Half a world away, Sydney Claire Smith, 14 months, lay in Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin battling the identical illness. Her kidneys and liver shut down and her heart stopped twice for a total of 36 minutes, as the infection that began in her urinary tract ravaged her tiny body. Her parents, Jillian and Shannon Smith, stood by helplessly as their once healthy infant was on the brink of death. As they prayed and kept vigil at their daughter’s side, the television news alternated coverage of the final hours of Terry Schiavo’s life after she was removed from a feeding tube and the pontiff whose body succumbed to the infection on Divine Mercy Sunday, April 2.
Snip...
Initially, there was no improvement. Father Reifenberg was summoned and, using oils blessed in the Holy Land given to the Smiths by a family of another sick infant, conferred the sacrament of the anointing of the sick.
“At this point, we also became acquainted with Padre Pio,” recalled Jillian describing how a cousin gave her a biography of the 20th century Italian priest who bore the stigmata - the bleeding wounds of Christ - and who was canonized June 16, 2002. “He (and Pope John Paul II) became a sort of prayer focus for us.”
More than coincidence
Incidentally, my tag line is from the Divine Mercy...
Pope, Padre Pio credited for saving girl near death
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NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, September 25, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The doctor accused, along with two nurses, of murdering four patients in a New Orleans hospital in the days after hurricane Katrina struck has denied the accusations. She also said she does not believe in euthanasia.
Arrested and charged with four counts of second-degree murder for lethally injecting patients during a panicked exit from the flooded Memorial Medical Center, Dr. Anna Pou insists she and the two nurses only gave “comfort care” to the elderly patients.
Doctor Charged in Katrina Deaths Denies Committing Murder, Euthanasia
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Now, there is a wise and wonderful grandfather!