‘Our little miracle’: how parents asked George Pell to save their boy’s life
Wes and Caitlin Robinson didn’t believe Vincent would survive after receiving an astonishing 52 minutes of CPR. But they credit the late George Pell with interceding to save their baby after he nearly drowned in their hot tub.
It was a rush of sudden and terrifying chaos. Caitlin Robinson had taken seven of her children out the front of their home and dragged them to their knees in prayer as her husband, Wes, tried to resuscitate their youngest child who was no longer breathing.
Moments earlier she had called 911 as Wes attempted to perform CPR on their 15-month-old toddler, Vincent.
Wes had discovered the boy unresponsive in the hot tub in the backyard of their home in Phoenix, Arizona, where a statue of the Virgin Mary looked on serenely.
Neither of the devout Catholic parents initially believed Vincent would survive after receiving an astonishing 52 minutes of CPR.
“I was not praying for a miracle,” Caitlin told The Australian.
“There was no part of me that felt like a miracle was even possible.” However, after Vincent was miraculously brought back from the brink of death and made a full recovery, both parents credited the late Australian cardinal George Pell with interceding on their behalf to save their baby – along with a number of other holy figures in the Catholic Church.
“This miracle happened,” Wes told The Australian.
“The exciting thing now is, like, this must have happened for at least a reason. And there’s probably a lot of reasons.”
Caitlin hopes that “if one thing comes from the story” it was that “faithful Catholics around the world realise that cardinal Pell can be your intercessor”.
“That, yes, you actually should be praying to these people who show a heroic virtue here on Earth. And they will help us.”
Sunday March 2 was going to be like any typical Sunday for the Robinsons. The family attended mass in the morning and Caitlin was baking a loaf of bread in the oven as well as preparing for the week ahead.
Wes was gardening and the family was looking forward to a restaurant dinner with relatives later that evening.
Then the nightmare began when they realised Vincent, who was born on Christmas Day 2023, had disappeared.
The parents, who have named all their children after Catholic saints, suspect young Vincent may have been below the surface of the hot tub – which fortunately was turned off – for up to 15 minutes before he was discovered.
They think it took five minutes to find him after beginning their search.
“We have an in-ground pool and hot tub that’s gated. It’s gated. It’s fenced. It’s latched. But what we suspect is that sometimes a ball goes over, sometimes people go in there – it probably wasn’t latched all the way. So it wasn’t wide open. But it just didn’t shut all the way,” Wes said.
“He (Vincent) kind of slipped in unnoticed, we assume. And, then shortly thereafter we were looking for him. And so we had looked around. And then I found him in the hot tub, screamed to Caitlin. She called 911.”
Describing the moments after he found Vincent, Wes said the family had little hope the child would live.
“He drinks milk, so I don’t know if the milk was coming out. But when I was compressing and then blowing, what was coming out was white,” he told The Australian. “We didn’t have a whole lot of hope at that point.”
“I was screaming,” Caitlin said. “I called 911 and I screamed into the phone, ‘My baby drowned’.
“I ran out front to wait for whoever was going to be the first one (to arrive). And of course we have seven other children. They all followed me out. And I dragged them to their knees and we just started praying Hail Marys waiting for whoever it was. Then we saw the police officer,” she said.
Police officer Alan Hoelscher was the first on the scene. He later described the family home at that time as “very chaotic”. Speaking to local news outlets after being reunited with Vincent following the toddler’s remarkable recovery, he said Vincent had been unconscious and unresponsive after being pulled from the water by his father.
“Knowing that family is whole and not missing a piece means a lot to me,” he said. “Clearly, the family was having the worst day of their life.”
Taking up the narrative for The Australian, Wes said: “He was able to come and grab Vincent while I was performing CPR.
“The police officer came. Then the firefighters came and they immediately took him off to Banner Thunderbird hospital,” he said.
“They drove us in a van to the hospital. Then we were kind of in a side room and the next thing you know they said ‘He’s alive!’ And it was just disbelief.”
The couple reacted differently to the news, with Wes being more hopeful of a full recovery.
“Initially, I had no hope when I pulled him out of the pool. When I was told he was alive, I felt at that point, I was like, ‘I can’t give up hope.’ As long as you keep on fighting, I’ll be on my knees praying,” Wes said.
Caitlin had the opposite reaction. “To me, he was already gone,” she said. “Even in the car on the way to the hospital, I told Wes, ‘We cannot let this destroy our marriage – and this cannot break up our family’.”
Dr Rahul Chawla, the medical director of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Banner Thunderbird hospital, made clear that Vincent had no pulse when he arrived and it was unclear how long his heart had stopped beating. The boy was swiftly put in a medically induced coma and Dr Chawla told the parents he did not “know what’s going to happen – I can’t tell if he’s going to survive”.
Wes said they had been informed that 52 minutes of CPR had been performed on Vincent.
“He wasn’t breathing,” he said. “He had a faint pulse that would go on and off. And it would go away and it would come back. But again, as we were told, he didn’t have a steady pulse until that 52nd minute.”
“I was certain we were going to be burying him,” said Caitlin. “I still was so sceptical.”
She said the first glimmer of hope had come on March 5 – Ash Wednesday – when Vincent was moved out of “end of life care” to be treated for “recovery”.
“I was like, ‘we don’t know what recovery is going to look like. He’s probably going to be a vegetable for the rest of his life’,” Caitlin said. “You just don’t know.”
The devout Catholic parents, both 39, had met in their early 20s at university, fallen in love, married quickly and had eight children with the ninth being on the way.
To this day they have no doubt their son’s miraculous recovery – in which he sustained no permanent damage to his lungs, heart or brain – was aided by the heavenly assistance of cardinal Pell whom Wes and Caitlin met in late 2021.
“That was one place my head went to – to pray for cardinal Pell’s intercession,” Caitlin said. “I was just praying that the Lord have mercy on us. I was just praying that we bear it and bear it well.”
After spending 11 nights and 12 days in hospital, Vincent was discharged on Thursday March 13 with what Wes said was a “clean bill of health”.
In the days before he was discharged, Vincent was standing up, walking and playing peek-a-boo with the nurses.
He was moved out of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit on Tuesday March 11. Two days earlier, Vincent had started eating regular food and the previous day had been taken off heavy drugs.
Just five nights after the accident, Vincent had been taken off a ventilator and was breathing on his own with a CPAP machine.
The day before, March 6, his MRI had come back “completely clean”. The family was amazed by the recovery. Wes said it was “a little miracle each day”.
Reflecting on the experience of meeting cardinal Pell, who was in Phoenix at the end of 2021 on a book tour promoting his three-volume prison journal from his 404-day imprisonment, Caitlin said it was “just a blessing to be in cardinal Pell’s presence and to be able to experience that”.
The family has a connection to cardinal Pell. One of Caitlin’s brothers, Father Dan Connealy – a Catholic Priest in the town of Flagstaff located about 230km north of Phoenix – is a friend of Father Joseph Hamilton, the Rector of Domus Australia in Rome and cardinal Pell’s former secretary.
“My brother had just been out in Rome in January for a trip and Father Hamilton had sent back a Rosary for me and that was the Rosary I grabbed when we went to the hospital,” Caitlin said.
“We knew how much cardinal Pell had suffered and then we had been lucky enough to have dinner at my parents’ house with him.”
Caitlin said she had previously reflected on cardinal Pell’s solitary confinement and respected his appreciation of suffering as a means of coming closer to God.
“To love your ministry as a priest so much that you climb to the ranks of cardinal in whatever way it happens and then to be accused of something so heinous and so ugly, and yet to be obedient to your higher-ups, the Pope, and to return to suffer whatever consequences the state was going to put on you – how he ended up incarcerated like that. And the injustice of it all,” Caitlin said. “But what did he do? He kept a journal and he suffered it well.”
Wes told The Australian: “We do think cardinal Pell is up in heaven and he is a saint already.”
One of the other first responders to the 911 call, Leah Groom, a fire dispatcher for 19 years, also spoke to local media when she reunited with the family at their home just a few days ago.
“I actually didn’t find out that this young boy survived until this morning. I thought he had passed. So it’s an awesome day. It was very emotional,” she said.
Speaking after Vincent’s recovery, Dr Chawla said that several factors may have played into his survival, including the swift performance of CPR and even the coldness of the water in the hot tub.
“This (cold water) is protective for the brain,” he said. “Had this been July or August when everyone’s swimming pools turn into bathwater, the outcome might not have been the same – likely would not have been the same.”
In addition to seeking assistance from cardinal Pell, Wes and Caitlin also sought the intercession of the Blessed Father Michael McGivney who founded the Knights of Columbus in 1882 and prayed a novena to him. Some of the other holy figures to whom Wes and Caitlin prayed for intercession included Blessed Maria Concepcion, or “Conchita.” She was the first Mexican laywoman to be beatified, with her feast day falling on March 3 – the day after Vincent’s accident.
She had nine children, three of whom died, including her youngest – Pedrito – who drowned at the age of three at a fountain near her house. “Her feast day is a day after (the accident),” said Wes. “I truly believe she was up there interceding.”
Through their connections to cardinal Pell, Wes and Caitlin were provided with a card containing a prayer to “obtain a favour through the intercession of cardinal George Pell”.
Wes said the process was like asking people at church to pray for us. “We’re asking for them to intercede and ask for God,” he said. “You look at cardinal Pell. We met him. So there was a special bond – different than other people.”
He said cardinal Pell, Father McGivney and Blessed Conchita were all “waiting to get recognised” and made clear the family would assist in any future canonisation process.
“They’re saints already,” he said. “Whether it’s our miracle or another one – I don’t want to say we don’t care. We’re happy he (Vincent) is alive – but we will do whatever we can to help with that because it’s important.”
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout