METUCHEN, N.J. (RNS) Church officials here are helping oversee a church investigation into whether a nun who’s being considered for sainthood is the cause of a medical miracle.

The probe, the first in the 28-year history of the Diocese of Metuchen,

involves Mother Mary Angeline Teresa McCrory, who died in 1984 at age 91 and was foundress of the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm.

A married couple in New Jersey whose unborn baby was diagnosed with a genetic disorder is claiming that prayers to McCrory helped their child, who was born far healthier than expected, said Mother Mark Louis Randall, superior general of the Carmelite order, based in Germantown, N.Y.

She said another member of the order, who is related to the couple, had suggested they pray to McCrory.

The investigation began Monday (May 18), with a public ceremony attended by several of the order’s sisters and overseen by Metuchen Bishop Paul Bootkoski.

The postulator, or chief church advocate, of McCrory’s cause of sainthood had asked the diocese to oversee the investigation, which is expected to last months and include closed hearings, said Lori Albanese, the diocese’s chancellor.

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints would eventually decide whether a miracle can be attributed to McCrory’s intercession, and give her case to the pope.

McCrory’s order began pushing her cause in 1989, five years after her death.

Citing privacy reasons, church officials would not identify the family making the miracle claim, except to say the parents live in the Metuchen diocese. They also would not say when the child was born.

One issue to be explored is whether the parents prayed to multiple sources. If so, investigators will consider whether an existing saint rather than McCrory could have been responsible.

To be canonized, a person must be credited after death with interceding in two miracles. People credited with interceding with one are “beatified” and given the title “Blessed.” A second miracle is needed for canonization.

McCrory, born in Ireland in 1891, joined an order called the Little Sisters of the Poor in 1910. She later founded the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, in 1929, in New York. That order now has 198 sisters in seven states and Ireland.

The order’s Web site praises McCrory as “a woman of tremendous faith, hope and love,” saying that “(h)er love for the elderly was second only to the love of God.”