Pope urges 50,000 to pray for seriously ill little girl
(ANSA) – Vatican City, November 6 – Pope Francis led more than 50,000 people in prayer Wednesday for a little girl struggling with spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic wasting disease.
He led the crowd packed into St. Peter’s Square for his weekly papal audience in a minute of silence followed by the prayer Hail Mary for 16-month-old Noemi.
“Let’s perform an act of love. We don’t know her, but she’s been baptized – she’s one of us, a Christian,” he said. Her father, Andrea Sciarretta, 26, from Guardiagrele in the Abruzzo region, said the pope is “a great friend” of his daughter, whose disease is the most common genetic cause of infant death.
The family, he told ANSA, was invited by the pope to visit the Vatican and pray with him.
“It was an indescribable feeling, a mix of feelings between being there in front of a great man of the Lord, who is thinking about our daughter who is ill,” said Sciarretta.
The pope said that despite Noemi’s illness, she smiled at him.
He also invited the little girl’s parents and her five-year-old brother to stay as his guests at St. Martha’s House, the Vatican residence where Francis has lived since his election last spring.