61 Minutes to a Miracle: Fulton Sheen and a True Story of the Impossible

"You mean sixty-one seconds. You said sixty-one minutes, but you mean a little over one minute."

"No," I said. "He didn’t have a pulse for over an hour."

After a healthy pregnancy, on September 16, 2010, Bonnie L. Engstrom unexpectedly delivered a stillborn baby boy. Sixty-one minutes had passed and the doctors were going to call a time of death, but then... James Fulton’s heart began to beat.

In that sixty-one minutes, the Engstrom’s had been asking for and counting on the powerful intercession of James’s namesake: Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.

That James was alive at all was a miracle, and the rest of the story is even more amazing. While the Engstroms were preparing for their little boy to grow up blind, unable to walk or talk, and be fed by a tube for the rest of his life, another miracle occurred. Against all medical odds, James not only survived, but he began — and continues — to thrive. In 2014, medical experts and theological advisors to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints unanimously approved the miracle, and it was officially recognized by Pope Francis in 2019.

This amazing true story, full of weakness and strength, heartbreak and celebration, hope and joy, teaches us that through our faith in Christ and the prayers of the great cloud of witnesses, miracles are possible.

"Believe the incredible, and you can do the impossible." – Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen