11-year-old Boy's survival from flesh-eating bacteria.

Jake Finkbonner is bouncing about, teasing his sisters and playing basketball again. That is a miracle – not only to him and his family but also to the Pope Benedict XVI.

The 11-year-old Ferndale, Wash., boy’s stunning recovery from the flesh-eating bacteria that chewed up his face and nearly killed him in 2006 has been officially deemed by the Vatican as a miracle attributable to Kateri Tekakwitha, a 17th-century American Indian woman who converted to Catholicism at a young age.

The pope on Monday signed a decree authenticating the miracle, clearing the way for Tekakwitha to be canonized as America’s first Roman Catholic indigenous saint.

“There is no doubt in me or my husband’s mind that a miracle definitely took place,” Jake’s mother, Elsa Finkbonner, told msnbc.com on Tuesday. “There were far too many things that could have and should have gone wrong with his illness. The doctors went through every avenue they could to save his life and he survived. It’s a miracle that all of the other things that could have gone wrong, didn’t.”

Fateful day
Jake's face-off with death started at age 5 on Feb. 11, 2006, when he fell and bumped his mouth against the base of a portable basketball hoop while playing basketball for the Boys & Girls Club. Lurking on the surface of that base was Strep A bacteria, which causes a tissue-destroying disease known as necrotizing fasciitis, a very rare condition commonly known as flesh-eating bacteria.

Within a couple of days Jake found himself in Children’s Hospital in Seattle, fighting for his life as the bacteria gnawed away incessantly at his head, neck and chest.

“They had taken him apart. There was nothing to see of Jake’s face except his nose and chin. Everything else on his head was completely covered in bandages,” Elsa Finkbonner recalled.

jakefinkbonner.com

Jake Finkbonner two months later with skin grafts.

advertisement

Doctors told Elsa and her husband, Don Finkbonner, who works at a BP refinery in Ferndale, that the prognosis was grim.

“They opened up Jake and said, ‘If you are praying people, you need to pray. You need to get your family here because we are trying to save his life,’” Elsa said.

A priest and family friend, Fr. Tim Sauer, was called in to administer what he thought would be last rites.

“When I was called to the hospital it was basically to help the family prepare to say goodbye and let go. His probability of survival at that point was very slender,” Sauer told mnsbc.com.

Vatican investigates
After Jake’s recovery, Sauer sent a letter to the Seattle archbishop detailing the possible miracle.

The Vatican in Rome eventually sent a panel of investigators – including a doctor and a church lawyer – to Ferndale and Seattle to examine the claims. Community members were asked if they indeed did pray for the intercession of Tekakwitha. Doctors who attended to Jake were also interviewed.

The findings were forwarded to the Congregation for Causes of Saints, a committee of cardinals and bishops in Rome who review all the testimony that leads to the canonization of saints and presents the case to the pope.

And here is Jake Finkbonner and what he has to say.

Elsa Finkbonner

Jake Finkbonner in 2011

“He said, ‘I’m not afraid of that infection. I beat it the first time and I can beat it again,’” Elsa said.

As for the nonbelievers, Elsa is quick to explain that attributing Jake’s miracle survival to a future saint is in no way a discredit to the doctors who treated him.

“We know Jake would not be here if those doctors were not so fabulous,” she says.
But she also notes that the doctors themselves told the Vatican interviewers they don’t know how to account for the boy’s turn of fortune.

“They stated they did everything humanly possible and that the death rate for this disease is very high. They had also made comments as to they don’t know why he survived. They, too, have stated that, yeah, it is a miracle that he has survived.”