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August 26, 2025 13 mins

In this episode of Unwritten, Trevor sits down with Victor to talk about the astounding, true story of his newborn son's miraculous healing from a life-threatening condition, a powerful testament to the intercession of St. Padre Pio and the Holy Spirit's movement.

Whether you're seeking proof of God's powerful hand, grappling with health challenges, or deepening your understanding of faith, prayer, and the communion of saints, this conversation will inspire hope, strengthen your faith in divine intervention, and illustrate the profound power of surrender and prayer in the face of impossible odds.


What You’ll Hear:

  • The terrifying moments of "code blue" and Victor's newborn son Pierce's fight for life against PPHN (persistent pulmonary hypertension of a newborn), leading a father to desperate prayer and the baptism of his son amidst chaos.
  • The incredible, tangible miracle: how a rosary became "smoking hot" in Victor's hand, and his son's oxygen saturation immediately jumped to 100% and stayed unnaturally high through St. Padre Pio's intercession, a moment Victor considers a "signal grace".
  • Victor's profound spiritual journey from fear to complete surrender to God's will, experiencing "unworldly love" and later discovering that his now healthy three-year-old son continues to see St. Padre Pio as "my buddy".


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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
Welcome to Unwritten, a podcast dedicated to sharing the stories
of the movement of the Holy Spirit in the world.
Today, I'm your host, Trevor Baraka, and on today's episode,
we're getting to hear from Victor Coppen.
I'm grateful to be a father of three amazing children and they
definitely keep my life very full.
What I've noticed over the yearsof being a father is that for as
much as we tend to take life forgranted, the gift of life and

(00:30):
everything that has to happen physiologically just for one
single child to grow is astounding.
I learned this first hand in thein the delivery room when we had
our first child and welcomed Evie out of the womb.
Things certainly don't always goaccording to plan, however, and
in today's story we hear first hand about both the tragedy
possible and welcoming a baby and God's powerful hand in the

(00:53):
midst of it. Welcome to the show and
listening. I was sitting in the hospital
recliner a few days after Saint Patrick's Day.
Snow was falling outside. I was finally able to hold my
newborn son for one of the firsttime since he had been born.
He was sitting in my left arm like you would hold a baby

(01:13):
football, and a predictable thing started happening.
His oxygen saturation started crashing again.
He was already hooked up to breathing tubes, respirators,
all kind of monitors. But that didn't stop it all the
time from a healthy 98% saturation and started to
flutter down. You'd hear a few beeps at 9495,

(01:34):
a few more at 92, and then it sounded like a submarine was
under attack when it dipped below 90.
That's when all the nurses and doctors would rush in and move
some dials and poke and prod himand try to get the oxygen number
higher. I had habitually started praying
when this would happen, begging the Lord to make him healthy, to
bring his oxygen higher, and this time was no different.

(01:56):
I pulled a rosary out of my pocket that I had gotten the
night before in my right hand and I I laid it across the
stomach. The only thing that I did
different this time was I asked St.
Pio PetroChina to pray with me when I said the rosary.
As I started the creed, the entire rosary got smoking hot,
so hot that you wanted to drop it, but you knew that's the last

(02:16):
thing that you wanted to do. Immediately every muscle in my
son's body started to twitch from above his eyebrows to his
nose to his lips, the places where I didn't even know he had
a muscle, and he started to convulse almost like a seizure.
And at the same time, his oxygensaturation that was in the low

(02:38):
90s and dropping fast immediately went to 100% and
stayed there unnaturally high, 100% A healthy person is usually
at 97 or 98. He kept convulsing and of course
I started to have my doubts eventhough the rosary was hot and
I'd never experienced this before.
I thought that maybe he's havinga seizure in the machines,

(02:58):
malfunctioning, we're getting a false reading on his oxygen
saturation and I'm going crazy with these rosary beads in my
hand. As I went to lift the rosary
with my right hand off of his stomach, this couple day old
newborn with his eyes closed, sound asleep, reached his left
hand up and grabbed the rosary with his eyes closed and
continued to shake. I knew then that I better keep

(03:19):
praying. I finished the rosary as oxygen
stayed at 100%. I sat there dumbfounded,
wondering how we had been so blessed, how I had been so
blessed to witness a direct intervention in his life some
time past. I've no idea how much.
The nurses came in for their next round of check UPS.
They checked his temperature, changed his diaper, did the

