babybrian.org
When Mary Pat and Shawn Gallagher were arranging to move their infant son’s remains nearly 40 years after his death, they received a phone call that left them stunned.
It was the funeral director.
“Mary Pat, I’ve never seen anything like this,” Mary Pat recalled the director saying in a June 27 interview with CatholicVote. “He looks just like he’s sleeping.”
In 1982, Mary Pat Gallagher gave birth to a son, Brian, at Fort Knox Army Base in Kentucky. Complications during labor led to his immediate transfer to neonatal intensive care, but despite resuscitation efforts, Brian passed away shortly after birth.
Thirty-seven years later, the Gallaghers arranged to relocate Brian’s remains so that he could one day be buried near them at a veterans cemetery in South Dakota. During the re-interment process, the original casket was accidentally damaged, requiring it to be opened so Brian’s body could be transferred to a new one.
What they witnessed defied all expectations: Brian’s body appeared completely untouched by time.
Brian had been embalmed and buried in a standard infant-sized casket. He was autopsied after his death — procedures that typically hasten decay. Yet when the casket was opened during the 2019 re-interment process at Black Hills National Cemetery, the funeral director was able to gently remove and re-dress his body without disturbing it.
Stunned by the call, the Gallaghers traveled to the cemetery, unsure of what they would find. The moment Mary Pat saw Brian again was filled with awe.
“It was like, oh my gosh, we get to see our son again,” she said. “I picked him up. It was beautiful… I could hold him again.”
She described his condition as astonishingly preserved.
“He was just this perfect baby, like we had just buried him that day,” she recalled. “There was no decomposition, no discoloring. It gives us goosebumps to this day.”
Only then did the Gallaghers revisit another lingering question — whether Brian had been baptized before he died.
Knowing their newborn was in critical condition at the time of his birth, they had requested a priest. A chaplain was called, but in the fog of grief, neither Mary Pat nor Shawn could recall the sacrament being performed. For decades, they believed it had taken place.
It wasn’t until they began documenting Brian’s story years later that they discovered no baptismal record existed with the diocese. However, nursing notes from the hospital that day confirmed that a priest had performed a conditional baptism about 35 minutes after Brian was pronounced dead.
Brian’s story remained largely unshared for years, as his parents quietly prayed and reflected on its significance — speaking of it only when they believed it might console a grieving friend or relative.
“We didn’t know what to do with this story. That’s why it’s been almost six years,” Mary Pat said. “It was a miracle for us.”
In March, a chance encounter at a Catholic women’s luncheon led Mary Pat to share Brian’s story with speaker Brianne Edwards, herself a grieving mother. At first, Mary Pat believed the Holy Spirit had nudged her to comfort Edwards with the story — but later came to see that same moment as a divine prompting to begin sharing Brian’s story with the world.
Edwards embraced the mission, creating a website, consulting canon lawyers, and launching a petition for his potential cause for canonization.
That petition is currently under review by two bishops: Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, who has said he would support an investigation if the local bishop initiates one, and Bishop Scott E. Bullock of the Diocese of Rapid City, from whom the Gallaghers are still awaiting a response.
Edwards, who lost her son Lachlan at 10 months old, has devoted much of her work to supporting grieving parents through her foundation, Lach’s Legacy.
Describing meeting Mary Pat for the first time, Edwards said she had a quiet confidence in her: “It must have been Holy Spirit‑inspired boldness” that led Mary Pat to share her story, she said.
Intrigued, Edwards recalled asking for a photo of Brian’s preserved body.
“I was like witnessing a eucharistic miracle … this tangible physical sign of something that the Church has always taught,” she told CatholicVote.
Reflecting on the timing of baby Brian’s baptism, Edwards called it a “particularly profound piece of the story.”
“Knowing that he was not baptized before his death is also an enormous consolation for the parents that didn’t have the opportunity to baptize their babies,” she said.
Mary Pat and Shawn, who went on to raise three more children, understand that an official inquiry could involve reopening the grave of their firstborn again.
“If Brian’s excavation finds him decomposed… then we know that it’s been a miracle for Shawn and me and our family,” Mary Pat said. “However, if he is still incorrupt, then this is a miracle for the world.”
For Mary Pat, the story’s power lies in what it can offer to grieving parents, especially those whose babies died before receiving baptism.
“This gives hope to moms that have lost so many children in miscarriages and stillbirths, that one day they will see their child again,” she said. “That’s what we believe, and [Brian’s story] is a pathway to give them that peace and hope.”
The Gallaghers and their children refer to him as “St. Brian” and regularly pray to him, asking for his intercession.
“I’ve been doing that an awful lot since 2019,” Mary Pat said. “And God [has been] answering our prayers right and left.”
When asked what she most hopes others take away from Brian’s story, Mary Pat’s answer is simple but firm: peace and hope.
“Those are really the only two words that come to mind,” she said. “But it seems to be the words that moms are looking for.”
