N.Y. Priest Claims Power of Prayer Helped Him Walk

A priest from Brooklyn, New York is claiming he has been able to walk again after being paralyzed thanks to the power of prayer.

Father John Murray of Brooklyn, New York was told by doctors four years ago that after suffering a fall, he would never walk again due to damage to his spinal cord.

After suffering his injury on a New Jersey boardwalk in 2010, Murray tells NBC News that doctors told him: "'You should expect no voluntary movement.'"

"That's a quote. 'No voluntary movement for the rest of your life,'" the priest added.

After years of praying, however, Murray argues that it was God who helped him walk again a year and a half ago.

"I think it's a result of prayer," the priest told NBC News in a recent interview. "Other people's prayers and my prayers, without a doubt."

Dr. Harold Koenig, head of Duke University's Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health, told WHDH-TV in a recent interview that many of those in the medical profession do not want to make a connection between spirituality and health.

"Doctors are still reluctant. They've been pretty much trained to keep these areas separate," Koenig told the media outlet.

Others have also sworn to the healing power of prayer. A study conducted by Thomas Jefferson Hospital and Medical College in Pennsylvania found that there is a connection between prayer or meditation and the healing power of the brain.

"When we look at how the brain works, it looks like the brain is very easily able to engage in religious and spiritual practices. [...] It only makes sense if God is up there and we are down here that we would have a brain that is capable of communicating to God, praying to God, doing the things that God needs us to do," Dr. Andrew Newberg, director of research at Thomas Jefferson Hospital and Medical College in Pennsylvania, told WLTX-19 in an interview earlier this year.