(03:40):
usual routine and after they sethim back in the isolate, his
oxygen settled in and was a 98. They had all observed how he's
doing great. I haven't seen him crash in a
while and I was too astounded tospeak when they set him in and
at a normal level. Then sometime later he was
laying sort of on his back, sortof on his side away from me and

(04:00):
I was the only one in there. Now again I started to feel a
little bit like doubting Thomas.I couldn't believe that what I
had witnessed with my own eyes, felt with my own hands had just
happened. So I walked over gingerly and I
slowly dangled the rosary on hisback, just ever so slightly let
it touch down on his back shoulder, and immediately his

(04:22):
whole body has started convulsing again and his oxygen
saturation, as measured by a scientific machine, jumped from
98 to 100. As we processed what had
happened to our young son and and to our family over the next
few days, we realized how important the things that led up
to that day were in preparing usto receive the Lord more fully

(04:43):
in our family. The journey actually started
several months before, on a First Saturday.
It was a devoted group of peopleat our parish that honored the
First Saturday devotion request of Marriott Fatima.
They'd get together for Mass andconfession and prayers of
reparation. I'd been invited for a while and
for whatever reason decided to go the November prior.

(05:03):
I had been practicing the faith but had honestly gotten out of
the habit of a regular confession.
So going that first time and seeing that spiritual growth
over the next few months was real important, I think to
prepare me personally and prepare all of us for for what
was to come. That 5th Saturday of the
devotion is what Mary promises, the spiritual grace necessary to

(05:26):
get to Heaven. That was in March, just before
Pierce was born. No more than two weeks later.
He was born, initially a healthybaby, scheduled C-section, and
was delivered minutes after he was supposed to be.
He came out a healthy child withan Apgar score of nine.
We went back to the maternity ward to get him cleaned up and
to allow him to nurse for the first time.

(05:47):
Fortunately, the nurse that was in that ward stuck around just
to chitchat and as he began to nurse, she came over to check
his foot. It was bright purple and as she
pulled back the blanket, his entire body was rapidly turning
dark blue and purple. She had whisked him away and we
were immediately in fear. Pierce was born with PPHN,

(06:09):
Persistent pulmonary hypertension of a newborn.
We were told that's when the lapin your heart doesn't come down
in the proper way to divert blood to your lungs when you're
breathing on your own for the first time.
In the ensuing hours, as the helicopter was on its way to our
local hospital, doctors and residents kept them alive while
he was revived 4 times. We heard code blue on the on the

(06:31):
PA system and we knew that was probably for him.
So I asked the nurse to get us alittle cup of water and we asked
to see the pediatrician ever seeing him for an update.
I said I needed to, I needed to and I couldn't get the words
out. So I asked an old friend, Saint

(06:51):
Joseph, for the strength to helpbaptize this baby.
I needed to baptized this baby, I was able to finally blurt out.
She whisked me. It felt like we ran down the
hall to where he was being worked on.
So in the middle of sirens goingoff and a bunch of people
working on him trying to get oxygen into his lungs, I was
able to sprinkle this Styrofoam cup of hospital water on his

(07:13):
forehead and baptize him in the name of the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit. By God's grace in Saint Joseph's
intercession. I think possibly that was
important for Pierce then to be ready to receive what was found.
The A-Team from West Penn showedup and doctors in flight suits
and were able to put him on a respirator and fly him to
Pittsburgh. I didn't have any skills to be
allowed in the helicopter, so I chased the helicopter down in my

(07:36):
car. He was already out of his first
minor surgery by the time I got there.
A few very short but very long days later, my brave wife was
able to come to Pittsburgh afterhealing up from the C-section.
She had already given up her child once to see him whisked
away on a ventilator in a helicopter.
She was able to spend some time with him and and hold him

(07:56):
outside the isolette. I went back home to check on our
two older children and by God's Providence one of our great
priests at the Love of Saint Pioof PetroChina at our parish or
special Mass. It was the blood stained glove
of his stigmata that had come infrom a contact in Kentucky.
This was pre scheduled and had nothing to do with us, although

(08:18):
it would feel like it had been preordained later on.
The Mass was beautiful. Afterwards I went to the back to
buy a few rosaries or donate fora few rosaries in order to lay
on the relic. These were just cheap dollar
rosaries with that light blue colored bead or that light pink
you've seen them in the back of of every parish you've been in,
I'm sure. And I was able to lay those on

