The scaffolding collapsed. A 17-year-old boy who was laying bricks fell 56 feet to the ground.
He was rushed to an emergency unit of a nearby hospital.
After several X-rays and other tests the doctor told the boy’s parents: “If your son manages to get through these next few moments, which will only be the result of a miracle, he will spend his whole life in bed. He will not be able to move his hands and his feet.”
The doctor continued, “If it is OK both you, I could could spare him from suffering. I could give him a lethal injection.”
A priest administered the last rites of the Catholic Church to the boy. He also received viaticum.
“No. Do not do that!” The mother said. If God wants him, let God take him. If God wants him, let God take him.” The mother said.
“But if God lets him live, I will take care of him for the rest of his life.” The mother told the doctor.
The boy was Nino Baglieri. He was born in Modica Alta, Sicily on May 1, 1951. His parents were Giuseppa and Pietro Baglieri.
Four days after he was born, Nino was baptized in the parish of St. Anthony of Padua.
Nino grew up like any Sicilian boy, with a group of friends and dreams of having a large family.
But a few days after his 17th birthday, on May 6, 1968, the feast of St. Dominic Savio, the scaffolding collapsed. And his life changed. He became a quadriplegic.
Nino spent many difficult years going to several hospitals. He underwent many surgeries and therapies to restore the use of his hands and feet.
All rehabilitation attempts failed. He would remain a quadriplegic for the rest of his life.
“I am blessed. My mother was always at my side,” he said. “She was always there for me with open arms and an open heart.”
But he felt that his friends looked at him with pity, which disturbed him deeply. Feeling hopeless and helpless, he started feeling sorry for himself.
“Poor Nino!” his friends would say. This attitude caused Nino to close in on himself for 10 years of loneliness and anger.
“These were painful years of despair and blasphemy,” he said.
He did not accept his condition and asked God, “Why me?”
Then came a turning point. It happened on March 4, 1978, the eve of the Feast of the Annunciation.
Father Aldo, a Salesian priest from the charismatic renewal movement in the area, and some of his parishioners came to visit Nino and pray over him.
On the morning before the visitors came, Nino asked his mother to dress him up. “If the Lord heals me, I would not be naked in front of these people,” he said.
“I was anxious and excited. Father Aldo placed his hands on my head. I did not understand this gesture,” he continued.
“Father Aldo invoked to the Holy Spirit to come down on me. After a few minutes, I felt a great warmth in my body.” Nino said.
“I felt a tingling, like there was a new force entering in me. It was like a regenerating force – a living force. At the same time, I felt something old going out from my body.”
“The Holy Spirit had come down upon me. With power, the Holy Spirit entered my heart. I was infused with a new love and a new life,” Nino continued.
“In that instant, I accepted my cross. I said my ‘yes’ to Jesus. I was reborn to a new life. I became a new man with a new heart.”
“All the despair of 10 years was erased in a few seconds. My heart was filled with true joy that I had never known before.”
“The Lord healed me. I wanted physical healing, but the Lord gave me something greater, the healing of the spirit.”
“I found joy and peace. The Lord gave me so much strength and so much will to live. I was so happy, even though I was in the same condition,” Nino said.
A new period began for Nino and his family. It was a period of rebirth. He rediscovered his faith and love for the Word of God. He opened his heart to new relationships which he had shunned previously.
Nino learned to draw pictures and to write with his mouth. He was able to write very well – much better than he could with his hands before the accident. He also learned to use a stick to dial the phone.
He started a diary. He wrote poems and essays and shared them on radio programs, at churches and public gatherings.
Nino wrote letters to thousands of people, especially the sick. Over time, the Nino who could not move became accessible to many through his letters and essays and drawings.
He created a network of people praying for the sick.
In letters, in meetings, in friendships, Nino showed his great realism. He recognized his own smallness and he recognized the greatness of God’s gifts in him and through him.
In a way, his little room, his bed and wheelchair became a chapel and an altar where many people brought their pain and their sorrows. He offered them to God, along with his own suffering.
His life became Eucharistic.
Through his network, thousands of letters, friendships, sharings and meetings, Nino led a special apostolate until the end of his life.
He became close to the charismatic Renewal, to the Camillians (a congregation that ministers to the sick) and to the Salesians.
Eventually, Nino became a Salesian cooperator. Later, he became a consecrated layman in the Secular Institute of Volunteers with Don Bosco.
Nino’s life reminds us that holiness is possible in every condition, that we all can conquer any difficulty through Him Who gives us strength, that holiness is possible to anyone who embraces the cross of Jesus, which comes to us in every color, size and form.
Nino Baglieri died on March 2, 2007 surrounded by family and friends. Before he died, he asked for a track suit and sport shoes to be placed on his bed so that at last he could run into the arms of God.
On his deathbed he wrote, “I no longer need anything, not a bed or a wheelchair, nor someone to push me. Now I am free and I can go and run where I please.”
When I wrote this chapter, Nino Baglieri was in the last stages of the canonization process of the Catholic Church, leading to possible sainthood.
Overcoming the bitterness caused by his quadriplegic condition, Baglieri gave himself to the mission of evangelizing through the means available to him. May God grant us grace to bloom wherever we are planted; the grace to be content where we are in life and make the most of our opportunities to grow and flourish in any circumstances, even if they are difficult.