Another Seelos miracle

Some of you know of my firsthand account of the powerful intercession of Blessed Fr. Francis Xavier Seelos. If not, click on my blog story titled Angela Boudreaux. She is the approved miracle the Vatican accepted that allowed Seelos to be declared blessed by Pope John Paul II. I blogged several months ago about another miracle in Baltimore that looks good, really good. Now this:

Joey’s fight: Family Attributes to Clean Scan to Faith
By Keighla Schmidt, Staff Writer

It might sound like a plot line from a movie, but after his family visited a Catholic shrine in New Orleans, Joey Schwartz’s latest CT scan showed he’s cancer free just two months after being told terminal cancer had returned.

Joey was first diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer, midline carcinoma, in March 2008 when he was 13. After 10 months of highly-toxic chemotherapy followed by six weeks of radiation, he was told he was in remission. But, during a follow-up PET scan in July, the 14-year-old from Savage was told he had to continue his fight the aggressive cancer.

“When Joey was re-diagnosed, the reoccurrence on the chest wall and in his lungs was devastating news,” Paul said. “The doctor told us, ‘I can’t offer hope at this point.’”

Doctors identified two large masses on his chest wall and dozens of small tumors in his lungs.

Deciding to fight anyway, Joey started chemotherapy again and with the support of his parents, Paul and Melinda, along with his twin brother Derek, the family turned to their Catholic faith.

They had been following a story about a 71-year-old woman who had been diagnosed with terminal esophageal cancer that had spread throughout her body, but the malignant tumors disappeared after prayers to Blessed Father Seelos, who died in 1867 in New Orleans. Seelos has been beatified by the Vatican and is believed to have successful intercessions for ill people. The woman, Mary Ellen Heibel, has been cancer free since 2005.

Paul ordered a first-class relic, a small piece Seelos’s body, for Joey to wear in a pendant as a point of focus for prayers, as Heibel has done.

“Obviously not everyone who prays to Seelos is healed,” Paul said.

But, he added, prayers couldn’t do any harm.

After one round of the toxic drugs and getting an affirmative nod from their doctor, the Schwartz family made a pilgrimage to New Orleans to visit a shrine to Seelos.

“It may have been New Orleans, but it wasn’t voodoo,” Melinda said with a laugh.

The family attended a Sunday mass and a woman in charge of the administration of the Seelos shrine, Joyce Bourgeois, took special care of the family.

“Just talking to her on the phone is a spiritual experience,” Melinda said.

Joey said throughout the mass Bourgeois had her hands on his shoulders to bless him.

Along with Bourgeois and other shrine officials, Paul said many parishioners offered up their anecdotal stories about the intercessions Seelos had done for them and expressed hope for Joey.

“You take some of it with a grain of salt,” Paul said. “But, really, you’re going there looking for some hope … it was a very uplifting, spiritual day.”

With Joey still wearing the relic, the Schwartz family headed home.

“When we got home and started telling people about our trip, we got the typical ‘pat on the head,’” Paul said. “A very small amount of people actually understood what we did and why.”

After one more round of chemo and one CT scan on Sept. 3, the family thought their prayers were answered.

“We were hoping the scans would show the tumors had either stayed the same size or shrunken a little,” Paul said of their feelings going into the appointment.

“It’s scary before going in,” Joey said. “I really didn’t know what to think, I was hoping for something good.”

When Dr. Jawhar Rawwas, Joey’s oncology doctor at Children’s Hospital, read the scans initially, he told the family the tumors had shrunk.

“We thought that was our miracle,” Melinda said. “We were thrilled with that.”

After bringing Joey back to the Academy of Holy Angels where he and Derek are freshman, Paul and Melinda got a call from the doctor.

“He said the radiologist had looked at Joey’s scans and that’s when I thought he was going to say the initial scan missed something and prepared for the worst,” Paul said. “He said he couldn’t detect any traces of cancer … and on top of that, the two initial large masses were now thought to be scar tissue.”

> Continue to pray that if it be God's will, Seelos may be declared a Saint and pray through Fr. Seelos for your intentions!