An American seminarian, in a coma for 32 days and twice declared dead by doctors, believes he owes his life to the intercession of the late Cardinal Francois-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan.
Cardinal Van Thuan, who spent many years in a communist prison, died in 2002 in exile in Rome.
Joseph Nguyen, the son of immigrants from Vietnam whose family was a friend of the Cardinal, was in a coma for 32 days in 2009.
At a certain point doctors even filled out his death certificate.
The doctors said that Joseph was dead.
His heart rate had fallen to beyond any possible recovery, and all brain activity was gone. But as they wrote the death certificate, his parents began praying to the dead hero of the Vietnamese people.
Since then he has recovered and returned to the seminary.
In the weeks when he was hovering between life and death, Joseph said he twice encountered Cardinal Van Thuan.
The prelate was cited in Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Spe Salvi for his exemplary Christian witness in 13 years of prison, and in October of this year his cause of beatification began.
SIC: IC/IE
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