LONDON (LifeSiteNews) – 12-year-old Archie Battersbee, who died Saturday after doctors removed him from life-support, was baptized on Easter Sunday after he was taken into hospital.
The young boy died on August 6, after the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel removed him from life-support. Archie had been unconscious since April 7, after he was found in that condition by his mother, Hollie Dance.
His family engaged in a series of legal battles to keep their son on life-support, but, like many other families fighting to keep their children alive, they ultimately lost. Based on a decision that he was “likely dead,” Archie was removed from life-support and died shortly thereafter.
However, Archie’s story has a unique silver lining: the young boy was baptized and received into the Catholic Church just days after he went into a coma.
According to his mother, Archie had long desired to be baptized, as he had been especially inspired by Christian boxers on television.
“Archie was asking me to get him baptized over a few years before his accident, particularly after he started watching a lot of box fights on TV,” Dance told Christian Today in July.
“Many boxers pray for protection when they go into the ring,” she continued. “The more and more fights he’d watch with his brother, the more he would be nagging me to get him baptised. Every time we drove past St. Mary’s Church, he shouted out his most predictable line without fail, ‘Mum when can we go and be Christened in there?’”
Accordingly, on Easter Sunday, ten days after he was found unconscious, Archie received a Catholic baptism by the hospital chaplain, according to Premier Christian News. Likewise, the following day, on Easter Monday, his mother and two his older siblings reportedly were likewise baptized and entered the Catholic Church.
In June, Dance revealed that, while with her son in the hospital, “[t]he chaplain came in, and instantly asked, ‘Oh, would you like me to pray?’”
“We’ve done that every single day since we’ve been here – every day for just over eight weeks,” she added.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God; we become members of Christ, are incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission.” (CCC 1213)
The Baltimore Catechism states that Baptism removes the eternal punishment for unforgiven mortal sins committed prior to Baptism, as well as the temporal punishment due for venial sins, or forgiven mortal sins. In Archie’s case, it would forgive any sin committed before he fell into a coma, providing he had remorse for those sins.
“Baptism properly speaking (…) signifies and actually brings about death to sin and entry into the life of the Most Holy Trinity through configuration to the Paschal mystery of Christ,” the Catechism teaches.
While Archie lost his temporal life on earth, his Baptism grants him access to the life of grace and the life of the Church. In addition to opening the way to his own salvation, Archie’s suffering led to his family’s reception of Baptism and acceptance into the Catholic Church.
It allows their souls to be flooded with grace so that they have the strength to overcome the challenges of earthly life, remaining in the friendship of God, so that they might one day hope to attain heaven.