Brazilian boy’s recovery from brain injury is Fatima ‘miracle’
FATIMA, Portugal — The parents of a Brazilian boy whose recovery from a severe brain injury is being cited by the Vatican as the “miracle” needed to canonize two Portuguese children broke their silence Thursday to share the story.
Joao Baptista and his wife, Lucila Yurie, appeared before reporters at the Catholic shrine in Fatima, Portugal on the eve of Pope Francis’ arrival. Francis will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the so-called Fatima visions of the Virgin Mary by canonizing the children who experienced them.
The “miracle” involves little Lucas Baptista. His father said Thursday that his son, then five years old, fell 6.5 metres from a window at their home in Brazil in 2013 while playing with his infant sister, Eduarda.
Doctors diagnosed a severe traumatic brain injury and a “loss of brain material” from the frontal lobe. Doctors said he had little chance of survival, and if he did live, would be severely mentally disabled.
Baptista said he and his wife, as well as Brazilian Carmelite nuns, prayed to the late shepherd children who said the Virgin Mary appeared to them in “visions” in 1917. Two of those children, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, will be made saints on Saturday. They will become the Catholic Church’s youngest-ever non-martyred saints.
Baptista, with occasional pauses to compose himself, said doctors removed tubes from his son six days after the accident.
“He was fine when he woke up, lucid, and started talking, asking for his little sister,” Baptista said. Another six days after that, Lucas was released from hospital.
“He’s completely fine ... with no after-effects. Lucas is just like he was before the accident,” his father said. “The doctors ... said they couldn’t explain his recovery.”
Sister Angela Coelho, the Portuguese postulator who led the project to canonize the shepherd children, said her office was informed of the Brazil story about three months after it happened. She said officials had to wait see whether the recovery was complete before presenting the case to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints. The recovery must be medically inexplicable.