Rather, Marcilio Haddad Andrino told a Vatican press conference today he is just one example of God's ample mercy and love.
"The merciful Lord looks at us all without distinction," Andrino said. "Maybe it was me this time but maybe tomorrow it will be someone else. The merciful mother looks after everyone. I don't feel special."
Pope Francis in December decreed that Andrino's cure was a miracle after Vatican doctors and theologians determined that it was medically inexplicable, instantaneous, lasting and due to the intercession of Mother Teresa, who died in 1997. It was the final step needed to canonise the nun who cared for the poorest of the poor.
Andrino's wife, Fermanda Nascimento Rocha, recalled that she and her family began fervently praying for Mother Teresa's intercession after receiving a relic of the nun on September 5, 2008, after Andrino began suffering from the effects of a viral brain infection.
More From This Section
By December of that year, despite powerful antibiotics, the brain abscesses and fluid had built up so much that Andrino was suffering debilitating headaches. According to the official story, doctors decided the only chance was to operate, but on the day surgery was scheduled, they couldn't intubate him.
She said she went to her mother's home and prayed "with all the strength I had."
When the surgeon returned to Andrino's room, he was awake, pain-free and asymptomatic, according to the priest spearheading Mother Teresa's sainthood cause, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk.
He calls his two children "the extension of that miracle."
"We are very grateful to Mother Teresa for our family," he said.