Healing of James Fulton Engstrom

Born pulseless after true knot in umbilical cord. CPR for ~20 minutes at home; resuscitation at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center for 61 minutes total including epinephrine. Heart began at 148 bpm spontaneously at the 61-minute mark. Expected severe disability; developed completely normally with no lasting impairment.

Bonnie Engstrom of Goodfield, Illinois had long had a devotion to Venerable Fulton Sheen, whose cause for canonization was being advanced by the Diocese of Peoria. When she and her husband Travis were expecting their eighth child in 2010, they named him James Fulton in Sheen's honor, and Bonnie prayed for Sheen's intercession throughout the pregnancy.

Early in the morning of September 16, 2010, Bonnie went into labor at home. During delivery, a true knot in the umbilical cord — a knot that had formed earlier in the pregnancy and tightened as the baby descended — cut off the supply of blood, oxygen, and nutrients to the infant. James was born blue, limp, and without a heartbeat. He was not breathing.

The attending midwife began CPR immediately. For approximately twenty minutes, resuscitation efforts continued at the house while an ambulance was summoned. Bonnie, on the floor and unable to intervene, repeatedly invoked Sheen's intercession aloud: "Fulton Sheen, Fulton Sheen." James was transported to OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria. In the emergency department, physicians continued resuscitation, including the administration of epinephrine injections. The team worked for sixty-one minutes from the time of delivery without detecting a heartbeat.

At the sixty-one-minute mark, physicians were preparing to declare the child deceased. At that moment, James's heart began beating spontaneously — at 148 beats per minute, in normal sinus rhythm, without a gradual onset. There was no medical explanation for the timing or the nature of the recovery.

Given sixty-one minutes of oxygen deprivation beginning at birth, the expected outcomes were severe: profound cerebral palsy, blindness, cognitive impairment, permanent dependence on a feeding tube, and probable confinement to a wheelchair. James Fulton Engstrom developed normally in every respect, with no lasting physical or cognitive impairment.

A seven-member panel of medical specialists convened by the Diocese of Peoria concluded on March 6, 2014, that the recovery "could not be explained through any scientifically known natural causation." Theological advisers unanimously confirmed the attribution to Sheen's intercession on June 17, 2014. The case then advanced to the Vatican's Consulta Medica for independent review. Pope Francis approved the miracle by decree on July 5, 2019.