I come from Paris and have Vietnamese roots. As a young man, I studied in the United States and returned to Paris at the age of 24. It was there that I met my current wife Nathalie. She was a believer, whereas I was not yet baptised. I started attending catechism classes to prepare for a church wedding, but I soon stopped because of my workload. My work also required me to move regularly.

When I was working in the Netherlands, our first daughter, Lou-Anh, was born. After my return to France, my second daughter, Mayline, was born.

On 29 May 2012, we held an aperitif dinner to celebrate our upcoming move to Mandelieu with the mothers and children of the Cours Diot school. We were opening a new restaurant in Nice.

During this party, Mayline, who was three and a half years old at the time, was sitting on a sofa with her food. Suddenly she was standing behind me, both hands clasped around her neck, desperately stamping her feet on the floor but unable to make a sound. She was suffocating! Before I could help her properly, she fainted.

As I had trained in first aid, I immediately tried to help her with the so-called "Heimlich grip", a compression of the upper abdomen, but without success. A piece of sausage was stuck in her windpipe and could not be removed.

The emergency doctor was called immediately and in the meantime I desperately tried to remove the obstruction but I didn't succeed, it was stuck too deeply in her windpipe. In the meantime, her breathing had stopped and also her heart.  She was lying in my arms and no longer breathing.

The firefighters who arrived first tried everything to revive her, but they couldn't do it either. Then the emergency doctor arrived. After what seemed like an interminable time, he managed to stabilise her and finally remove the foreign body, but her little heart continued to stop. That night, Mayline suffered three more cardiac arrests and a pulmonary embolism at Lyon Hospital. The doctors told us that her condition was so critical that she would probably not survive the night. Of course we stayed there.

Mayline survived the night and a dramatic fight for her survival began in the intensive care unit. On this second day, she was put into an induced coma and her brain waves were monitored. Day after day, a decrease in brain activity was detected. Due to the prolonged lack of oxygen, her brain had shrunk and suffered irreversible physiological and anatomical damage. On the 10th day of her stay in intensive care, it was found that there was no brain activity at all. The doctors declared that Mayline was in a deep, irreversible coma and she was classified as brain dead.

The doctors then recommended that we agree to the "end of life project", i.e. to stop artificial feeding. Mayline would die shortly afterwards due to dehydration. We did not want to agree to this suggestion under any circumstances.

Mayline was then transferred from the intensive care unit to the neuropaediatric ward, where she received the anointing of the sick.

In the meantime, we often had to go to the school of Lou-Anh, Mayline's older sister. She was only seven years old and also needed our daily presence and support to lead as normal a life as possible during this difficult time.  We also got to know Elizabeth, the mother of one of Lou-Anh‘s classmates.  Elisabeth had already lost two children and could therefore easily understand our desperate situation.  She was a woman of faith and a member of a prayer movement called "Living Rosary". This is an organisation whose members pray at least one short rosary every day for various intentions. This prayer movement, which is now widespread throughout the world, was founded in 1826 by a certain Pauline Marie Jaricot.

Elizabeth had the idea of organising a novena to the founder of this prayer movement. For nine days, people were to ask Pauline Marie Jaricot to intercede with God for the healing of our little Mayline. Because Pauline Jaricot had not yet been canonised, Elisabeth asked the Cardinal of Lyon for permission to do so, as Pauline had lived in his diocese in the 19th century.

All the pupils, parents and teachers of the Lou-Anh school then promised to pray for Mayline for nine days. This call for a novena was shared by friends all over the world. Later, when we received letters from people all over the world, we realised that thousands of people had prayed to Pauline Jaricot for our Mayline.

Due to our move to the Nice area, Mayline also had to be transferred to the Nice hospital. We had seen her in Lyon before her transfer: Her eyes were empty and lifeless, her pupils were huge. When we saw her again in Nice, the look in her eyes had completely changed: It was back, alive, completely normal. Mayline's eyes shone and life shone through again. In response to our surprised questions, the nurses emphasised that they had done nothing for Mayline in the meantime.

In spite of these extraordinary developments, the "end of life project" was still visible in Mayline‘s medical records. Then, at a meeting with the new medical team looking after Mayline, the head neurologist in Nice explained that Mayline's clinical condition was not consistent with the medical records. She was not going to die but there would be no hope of recovery. At best, she would one day move her eyes, but she would always remain severely disabled and would never be able to communicate with us.

