Child Actor Lucy Hussey-Bergonzi, 13, Saved from Death through Baptismal Water

The teenager was in a coma and on life support when doctors performed emergency operations. Five days later the family was informed that their child would not live. At this point they called for a priest to baptize their daughter.

WASHINGTON, DC (Catholic Online) - Lucy Hussey-Bergonzi was 13 years old when she collapsed with a brain hemorrhage in February of 2009. At the hospital, her parents called for a Catholic priest to baptize her before she died. As the holy water touched her forehead, Lucy's arm shot up in the air and within 24 hours she was taken off life support.

A child-actor, she had just finished filming a walk-on scene for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. A few days later she was admitted to Great Ormond Street Hospital and diagnosed with Arteriovenous malformation (AVM). Usually something carried from birth, the person has a cluster of abnormal blood vessels that remain undetected until they burst.

The teenager was in a coma and on life support when doctors performed emergency operations. Five days later the family was informed that their child would not live. At this point they called for a priest.

Recently, the family went public with the story. 

"Doctors were saying it was a miracle - people who have brain hemorrhages usually don't survive them," Lucy stated, according to the London Metro.

Her mother, Denise, added, "I think it was a miracle. I can't think of another explanation. It could be she was recovering anyway but the way it happened, even the nurses said it was a miracle."

The London Express tells the rest of Denise's story. "It was the day after her second operation when I turned to my husband Robert and said 'we have to get her baptised'.

"At that point I really thought she was going to die and I wanted to give her the best chance in the next life.
   
 "So five days after Lucy was first taken into hospital we were by her bedside saying prayers watching her about to be baptised.

"Then, the moment the priest put holy water on Lucy's head, her arm suddenly moved up. At first I thought she might be having a fit, but within 24 hours she was taken off all the life support machines and tubes.

"It could be she was recovering anyway, but the way it happened, even the nurses said that it was a miracle.

"When I asked the doctors why she had come back to us they said they can't explain how it happened and to this day they don't know how or why she recovered."

Now 16, Lucy is a student at the Bishop Challenor School in the Shadwell area of London. Even though she received this incredible miracle, she still had to learn to walk and talk again, a part of her rehabilitation she doesn't remember now.

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She still suffers from severe headaches from time to time, side-effects from medications and numbness on her right side, but she is continuing to rebuild her life.

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Randy Sly is the Associate Editor of Catholic Online and the CEO/Associate Publisher for the Northern Virginia Local Edition of Catholic Online (http://virginia.catholic.org). He is a former Archbishop of the Charismatic Episcopal Church who laid aside that ministry to enter into the full communion of the Catholic Church.

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