My name is Patrick Gilboy, I am sixteen years old and a sophomore at Fenwick High school in Oak Park, Illinois. Six years ago (2016), I developed a problem in my stomach that was undiagnosable. The stomach problems started when I was in fourth grade. I was 10 years old. 

I had recently transferred to a new school and I was enjoying school. However, just over two months into my fourth grade year, my stomach started to ache all the time and my appetite decreased. I did not want to eat.  This also put a strain on my social contacts. I no longer wanted to play with my friends, my brother or my sister.

After about five months of pain, my parents decided to see a specialist. We continued to go to Chicago for different hospitals and different specialists. It weighed heavily on me that even after two months of tests, the doctors couldn't find out anything about the cause of my pain and nausea.  The official report was: nausea and abnormal weight loss. Neither of these were news to us. It was not hard to see that I was losing weight abnormally for a ten-year-old.  Instead of growing, I was getting thinner and weighing less.

On August 22, 2017, one of the doctors concluded perhaps I had Gastroesophageal Reflux disease.  I was now also examined for this. On October 3, 2017, however, it was discovered that this assumption was not correct. On the one hand, this diagnosis was a relief for me and my family. But on the other hand, we were completely at a loss, as none of the doctors had a guess as to what could be the cause of my sickness. For the next while, I took nausea pills and worked on ways to cope with the anxiety from the stomach aches.

 Several months passed, it was February 22, 2018.  It was a random school night. I did not have too much homework so my mom asked me if I would like to go to Mass with a special priest.  I had no idea who he was or why we were going there. I was thinking it was kind of peculiar for a Tuesday night. Normally, if I had heard that we had to drive 45 minutes to be able to attend this mass, I would have said no immediately. But strangely, that evening I just had a longing to go to Mass that night.

We arrived at Saint Gerald's Catholic Church in Oak Lawn 30 minutes early because my mother knew there would be many people. There were really a lot of people already there and we sat down in the only seats we could find.

The Mass was quite normal, so I wondered why we had travelled so far.

After the final blessing, Father Ubald started the Benediction.

Father Ubald processed around with the Monstrance and started to precede through the pews with Jesus. Every few rows he stopped and made the sign of the cross with Jesus. Finally he came to the area where I was kneeling and stopped right in front of me. I so vividly remember Father Ubald looking straight at me. When he had made the sign of the cross with the monstrance, I suddenly felt a wave of immense heat drowning me. Instantly all my pain, all my fears and all my anxiety just lifted from me. I could not control myself at all. I started to cry violently. I started to empty every emotion that had been wound up inside of me for the last two years. Then I noticed that my mom was also crying, it was the first time I had ever seen her cry. She was crying as hard as I was, but so was everyone around me. I knew that I had experienced a glimpse of God’s mercy.

After Father Ubald returned to the Sanctuary, he began calling out healings of people that had been healed that night. Then he said, "A boy with unknown stomach problems has been healed out of the Lord's mercy". I looked around for who that could be; I looked at my mom and she just wiped her tears and nodded. I realised that he had just described me. I had close to crippling anxiety, but after my encounter with the Eucharist, I just got up in front of hundreds of people to “claimed my healing”.  I told everyone that I was the boy with the stomach problems that God had just healed.

Remark:

Father Ubald was a native of Rwanda. In 1963, his father and uncle were murdered by radical Hutus. This was a catalyst for his later strong commitment to forgiveness and reconciliation in his priestly ministry. Then, in 1994, when a total of 85 members from his family, including his mother, were killed during the genocide against the Tutsis, he was once again ready to forgive the killers of his relatives. His example and his priestly work led to an unexpected wave of reconciliation between the victims and perpetrators in Rwanda. In the course of his reconciliation celebrations and services, there were many spontaneous healings, often of the most serious infirmities, and God gave Father Ubald the gift of inner sight as to who of the persons present had been healed by God (see also the testimony: "God healed severe spiritual wounds from the genocide in Rwanda and subsequently gave many physical healings", "Healed from ulcerative colitis at a healing service" and "Healed from stage IV cancer through prayer"). An extraordinary number of providences also occurred in his environment (see, for example, "God filled my empty hands again and again to help people in Rwanda" and "Examples of how God has intervened and helped in our aid projects in Rwanda"). Father Ubald passed away in 2021.