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Father Jesús Mariscal is the parochial vicar at St. Paul Cathedral in Yakima, Washington. He stepped out of the rectory in September for what he thought would be a short trip to buy donuts for a marriage preparation meeting with an engaged couple. However, as he walked past the statue of the Our Lady of Immaculate Conception, located on the cathedral grounds, he noticed a homeless woman in distress standing near it.
She was screaming: I need help! I’m having a baby!” The priest, Father Mariscal couldn’t believe it at first. He then saw blood at her feet. She cried out, “I’m having it now! I’m having it now!”
He called 911 and helped the woman lie down. He then put his phone on speaker and placed it on the ground so he could follow the 911 instructions.
Within seconds the woman gave birth to a baby boy. Father Mariscal handed the crying boy to the woman.
“I’m having another!” she shouted to the shocked priest.
Father Mariscal delivered the second boy. He told the 911 operator it was still in the amniotic sac, the protective membrane that surrounds a child in the womb. Father Mariscal saw the baby moving inside it.
The 911 operator told him to break it open.
Having no tools at his disposal, the priest, was able to burst the sac with his hands, only to find the tiny infant wasn’t breathing.
His umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. The operator told Father Mariscal to lay the child on his side and gently tap him on the back.
After a few moments the baby started screaming. Father Mariscal placed the second child in the woman’s other free arm.
Then the priest ran inside to get towels. Finally, the paramedics arrived.
Father Mariscal texted the couple he was supposed to meet for marriage preparation.
“I’m sorry I’m late for our appointment. I was just helping a lady deliver twins,” he wrote.
They responded, assuming it was a joke to excuse his tardiness, “LOL Father. You don’t have to lie.” The woman and twin boys were taken to the hospital. The babies were born premature, at 30 weeks. Father Mariscal has visited them in the hospital. They are doing well.
Father Mariscal does not know the exact nature of the mother’s situation in life. She left the hospital a few hours after being admitted, and as far as anyone knows she has not yet returned.
“It’s a beautiful story on one side, but heartbreaking on the other,” said the priest, whose own beloved mother passed away earlier in the year.
“It was a surreal experience,” he said. “It was like something from a movie.”
“I was there holding a baby with my bloody hands, and the baby was all bloody as well, and I’m dressed in clerics And I was thinking, ‘What is God trying to tell me? What are you trying to tell me God? What is this about?’”
He shared the experience with parishioners at Mass the next day, who also thought the priest was telling an “apocryphal” story.
But the reality is that there are two new babies who have come into this world thanks to his quick thinking and action. And, although they have entered the world at a disadvantage, like Jesus, with “no place to rest their heads,” these children have hope of being received with love and raised in caring homes.
Father Mariscal expressed that this story should be “about the mother and the babies and how they are,” he said. “The twins and the woman are the protagonists of God’s love. They and people like them on the peripheries of our own communities are the ones God is calling us to embrace with our service and love for our neighbors.” Father Jesús Mariscal is one of hundreds of active priests whose seminarian education has been supported by Catholic Extension.
He was ordained in 2018 and they now support his ministry with the diocese serving migrant farmworkers.
They work in solidarity with faith leaders like Father Mariscal, who serve among the poor in the poorest regions of the United States. Please consider helping them in their mission to support faith community leaders like Father Mariscal! https://give.catholicextension.org/page/42480/donate/1?en_txn6=XXXXDGUNW1&en_txn7=website
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