But for us, her parents, who cared for her every day, it became increasingly clear that she was returning to life. Soon we could see her lips forming the words daddy and mummy, she laughed when we tickled her, she seemed to want to blow out imaginary candles when we talked about an aunt's birthday and she cried when we had to leave her in the evening.

The doctors thought it impossible for Mayline to communicate as the absence of her brain waves made this impossible. However, one day when the neurologist heard Mayline clearly say "mummy" to Nathalie during a visit, his opinion suddenly changed. The doctors did not understand this development at all and had never seen it before; it was scientifically inexplicable.

However, a new MRI scan of the brain was devastating: it still showed irreversible brain damage with dead tissue in both hemispheres of the brain, which had led to shrinkage of the brain.

The restoration of healthy brain tissue was apparently medically impossible. Mayline was then  transferred to a facility 150 km away that specialises in the care of severely disabled infants. Unfortunately, this made our visits very difficult.

Despite all of the negative prognoses, Mayline made unexpected progress there too: she was suddenly able to say "daddy", she could show us how to brush her teeth and swallow porridge. We were now able to feed her ourselves - one tube less!

On 2 September, she was able to sit up on her own for the first time and she was also able to keep her balance. Can a brain-dead person do that? On 23 September, Mayline showed us her doll and said: "Baby". And then: when Mayline saw that her mum was coming to visit, she pulled herself up by the bars of her bed and was able to stand again. Nathalie's surprise was boundless, Mayline laughed and repeated the feat over and over again. Her recovery continued and her ability to speak normalised.

We would have liked to have brought Mayline home in October. She cried her eyes out every time we left. But in France it is difficult to bring a seriously ill child home. As our child was diagnosed with irreversible brain damage and this diagnosis persisted despite all the progress made, numerous additional tests had to be carried out beforehand. Yet despite all of  Mayline‘s visible improvements, the results of her MRI scan still appeared catastrophic. So we were still unable to get Mayline out of hospital, even though she was already able to eat, speak, draw, walk and run independently.

Finally, on 25 November 2012, we were able to bring her home cured - an incredibly wonderful event!

Mealtime at home was exciting: "Eat slowly, you have to chew well". "Yes," said Mayline, "otherwise..."  - and she would put her hands round her neck and make horrible noises with her mouth open. So she had memories of her accident, but wasn't traumatised.

After it was all over, I started to look into this inexplicable healing. Before that, I had been far from faith. I was not baptised and rarely found myself believing in the possibility of God's existence. But now I knew for sure that God was at work. For me, it is an incredible gift that we and our daughter were so important in God's eyes, that he had  helped and guided us through the intercession of Pauline Jaricot. I was now able to find the path of faith. Gratitude to God for this incredible gift now defines my life.

Incidentally, it took a very long time for the church to recognise it as a miracle. Elisabeth, the woman who had started the novena initiated the process. She wanted to forward the medical documents to the relevant diocese. But new examinations were requested, e.g. a new MRI of the brain. And then it turned out that everything was fine! The doctor compared the old MRI images, which he himself had taken three years ago, with the new images and it was incredible: Mayline's brain had regained its normal size and there was no more dead tissue or gaps....

Neurological tests to measure the transmission of electrical impulses from the brain to the limbs also showed that Mayline's neuronal functions had been 100% restored since the novena to Pauline Jaricot. Previously, the brain had suffered irreversible anatomical and physiological damage and had ceased all activity. - A phenomenon for which there is no scientific explanation. Even the most sober-minded doctors could only speak of a miracle in this context.

As part of the beatification process, new examinations were carried out in Rome. Mayline was 7-8 years old at the time. She had endured the associated trials very patiently.

And finally, on 26 May 2020, Pope Francis recognised that God had performed a miracle for our Mayline through the intercession of Pauline Marie Jaricot. In the presence of 12,000 faithful, Pauline was beatified by Cardinal Antonio Tagle in Lyon on 22 May 2022.

Today, we see it as our duty to bear witness to the fact that God not only exists, but is also ready to act in our lives when we turn to him in trusting prayer.