(08:39):
top of the reliquary. There was a glass case covering
the reliquary and venerate the relic and just ask St.
Pio to bind his intercession to those rosaries that they were to
ever be prayed worthily that he would also pray too.
It was a simple gesture, but it must have been enough to get his
attention because when I went back to the hospital the next
day, that's when the wonderful intercession took place right

(09:02):
before my eyes. Later on that night, after what
we started calling a miracle or or perhaps it was it was a
signal grace, which the Dominicans would call one of the
15 promises to those who pray the rosary.
We knew in our minds that he would be OK, but we still had
the fear in our hearts that perhaps because he lost oxygen

(09:22):
for a time that there would be some consequence to his brain or
his growth or any of the fears that a parent has for their
young child, especially one who's undergone some trauma.
So I curled up on the little love seat across the hospital
room and I covered with one of those light hospital blankets.
In the middle of the night, the beep started again.
He had been at a stable, healthyoxygen level since the

(09:45):
experience earlier that afternoon.
But I saw 96 and I saw 94, and Iheard some louder beeps.
I think because I was prepared by the experience earlier, I was
finally, for the first time in my life, able to surrender.
I started praying immediately, like I had each time the oxygen
had crashed the last few days. But this time, instead of asking

(10:05):
the Lord for what I wanted, or asking the Lord to heal him, or
for his oxygen to go out, I justasked the Lord the strength to
accept His will. I acknowledge that that baby
before me was actually God's child, and then if he needed
him, he could take him, Didn't want him to take him, but if
that's what he wanted. In that moment I finally
surrendered my heart to God's will, and He gave me the

(10:26):
strength to accept that will. Immediately I was surrounded by
love that is unworldly, completely enveloped in
unconditional love. It felt like I was taken up
somewhere, though I was laying right there and aware of it.
I knew that that love would never go away, and I also knew
more than anything I've ever known, that that was the Holy

(10:47):
Spirit letting me know that I amloved.
You also let it be known all thesins that I had committed, I'd
forgotten about, that I had minimized, that I had tried to
justify in my head, while at thesame time holding me in that
love. The words that I'm sharing with
you do not describe what I was allowed to feel in that moment.
That God will never abandoned us, That He has never abandoned

(11:11):
us, even in our sins, even in our waywardness, even in our
lukewarmness. That He loves us no matter what.
And it took an act of surrender,complete trust to the point of
surrender, to make enough room in my own heart to receive Him.
Our lives have certainly been different since then.
We now have a healthy 3 year oldboy with no repercussion from

(11:34):
oxygen deprivation or any of theexperience that he went through.
He's a little bit too feisty sometimes.
Actually. We were in the sanctuary just
this past Sunday and he wasn't able to stay for the whole mass.
So overcoming our frustrations, he was walking with my wife in
the back hallway and saw two posters of Saint Pio on little

(11:54):
Flyers in the back wall. He pointed to him and said
that's my buddy, which wouldn't be abnormal.
He's seen a statue of him beforeand perhaps seen him on a
rosary. My wife asked him, oh, have you
seen him before, just in conversation?
And he said, yeah, I saw him on my birthday, which was just a
week prior. So she asked, did you see him
last week or have you seen him on other birthdays?

(12:15):
He pointed to his forehead and said, I saw him right here.
I see him on all my birthdays. Our frustration immediately
melted. And through our tears, we
contemplated not just that the Saints would be with us at a
moment, but rather that the Saints are with us at each
moment. They walk with us through our
whole lives. We've been appointed guardian

(12:36):
angels. The communion of Saints bring us
closer to the Lord at every moment.
I share this story with you for the same reason that John writes
in chapter 20 verse 31, that youmay believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God, and thatbelieving you may have life in
His name. Victor, thank you so much for

(12:58):
sharing such an intimate but powerful testimony to the power
of prayer, the intercession of the Saints, and your
faithfulness to God. And it's one of the most trying
moments of your life. This now marks, for those
keeping track, 2 remarkable miracles of Padre Pio on the
show. And I found myself moved by
God's faithfulness in your story.
I'm also struck by your surrender.

(13:20):
Just that prayerful movement of your heart to give everything to
God is something that inspires me to be just a little more
trusting today and what the Lordis doing in my life.
So thank you so much, Victor, and thank you so much for
listening. We hope to see you next week.
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