dressed in white and with a blue belt around her waist, who eventually introduced herself as the Immaculate Conception, a name by which the Virgin Mary was known, at a grotto in Lourdes.