Indi Gregory was only eight months old. Just a few hours after her birth in February, she stopped breathing and required resuscitation. Shortly after that she suffered seizures.
Doctors performs multiple tests and conclude Baby Indi from a a rare degenerative mitochondrial disease. The child was put on a ventilator. The hospital wanted to remove the baby from life support but the parents didn’t want to.
The matter was taken to court.
Despite the parent’s wishes, England’s high court ruled that it was in the child’s “best interests” to be removed from life support.
After a public outcry the Italian government granted the child citizenship and agreed to cover the cost of her medical treatment at the Vatican’s pediatric hospital, Bambino Gesù.
You’d think that would be it. The hospital could have the problem off their hands and the baby would go to Italy. But no. The hospital refused. The parents appealed to the courts but they ruled that the baby’s life support be removed “Immediately.”
Indi died in her mother’s arms in hospice just a few days ago.
Why? Why? I’m not suggesting that the baby would’ve been saved and lived a long life in Italy but why is it up to the hospital and the courts to decide issues of life and death for children. Parents have no say anymore?
This is nothing short of a modern day horror. But even this can bring some good.
National Catholic Register: Despite not being religious, Dean Gregory, the father of 8-month-old Indi Gregory, expressed that his time in court fighting for his daughter’s life felt like he had been “dragged to hell.” The experience moved him to decide to have his daughter baptized.
“I am not religious and I am not baptized,” Gregory told an Italian newspaper in an interview. “But when I was in court I felt like I had been dragged to hell. I thought that if hell exists, then heaven must also exist.”
He added: “It was as if the devil was there. I thought that if the devil exists, then God must exist.”
During Indi’s time in the neonatal intensive care unit, a Christian volunteer visited daily. It was during those visits, Gregory explained, that he was told “baptism protects you and opens the door to heaven for you.”
“I’ve seen what hell is like and I want Indi to go to heaven,” he expressed.
Indi was baptized on Sept. 22.
Gregory added that he has also decided to be baptized: “We want to be protected in this life and go to heaven.”
Bureaucrats, judges, political activists, and politicians are unleashing Hell on Earth. This is not God’s doing. It is ours. We turned away from Him. But God can make good come out of this. When people see what we create on our own, namely Hell on Earth, they will turn to God.
They will know that something is wrong. They will know that the materialist view of existence doesn’t work. And they will turn to God. But we have to be strong in our faith and set good examples, otherwise people will turn to non-materialist explanations such as the occult or Wicca or New Age. We must present the Church as the solution, the one institution opposed to this madness.
The world is crying out for Christian heroes right now. We need to be willing to be one. Imagine the moment if a priest or bishop marched into the hospital with some doctors and the family and began removing the child from the hospital and bringing the child to a waiting ambulance. What would a moment like that say to the world?
God can use evil for good but we must be willing to stand up against evil. Some of us will, I know. Pray for strength. Pray for courage. We will be needing it.
