Until this week, the term "Miracle of Chile" generally referred to the disputed economic transformation of Chile from the 1980s onwards, attributed by Milton Friedman to monetarism and by Amartya Sen to the rejection of Friedman-style economic liberalism. See Wikipedia.
Yesterday's dramatic rescue of 33 Chilean miners from a mining accident in San Jose has been popularly described as a miracle [Channel4 News, Daily Telegraph, Get Religion, Washington Post]. The Vatican had sent rosaries to the trapped miners, and will doubtless wish to use this miracle in justifying some future beatification or canonization procedure - perhaps even that of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI himself.
In Don't Waste A Crisis, I discussed the cliché "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste." We might also think that a miracle is a terrible thing to waste: see my earlier post on The Purpose of Miracles. I don't think we've heard the last of those rosaries.
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