Pope Leo XIV visited a Spanish teenager who had to be hospitalised during the Jubilee of Youth and prayed with and spoke to the family.
The pope said that if the teen “had come all the way to Rome, then (the pope) could come all the way to the hospital to see him,” Carmen Gloria Gonzálvez, the teen’s mother, told Vatican News 4 August.
“As a mother, I saw that Jesus Christ came close to me and said, ‘You are not alone.’ That’s what the pope’s presence in the hospital meant to me: the confirmation that God has not abandoned us,” Carmen Gloria said.
Vatican News spoke with the family members over the phone. During the evening prayer vigil in Rome’s Tor Vergata neighborhood 2 August, Pope Leo had asked people to pray for “a young Spanish man, Ignacio Gonzálvez,” who was admitted to the Vatican-owned Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital in Rome.
The 15-year-old Ignacio was in the intensive care unit and sedated after suffering from an acute attack, causing him to collapse; it turned out he has lymphoma affecting his respiratory system, according to Vatican News.
Doctors said if he had not gotten to the hospital when he did, he could have died.
