Pope Leo XIV Declares ‘Miracle’ in Rhode Island

Pope Leo XIV Declares ‘Miracle’ in Rhode Island

Pope Leo XIV, the first pope from the United States, recently recognized the first miracle of his pontificate. Marking another "first," the incident is also the only Vatican-approved miracle to have occurred in Rhode Island.

 

The declaration came as part of a June 20 decree that named 174 new martyrs, mostly victims of 20th-century authoritarian regimes. The decree also approved the reported 2007 healing of a premature infant at Memorial Hospital in Pawtucket, attributing the healing to the intercession of a 19th-century Spanish priest.

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According to a report from the Vatican's Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, a boy identified only as "Tyquan" was born prematurely after doctors induced labor due to an abnormally low fetal heart rate.  After delivery, the infant's heart rate continued to drop and he was unable to breathe on his own; hospital staff followed neonatal resuscitation protocols for an hour, at which point the nurse reported that the child no longer had a detectable pulse.

 

The attending physician for the case, Dr. Juan Sánchez-Esteban, responded to the desperate situation by saying a simple prayer that he had learned as a boy in the town of Huércal-Overa in Spain: "Fr. Valera, I have done everything I can. Now it's your turn." (translated from an interview with Spanish language news source Vida Nueva).

 

The "Fr. Valera" in question was Salvador Valera Parra, a priest born in Huércal-Overa in 1816 and who still has a dedicated following in the town and throughout the region of Almería.  The cleric won the admiration of his parishioners through his gentle manner and dedication to serving the sick, particularly during a brutal cholera epidemic in the 1860s. Although Valera died in 1889, many Catholics in Spain believe that he still continues his work of healing the sick today.

 

What happened next appears to have earned Valera a few new believers in Pawtucket as well.  According to the Vatican, as Dr. Sánchez-Esteban prepared to inform Tyquan's mother that her child had died, the nurse reported that the infant's pulse had suddenly returned and that he appeared to be respirating on his own.

 

The child was transferred from Memorial to Providence's Women and Infants Hospital, where he was kept in intensive care with a brain injury caused by lack of oxygen and blood flow around the time of birth.  According to the Vatican report, doctors believed the state would almost certainly result in a permanent disability, such as cerebral palsy.  Despite this prediction, Tyquan unexpectedly showed improved neurological functions after 15 days in intensive care, and he was stable enough to be transferred to Hasbro shortly thereafter.  The report concludes by mentioning that Tyquan has shown few lingering complications from the experience and has "continued to grow like a normal child, leading a regular life and playing sports." 

 

The case was submitted to the Diocese of Providence in 2014, which conducted a preliminary investigation before forwarding the report to the Vatican's Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.  Although other alleged miracles in Rhode Island have been reported to the Diocese before, this was the first to pass the initial stages of investigation: claims of a color-changing Communion wafer in Westerly in 2023 were discovered to be an optical illusion caused by LED lighting, while miracles attributed to 1920s Woonsocket mystic Rose Ferron have never received official canonical approval.

 

After theological review, however, the Vatican has attributed Tyquan's healing to the spiritual intercession of Salvador Valera Parra, making the "Miracle at Memorial Hospital" the first incident in the Ocean State to be declared a miracle by the Catholic Church.  It is also the first declared miracle for Valera, who is now being considered for beatification (the final step before being named a saint).

 

Fr Valera's intercession does not seem to have helped resuscitate Memorial Hospital, however, which closed due to financial issues in 2018.

 

Daniel J. Holmes is a Rhode Island-based religion writer. He teaches English at NEIT.