Healing of Jake Finkbonner

Infection advanced rapidly up the face toward the skull despite multiple surgical debridements. Family prayed for Kateri's intercession and applied her relic. Infection arrested inexplicably; Jake recovered with far less scarring than physicians had anticipated.

Jake Finkbonner was a six-year-old boy and member of the Lummi Nation, living in Ferndale, Washington, in the northwest corner of the state near the Canadian border. In February 2006, he was playing basketball when he fell and struck his lip on the edge of the court. The cut was small. Within days, it had become something far worse.

Group A Streptococcus bacteria entered the wound and progressed to necrotizing fasciitis — a rapidly advancing bacterial infection that destroys soft tissue as it spreads, following the fascial planes that connect muscle and skin. The infection moved up his face toward his skull. Surgeons at Seattle Children's Hospital operated to remove infected tissue, then operated again as the infection continued to advance. Jake underwent more than fifteen surgeries over several weeks. His face was progressively damaged by both the disease and the debridement required to contain it. His physicians told his parents, Elsa and Phil Finkbonner, that he would likely die, and that if he survived he would be severely disfigured.

His family prayed for the intercession of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, who had been beatified in 1980. A relic of Kateri was obtained and placed with Jake. Sisters and parishioners from the local community joined in prayer.

The infection stopped. Physicians could not explain the arrest of what had been an inexorably advancing disease. Jake recovered. His facial scarring was significantly less severe than his medical team had anticipated. He left the hospital alive, mobile, and recognizable.

The case was submitted to the Vatican's Consulta Medica for evaluation. The medical board reviewed the full record — the diagnostic documentation, the surgical reports, the pathology — and declared the outcome scientifically inexplicable. Pope Benedict XVI approved the miracle in 2011. Kateri Tekakwitha was canonized on October 21, 2012. Jake Finkbonner and his family were present at the ceremony in Rome.