Little Indi Gregory, who passed away on November 13 following an incurable illness after doctors decided to withdraw treatment, was baptized in her hospital room on September 22.
Although her parents were not originally believers, they wished for their daughter to "access heaven."
Sometimes, in the midst of the most difficult trials, hope finds its place. This is what the parents of little Indi Gregory, an eight-month-old British girl with an incurable illness, experienced. After doctors decided to stop treatment, the little girl breathed her last in the night of Monday, November 13. She had been at the center of a legal battle between doctors and her parents, who had hoped to transfer her to Italy to continue care at the Vatican's Bambino Gesù hospital.
"If hell is a reality, then heaven is too"
Two months before her death, her parents, initially non-believers, made the decision to have their daughter baptized in her hospital room. "We want Indi to be able to access heaven," said Dean Gregory, the little girl's father, in an interview with the Italian press. "I am not religious, I am not baptized, but in court, I felt like I was in hell," he recounts. "I thought that if hell is a reality, then heaven is too. And if the devil exists, then God exists too."
Bishops Propose Solutions for the Future
The death, in the early hours of last Monday, of Indi Gregory, the 8-month-old baby around whom a tough legal battle had developed in the preceding weeks in the United Kingdom, "shows once again the need to give more weight to the voice of parents in these complex and sensitive cases."
This is affirmed by the Catholic bishops Patrick McKinney, Bishop of Nottingham – where everything took place – and John Sherrington, lead bishop for life issues at the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales.
To achieve this, they propose, for example, reforming the Health and Care Act 2022. In this sense, they suggest reviving an amendment presented last year in the House of Lords by Baroness Ilora Finlay on resolving conflicts in the field of pediatric palliative care.
This proposal provides for a mediation process for situations where parents and doctors do not agree on the steps to take in the care of minors.
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Without forcing doctors to carry out parents' decisions, the amendment included at least the necessity of encouraging parents to obtain a second opinion and ensuring that professionals who propose alternative treatments are heard both during mediation and in court. This would have been useful in Indi's case, as the invitation to transfer her to the Bambino Gesù pediatric hospital in Rome was due to the fact that this hospital proposed implanting a stent in a heart valve, so that she could breathe more easily. When that happened, "we could focus on the mitochondrial disease," as her father, Dean Gregory, explained to the media.
Bishops McKinney and Sherrington commit to "continue to contribute to a broader debate on when treatment becomes disproportionate" and on "the duty to maintain basic care." In their message, they also express their condolences and prayers for little Indi and her parents. Also their certainty that "as a baptized child of God, she will now share the joy of heaven after her short life, which brought deep joy to her parents."
They "loved and protected her as a precious gift from God." Finally, the prelates thank "all those who worked tirelessly to care for her" at the hospital where she was admitted and at the hospice where she died.