Healing of Pietro Schiliro

Pietro was born on May 25, 2002, at Saint Gérard de Monza hospital. He developed meconium aspiration syndrome, triggering severe pulmonary hypertension and multiple collapsed lungs, and was placed on artificial respiration for forty days. His family prayed a novena to the Venerable Louis and Zélie Martin. On June 29, 2002, his condition began to resolve; he was taken off the respirator on July 3. The Vatican medical commission declared the healing scientifically inexplicable on January 17, 2008.

Pietro Schiliro was born on May 25, 2002, at Saint Gérard de Monza hospital in Monza, near Milan. From the moment of his birth, he was in critical condition. He had inhaled meconium — fetal waste matter — during delivery, causing meconium aspiration syndrome. The condition triggered severe pulmonary hypertension and multiple pneumothoraces, a series of collapsed lungs. He could not breathe on his own. He was placed on artificial respiration and remained between life and death for forty days.

His parents had nowhere medically to turn. Doctors could not predict whether he would survive, and the severity of his pulmonary injury left little room for optimism.

His family turned to prayer. At the time, Louis and Zélie Martin — the parents of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux — were in the late stages of a beatification cause that had been open since 1994. They were not yet blessed; their cause had reached the stage of Venerable. Pietro's family nonetheless offered a novena asking for their intercession.

On June 29, 2002, Pietro's condition began to turn. The pulmonary complications that had been progressive and unresponsive began to resolve. On July 3, he was taken off artificial respiration. His recovery was complete.

The case was submitted to the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints. On January 17, 2008, the medical commission declared the healing scientifically inexplicable. Pope Benedict XVI formally approved the miracle on July 3, 2008 — exactly six years to the day after Pietro was taken off the respirator — and set October 19, 2008 as the date of beatification for Louis and Zélie Martin.

Pietro, by then six years old, made a pilgrimage of thanksgiving to Lisieux with his family at the end of 2002, and was photographed with the Martin family relics in 2008.