Healing of a Child from Traumatic Brain Injury

A 9-year-old boy was struck by a car while riding his bicycle, sustaining severe cranial trauma and falling into a coma. Physicians assessed the damage as irreversible. Family prayed to Brother André and anointed the boy with oil from the Oratory. He recovered rapidly and completely with no lasting neurological damage.

In 1999, a nine-year-old boy in Quebec was riding his bicycle when he was struck by a car. The collision caused severe cranial trauma. He was admitted to hospital in critical condition and slipped into a coma. His physicians assessed the brain damage as irreversible. His family was told to prepare for his death.

The boy's relatives prayed to Brother André — the lay brother from Montreal who had been beatified in 1982, and whose Oratory on Mount Royal remained one of the principal Catholic pilgrimage sites in Canada. Following the devotion long associated with Brother André, they also anointed the boy with oil obtained at the Oratory and continued their prayers at his bedside.

The child recovered. Not gradually, in the way that might be attributed to the passage of time and intensive care, but rapidly and completely — in a manner his physicians could not reconcile with the documented severity of the injury. A full neurological recovery from the kind of traumatic brain injury he had sustained was not medically expected. There was no clinical account for what happened.

The case was submitted to a diocesan tribunal in February 2005 — the centenary year of Saint Joseph's Oratory — and referred to the Vatican for formal review. The Consulta Medica, the theologians of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, and ultimately Pope Benedict XVI all concluded that the healing was scientifically inexplicable and was to be attributed to Brother André's intercession. The decree recognizing the miracle was signed on December 19, 2009. Brother André was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 17, 2010.

The identity of the child has never been publicly disclosed. What is known is that he was a young man from Quebec, and that he was present at the canonization ceremony in St. Peter's Square in Rome in 2010.