The article by Malcolm Moore, reporting from Rome, says that Nicola Grippo, 76, 'a tailor from Salerno, southern Italy [Images], got cancer three years ago. Until a few months ago, his body was riddled with tumors, and his doctors told him he would die. However, he made a dramatic recovery after a vision of John Paul II apparently came to his wife, Elisabeth.'

"One night, the pope appeared to her in a dream, holding a small child in his hand and walking on a road of white cobblestones," he told La Stampa newspaper.

"The doctors came to me and asked if I was a believer, if I had prayed to a saint. So my wife told them about her dream. They told me that my lungs were clear of all traces of cancer and that they could not claim credit for the cure," Grippo added.

This is being cited by a senior Vatican prelate, Archbishop Gerardo Pierro, as the second miracle that John Paul II --who died in April last year-- needs to be canonised. "It was a prodigious intervention, a miracle of the first order," he was quoted as saying.

"There is medical proof otherwise I wouldn't have dared bring up the case. The recovery has lasted - a year and a half later, the inexplicable remains confirmed," Archbishop Pierro told the Il Mattino newspaper Thursday.

'The late pope has been put on the so-called "fast-track" to sainthood by his successor, Benedict XVI, and Vatican theologians are currently verifying the evidence in his favor, the Telegraph report said.

'However, two miracles are required, and they must be examined by several Vatican councils and consultants before being given the seal of approval by Pope Benedict,' the report said. The late pope's first miracle involved a French nun apparently cured of Parkinson's disease, it added.