The process leading to sainthood for late Polish Pope John Paul II has been accelerated after a medical team confirmed the ex-pontiff’s first miracle, media reports said.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi refused to comment.

Il Giornale daily and i.media, a French agency for religious information, quoted sources close to the case as saying the investigating medical committee had confirmed the miracle.

The committee, led by Patrizio Polisca, Pope Benedict XVI’s personal doctor, have been investigating the claim that French nun Marie Simon-Pierre was miraculously cured of Parkinson’s disease through John Paul II’s intercession.

John Paul II also suffered from Parkinson’s and died aged 84 on April 2, 2005.

The procedure leading up to sainthood usually takes many years, but the medical confirmation of the miracle is an important step towards beatification and eventual canonisation.

The case has also been studied by theologians and will go before the Congregation of the Causes for Saints “mid-January,” according to Andrea Tornielli, Vatican expert for Il Giornale.

In April 2010, the late pontiff’s sainthood dossier appeared to have hit a snag with the suggestion that Simon-Pierre, who worked in a maternity hospital near the southern French town of Aix-en-Provence, may have suffered from a different illness.

But in October, Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski said the process leading to sainthood for the late Polish pope had been accelerated.

“We expressed hope for a continuation of the process and the latest signals show that this process has been recently speeded up,” Mr Komorowski told reporters after talks with Benedict on the 32nd anniversary of John Paul II’s election.