The mother of a disabled child blessed by Pope Francis on Saturday in Philadelphia has praised the Roman Catholic leader for showing “love for everybody, regardless of who [they] are, where [they] come from”.
Christopher Limos, a 10-year-old boy who has lived with cerebral palsy ever since a staph infection put him on life support for 14 days as an infant, was one of a group of disabled children who caught Francis’s eye as he was finishing mass at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul.
On his way out of the church, the pope passed several disabled children, immediately smiling and pausing to bless each in turn, kissing one on the head and clasping the hands of another.
“He has love for everybody, regardless of who you are, where you come from, what your beliefs are – he has respect for everybody,” Christopher’s mother, Nancy Limos, told the Guardian.
The blessing was a complete surprise, she said, adding that she had not even known whether she would get to see the pope when the Make a Wish Foundation got her family set of tickets.
“We’ve got this community wheelchair, so we thought they would put us in the back,” she said. “It’s just amazing.”
Nancy Limos, whose family emigrated from Mexico when she was four, said she had asked the pope “to bring dignity and respect for special needs kids”.
“In our culture, sometimes if you have a special needs child they see it as a curse,” she said. But she added that she was heartened by Pope Francis’s words and actions, and that it gave her hope.
She was not the only mother to be moved by Francis’s actions on Saturday. Kristin Keating thanked the pope when he kissed the forehead of her 10-year-old son, Michael, who like Christopher suffers from cerebral palsy.
Francis, who had just landed in Philadelphia, appeared to spot Michael as he was being driven away from the plane. He ordered his Fiat 500L to be stopped, got out and walked over to the boy, put his hand on his head and kissed him as his sobbing mother looked on.
“It was an unbelievable feeling,” Keating told Associated Press, adding she felt “totally blessed and loved” by the pope.
“When the pope took his hand off him, he had a bit of a smile on his face. To me, in that moment, he must have felt that blessing,” said Keating, a fourth-grade teacher from Elverson. “For us, it was beautiful,” she added. “For us, it meant something.”
