Father Emmanuelle Cueto Ramos, 31 years old from Mexico, is a priest of the Apostolic Missionary Society of the Word of God. In February 2020 he was diagnosed with eye cancer and due to the Covid-19 pandemic he was not treated until August, when it was too late. However, I know that suffering is the shortest way to heaven. Although he had incurable cancer, he could bring hope and be a witness to the faith.
As a teenager, Ramos had a crisis of faith and did not go to church. Until one day, a close friend invited him to attend a 5-day retreat. And a priest asked him: “Do you want to be a missionary?” Ramos immediately replied "no". But the priest insists: “You can become a priest.” Ramos replied: “No. I feel good like this.” But after 20 minutes of conversation, the priest convinced Ramos. Father said to him, “Go on a mission for a year.” But Ramos said: "A year is too long, Father." The priest said to him, "Then go for 6 months, or 3 months, or during the summer vacation." And that summer Ramos agreed to go on a mission.
Ramos said goodbye to his friends. As a member of a gang wearing loose pants and earrings, when Ramos said that he was going on a mission, no one believed him; they thought that soon he would give up. But 17 years have passed since the day Father Ramos first said "yes" to God's call.
Eye cancer
About a year and a half ago, Father Ramos began to experience discomfort in his right eye. I think it was due to fatigue, since that was the period when I was asked to collaborate in the seminary as deputy director of the department of initiation and teaching, and the following year he became director of this department. The pressure was great, because at the same time he was also the chaplain for the nuns in the community there.
At the end of January 2020, he arrived in Oklahoma, USA, and during a Mass, he felt his right eye close, swollen. When he returned to Peru, he went to the hospital for an ultrasound and it was determined that there was a tumor in his eye. Father was sent to the National Institute of Cancer, where CT results showed the tumor was not only in the eye but also in the inner part of the skull and part of the eye.
Delay in treatment due to the Covid-19 pandemic
When Dad started receiving treatment, the pandemic hit, and all the hospitals were closed. Only Covid patients are treated. Father was left untreated, his eyes began to swell too much. Dad was in so much pain that he needed palliative care, and the pain could only be relieved with morphine.
He waited from March, April and May, until June, but by July he had lost sight in his right eye, and in hospital he had to wait until August 19. Father also had difficulty because he did not have a residency permit in Peru, nor insurance in Peru; Dad doesn't want to go to a private hospital but wants to go to a hospital for the poor.
At the National Institute of Cancer, I learned that the tumor was benign but it was growing very quickly. Father had his first eye surgery on September 5 last year. Dad then had to undergo a bigger surgery, which lasted about 13 hours, which was multi-specialty because the doctor said the tumor had spread to a very dangerous area and it was compressing a vein. important, the right internal carotid artery, so blood didn't get to the right side of the head; and nothing more can be done.
The left carotid artery is doing all the work, it has to pump enough blood, it's bridging to the right. Doctors can't explain how the left carotid artery automatically takes over. Then they forced him to have a third reconstructive surgery.
Dad was then discharged from the hospital, but the doctor was a bit skeptical of the previous diagnosis, so he asked him to do a histochemistry study to rule out the hypothesis that the eye inflammation was caused by an infection.” The results showed that The tumor that had previously been diagnosed as benign was actually malignant, and they diagnosed him with "third-degree radio-facial cancer, which means it has metastasized.
Doctors diagnosed him with only 7 or 8 months to live. But for me, this diagnosis is medical, and as a Christian, I believe that no one knows, maybe I will live many more years.
Losing sight but not losing faith
Father Ramos called his illness the glorious Calvary that God allowed him to consecrate to Him. I offer my sickness for my salvation, to strengthen the brotherhood of the Apostles to the Mission of God and to the Church.
After the third surgery, his left eye also lost 20% of his vision and gradually decreased. I was afraid that I would not be able to say Mass but now I have started to say Mass again. People told him that he saw with the eyes of the spirit. At first he was sad because he couldn't see but now he has the joy of sharing his experience.
Even in this dark situation, Father Ramos feels protected, because something has been taken from him but has been replaced by something else. I experience peace when I celebrate Mass. The greatest sign of God's presence is peace!
There are people who say to me, "Father, let's hope for a miracle", and I also hope and believe that God can work a miracle, believe that God can cure me, but I do not force him to do so. force God to do it.
Father Ramos said: “I am used to this dark space, but in a positive sense… This blindness for me is not absence, but presence.” I remember the words of Cardinal Robert Sarah in the book "The Power of Silence", in which he said: "Silence is not the absence of someone, but the presence of others. something."
“We are silent when there is someone. And then I was silent because there was Someone, Jesus. In this darkness of my physical blindness, I cannot see the Lord but I touch Him, and in receiving Him these shadows are illuminated.”
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catholic