Kevin Becker's 'miracle' recovery could lead to sainthood for Pier Giorgio Frassati

Kevin Becker was a college student when he fell off a roof, fracturing his skull in five places, and was given little chance by doctors of surviving or living a normal life if he did make it.

But as the former Lynbrook High School lacrosse and soccer player lay in a hospital bed in a coma in Pennsylvania a decade ago, relatives started to pray. They directed their pleas to the Catholic scion of a wealthy family in Italy who a century ago dedicated his life to the poor and is now up for sainthood at the Vatican.

In a case doctors found highly unusual, Becker, then 21, soon fully opened his eyes, woke up, began to walk, and regained his brain function. After 18 days, he left the hospital.

As Easter Sunday is celebrated by thousands of Christians on Long Island and millions around the world, Becker, 32, is working as a college sports recruiter and is in good enough health to run marathons and train 15 miles a day. He can’t help but see parallels between Jesus’ resurrection story and his own recovery.

The Lynbrook resident’s case is now before the Vatican as a potential “miracle” that could help finalize the path of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati to sainthood. Becker travels the country giving inspirational talks about his odyssey.

“I don’t think my story is possible without Easter, or the sacrifice that Jesus made for us,” Becker said. “The reason I am here living and breathing and speaking, sharing my story, sharing hope and faith, is because of what he did and teaching us the way.”

Easter is the most important day of the year for Christians, marking Jesus’ resurrection three days after he was crucified on a cross on what is known as Good Friday. A day of great joy and hope, Easter culminates Holy Week for the faithful.

'Very little hope left'

Becker recalls that he was days away from starting his junior year at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania when he headed to the second-floor roof of his off-campus house one night in August 2011.

He doesn’t remember what happened exactly, but he slipped off the roof, landed on his head and suffered a brain injury.

Doctors had to transfer him from a local hospital to one in Allentown with more advanced trauma facilities but told his parents they could not guarantee he would survive the trip.

He made it, but “on day five in his coma, the doctor basically told my husband that there really was very little hope left,” said Jeanmarie Becker, Kevin’s mother.

Eight days into his stay, though, a photograph of Frassati sent by a cousin of Becker's arrived in his room. That's when he and his family said his recovery began in earnest.

“We had won what I call the God lottery in being given our son back when we shouldn’t have been,” his mother said. “I think there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t thank God for the gift that he gave us in healing our son.”

He went back to college five months after the accident and later graduated. A year after the brain injury, he returned to Lehigh Valley Hospital where he was treated and, to the amazement of doctors, ran in a half-marathon sponsored by the hospital. He finished near the top of about 1,000 runners.

Becker’s case has been taken up by FrassatiUSA, a ministry that seeks to promote the spirituality of Frassati and supports the Vatican declaring him a saint. Frassati already has passed the first stage, with one miracle officially attributed to him, and now needs one more to attain sainthood.

“In my 17 years with FrassatiUSA, Kevin’s case is definitely the most powerful, moving, believable, canonization-worthy miracle that I have seen,” said Christine Wohar, a Nashville, Tennessee, resident who heads the organization.

A spiritual life

Frassati was born into an upper-class family in Turin, Italy, in 1901. His father founded the famous Italian newspaper “La Stampa” and served as ambassador to Germany.

The younger Frassati developed a spiritual life early on, and as a teenager served the sick, the needy, orphans and veterans returning from World War I, Wohar said. He eventually studied to obtain a degree as a mining engineer so he could work with “the poorest of the poor” — miners, she said.

Frassati “came from wealth, fame, athleticism, good looks,” Wohar said. “He could have had everything handed to him, but he identified as one of the poor. He wanted to serve the poor.”

He is “just a great role model for the culture that we are in today,” she added, “and because he wasn’t a priest or a nun, his story does resonate” with many laypeople who find him so relatable.

Frassati died in 1925 at the age of 24 from polio. Doctors believed he picked up the disease from one of the poor he was helping, Wohar said.

Decades later, Pope John Paul II visited Frassati’s original tomb, and in 1990 “beatified” him during a service in St. Peter’s Square in Rome. It left him one step away from sainthood.

Frassati is gaining an increasing following around the world: Several years ago, the pastor at Curé of Ars Roman Catholic Church in Merrick commissioned a statue of him that now stands in the courtyard.

On Palm Sunday, a new parish in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, was inaugurated as Frassati Catholic Church — the first in the Americas, Wohar said. Schools in Colorado, Illinois and Texas now bear his name. And on June 28, the Catholic cable network EWTN will premier a docudrama about his life.

Becker, who has spoken about his recovery at the church in Merrick as well as St. John’s University, Kellenberg High School, Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, and other institutions, said he is grateful to both Frassati and Jesus.

Frassati has “been like another brother to me,” Becker said. “It’s been really a humbling experience knowing that he’s been looking down upon me.”