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PAGE 14 - The Georgia Bulletin, August 23, 1990
Boy With AIDS Who Was Embraced By Pope Dies
BY SISTER MARY ANN WALSH
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Seven-year-old Brendan
O’Rourke, a boy with AIDS who was embraced by Pope
John Paul II at a San Francisco church in 1987, died Aug.
17 of complications from the disease.
The youngster, who had contracted acquired immune
deficiency syndrome through a blood transfusion given
shortly after his premature birth, was mourned Aug. 20
both at his funeral in San Francisco and on the front page
of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper.
The boy captured the world’s heart three years earlier
when the pope hugged him as he reached from his father’s
arms to tug the pope’s ear at a meeting with AIDS
sufferers at San Francisco’s historic Mission Dolores. The
gesture from the red-haired preschooler visibly moved the
pontiff.
In noting the death, the Vatican newspaper said Brendan
offered the world the "fullness of a life that even as it
slipped away from him became more precious to every
one." The newspaper, which printed a photo of the pope
hugging the boy, added that he left the world "with
another hug of peace."
"The world still needs to understand - in these hours
more than ever - that the struggle is for life, as Brendan
taught us, and not for death," it added.
Brendan’s death at the University of Califomia-San
Francisco Medical Center followed numerous trips to the
hospital for treatment for AIDS complications. Hopes of
a miraculous cure also sent him to the Lourdes shrine in
France and to the beatification ceremony of Franciscan
Father Junipero Serra in Rome in 1988, where the young
ster received Communion from the pope.
Msgr. Patrick O’Shea, pastor of St. Cecilia’s Church in
San Francisco, told Catholic News Service that about a
thousand people attended an Aug. 19 prayer service at the
parish for the boy he described as "an upbeat little kid."
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The death was somewhat sudden, he said. Only a week
before, he had met Brendan as he was walking out of the
hospital and talking about an expected welcome-home
PAPAL EMBRACE - Pope John Paul II hugs
4-year old AIDS patient Brendan O’Rourke
during a visit to San Francisco’s Mission Dolores
Basilica in 1987. (CNS Photo from UPI)
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party, the priest said.
Brendan’s parents, John and Elaine O’Rourke, took the
death of Brendan, their middle child, "very well," the
priest said in a telephone interview Aug. 20.
"Both have a strong faith and come from big Catholic
families," he said.
Holy Name Sister Marilyn Murphy, principal at St.
Cecilia’s School, where Brendan would have been in
second grade in the fall, told CNS that despite his having
acquired immune deficiency syndrome, Brendan had a
normal school life and was out just once a month for
treatment.
The nun commended parents in the school community.
She said that when Brendan was enrolling in kindergarten,
she prepared herself for objections from some parents and
overbooked the class because she expected people to
withdraw their children.
None did, she said, adding, "I had to hire another
teacher. I couldn’t believe it."
Brendan was "a real gift" to the school, she said.
He was well-liked and had "a terrific personality," she
said. "The children in the whole school took to him, from
the eighth grade on down. He was not afraid to talk to
anybody."
He was "alive, alert and had a real twinkle in his eye,"
she said. "He never felt sorry for himself."
"I gave him his medicine" in school, she recalled. "It
tasted awful. He’d take it, say ‘ugh,’ and that was it."
The only special precaution the school took, the princi
pal said, was to have one person assigned to assist
Brendan should he somehow cut himself and bleed, since
the AIDS virus can be transmitted through contact with
blood contaminated with the virus. That never happened.
In an interview with CNS after the first meeting
between the pope and Brendan, Mrs. O’Rourke noted the
papal visit with people with AIDS removed the stigma her
family felt.
Now people know "we’re regular people like they are,"
she said. The meeting taught people that "AIDS doesn’t
know any boundaries."
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