Waning health is always difficult, but when it comes to a child, it’s particularly tragic. Kristen and Joe Masciantonio, devout Catholics, witnessed this firsthand when they gave birth to their daughter, Gianna.
Shortly after Gianna was born, she failed a routine hearing test.
“Her ears were working fine. The doctors didn’t understand why she couldn’t hear,” Gianna’s mom Kristen told Philly.com.
When Gianna was one month old and big enough to be sedated, doctors put her under for an MRI. That’s when they discovered cysts and an inoperable tumor growing on the baby’s brain stem. “I remember falling to the floor,” Kristen said. “Because of the size of the tumor, they thought it was malignant.”
“You don’t survive brain stem tumors. I asked a doctor if she’s ever seen miracles happen and she said yes, she has, but not in this case.”
“She said Gianna would not live to see her first birthday.”
“Her life was a miracle,” Gianna’s father told ABC News. “They told us to go home and spend days to weeks with her.”
The tumor was technically thought to be benign, but its location on Gianna’s brain stem is what made it deadly. Eventually, doctors feared the tumor would grow to impact the girl’s breathing and heartbeat.
For the first eight months of her life, Gianna spent her days in palliative care with two hospice nurses at the family’s Warrington home.
“She was terminally ill,” Gianna’s grandmother, Andrea Masciantonio, recalled.
“We made funeral plans.”
While all this was going on, Gianna’s family was desperately sending the girl’s brain scans to every children’s hospital they could find, hoping someone would be able to help them. Unfortunately, they weren’t having much luck.
“At that time, there was no hope for us at all. We were praying for a miracle because that’s the only hope we had,” Andrea Masciantonio revealed.
But on September 26, 2015, at a parade on Market Street, Philadelphia, the Masciantonios’ got their miracle. Guests at the parade were waiting for a special guest. Pope Francis would be making an appearance, and people from all over the city had gathered on Market Street to see him. At this time, Gianna’s last bout of chemo had just ended, and her parents had decided to bring her along for the event. That’s when they got the sign they had been waiting for.
As the parade made its way down the street, a member of the Swiss Guard picked Gianna out of the crowd and carried her to the pope who gave the baby a kiss on her head. For the Mascantonios, it was a sign that everything would be okay.
“We just thought we’d see him drive by. We never thought in a million years that he would bless our daughter,” Joe told Fox29.
“Pope Francis kissing her was my miracle, [it] was the way of God telling me he was with us,” Kristen explained.
Three months after the pope’s kiss, the Masciantonios received a call from Kenneth McClain, a director at the Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. Kristen was stunned when the man told her, “I think your daughter’s going to be okay.”
Gianna still had to undergo a few surgeries and chemotherapy, but one year later, the girl who wasn’t supposed to live past her first birthday was officially chemo-free. In an interview with Express UK, Kristen said:
“You can’t really see the tumor. In all of the scans, it’s just a blur.”
Gianna is currently working with Debbie Saffren, an occupational therapist, to strengthen the left side of her body and improve coordination.
“She’s incredibly smart. She faces everything head on and puts her whole heart into all of it. She’s like a child unicorn,” Saffren said.
“We were praying for a miracle because that’s the only hope we had. The miracle was the pope’s kiss. God showed us that he’s been with us.”
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