Chai Brady
Grace 
Did Padre Pio’s intercession save a family of seven, asks Chai Brady
In a near-death experience a holidaying Irish family of seven crashed onto a motorway after losing control of their car in the US.
Tumbling down an embankment after swerving to avoid another motorist, Cavan man Martin McBreen said the accident could have been “horrific”.
The family were on the road to a friend’s house in Texas at about 1.30am and had just turned off the motorway when a car “came out of nowhere” causing Mr McBreen to send his vehicle crashing onto a road where lorries frequently drive at 80kmh.
A fire brigade, six police cars and an ambulance arrived at the scene.
“If we just came out at the wrong time…to come out of it and not so much as a scrape on any of us, listen somebody is looking out for us and we feel that he is a part of it,” said Mr McBreen, who believes Padre Pio interceded, once again, to protect his family.
His wife Sinead had brought her Padre Pio sticker with them, with Mr McBreen saying “miraculously we all survived without a scratch, so he’s definitely looking after us”.
This is not the first time something miraculous has occurred for the McBreens, who were once told one of their children had no chance of survival.
When she was 16 weeks pregnant Martin’s wife, Sinead, was informed by medical staff in a Dublin hospital after a routine scan that her unborn child had little chance of survival.
The scans revealed their baby had a form of hydrops that meant it was bloated to a point that she was likened to the Michelin Man by doctors, with further tests showing the child had Down syndrome but would not live to be born anyway as the baby was full of fluid that would cause her heart to stop.
The couple were advised to go to England to have an abortion.
“They said not to think of it as an abortion but ‘as a medical management of your pregnancy’. Our belief is and always has been, these decisions are not ours to make and we didn’t go along with what they were saying,” Mr McBreen said, adding that throughout her pregnancy Sinead was consistently “pressured” to have an abortion by medical staff.
A gift
However, he said Sinead felt that every extra day she was pregnant was a gift, and still held out hope, even after choosing a cemetery spot for their unborn child.
“I couldn’t understand the rationale behind it, to abort a baby because she wasn’t going to survive,” Sinead told The Irish Catholic in a previous interview.
“I kept saying, and I remember the last time saying it, ‘Can we not just end this conversation for good? I’m not going down that road. I know what I’m facing isn’t nice, but to me it is the only option.’ I said, ‘God will decide what day, what hour, and what minute this baby is going to stop living, and only he can decide. I couldn’t – how can anybody? If she’s going to die anyway, well, let it be natural. Let her get every chance. I want to give the baby every chance,’” she added.
This continued for weeks with doctors saying they couldn’t understand how their child was still alive.
“A mutual friend of ours told us about Padre Pio’s glove, and said that it would be useful to visit,” Mr McBreen said.
“My mother has always been a great believer in Padre Pio. In my family I’ve got three brothers and three sisters and Padre Pio is the first sticker put in every car we had, she always said he protects us.”
Shortly after visiting the relic of Padre Pio, the night before her weekly scan, Sinead had a dream about the saint holding her baby. When she woke she believed that Padre Pio had her baby and would look after it.
Arriving at the hospital they thought they would be told the heartbeat had stopped. Instead the obstetrician was amazed, telling them: “I can’t see anything wrong.”
The hospital maintained that the baby had a fatal heart problem, and the McBreen’s should not get their hopes up, but on November 12, 2014, Grace was born, with Down syndrome as predicted – but perfectly healthy.
Mr McBreen decried the high rates of unborn children with Down syndrome being aborted in other countries, many of which are said to be incompatible with life. In Denmark 98% of foetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted, the figure stands at 90% in England and there has not been a baby born with Down syndrome in Iceland for the past five years.
According to Mr McBreen this points to a belief that Down syndrome children don’t have a right to life.
“At a time when you have early intervention and outcomes for people with disabilities have never been better, then on the other hand we’re singling them out and discriminating that they shouldn’t have a chance at life at all and that to me is just wrong in every sense you look at it and it needs to be highlighted,” he said.
“The actual existence of people with Down syndrome is being threatened.” Both Sinead and Martin have been publicly vocal advocates of retaining the Eighth Amendment in the upcoming referendum expected to be held in May.
The couple are setting up a Down syndrome centre in Carrickmascross with a group, and Sinead organises sending a gift basket to all mothers who give birth to a Down syndrome child in Ireland through the Facebook page ‘The Perfect Gift’.
To this day Mr McBreen thanks Padre Pio for his intercession in the birth of his youngest daughter Grace who is now three-years-old, and now more recently in October last year for keeping them safe after their traffic accident in Texas.
“He’s looking out for us at the moment, he thinks we have something more to do I think,” he added.
