Pope Paul VI is carried through St. Peter's Square in Vatican City on March 29, 1964. Pope Francis has approved a miracle credited to the intercession of Paul VI, moving the former pope a step closer to sainthood. His beatification is set for Oct. 19.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Paul VI, who did much to modernize the Roman Catholic Church but pronounced a ban on artificial contraception which was widely defied by the faithful, has moved a step closer to sainthood with Pope Francis’ official confirmation of a miracle.

The date for the beatification is set for Oct. 19, the Vatican said Saturday, a day after Francis formally certified the miracle said to involve a risky birth in California. Beatification is the last formal step before sainthood.

During his pontificate from 1963 to 1978, Paul made landmark progress in improving Catholics’ relationship with other Christians.

But he disappointed many Catholics who were hoping for liberalization of church teaching on sexuality. After much consultation and, reportedly, personal anguish, Paul VI enshrined the church’s teaching against artificial contraception in the 1968 encyclical “Humanae Vitae” (“of human life”).

A miracle is required for beatification, and traditionally a second for canonization. The Vatican didn’t give details about the miracle.

Italian media have reported that the miracle was that of a boy born healthy in California despite the diagnoses in 2001 of the rupture of the fetal bladder and absence of amniotic liquid. The mother reportedly refused an abortion and prayed for Paul VI’s intercession at the urging of a nun. The baby was born a month prematurely and is now a healthy adolescent, according to news reports.

Vatican II opened the way for Mass to be said in local languages instead of in Latin. Its reforms also inspired many nuns, especially in the United States, to shed their long robes in favor of knee-length skirts and abandoned the head-coverings that were their orders’ dress code for centuries.

Paul, who like John Paul took up traveling to distant lands, ended nearly a millennium of estrangement between Catholics and Orthodox Christians when he journeyed to Jerusalem in 1964 and embraced Patriarch Athengoras, then the Orthodox leader.

Paying tribute to that bold gesture, Francis later this month will go to Jerusalem and pray together with the current Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew I.