The Council of Trent video screengrab / YouTube
Following the brain cancer diagnosis of his wife, Laura Horn, Catholic Answers apologist Trent Horn is asking for prayers through the intercession of Venerable Aloysius Schwartz for her healing.
The couple, who have three young children, announced the diagnosis in a July 21 YouTube video, which is now filled with several thousand comments from Catholics and many non-Catholic Christians pledging prayers for them.
Amid the 43-minute video, which covers the heavy news and what this cross is teaching them spiritually, Trent and Laura remained humorous, joyful and candid.
Laura shared that when she first received the news, she cried intensely and felt angry with God. However, her husband’s response in that moment was particularly supportive.
“[Trent told me,] ‘Laura, we don’t know how many days we’re given,” she said.
She noted that Trent has debated people on the problem of suffering and has said in the past, “we don’t know God’s ways.”
It would be scandalous if “he didn’t actually believe it when push came to show and his wife has brain cancer,” Laura said. “But I can say with full confidence, Trent actually believes what he is telling people. And so it was really a moment of, ‘wow, I married the right person. Thank you, Lord, so much that I married a true believer to help me, because it would be really painful to not have someone with true faith in the family right now.’”
Trent, in turn, encouraged his wife, saying, “that’s why I feel vindicated also that I married the right person, in that you have handled this courageously. And courage doesn’t mean that you face a situation without fear; it means you face a fearful situation prudently.”
“You’re still going to be afraid,” he added. “If you weren’t afraid, that would show there’s something like, not quite right with you or you didn’t care. You understand the gravity of the situation, but you’re walking forward.”
Later in the video, Trent reiterated that he is ready to walk through the coming trials with his wife.
The couple is asking for Laura’s complete healing through the intercession of Ven. Aloysius Schwartz, an American priest who lived from 1930 to 1992. After his priestly ordination, he asked to be sent to South Korea during the Korean war to minister to orphans and street children living in extreme poverty. He established the Sisters of Mary Religious Congregation and the Brothers of Christ to further this mission, according to Sunderland Catholic. In the late 80s, he expanded the religious Sisters’ mission to serve in Mexico and the Philippines. He was known especially for his humor and joy. He died in 1992 from ALS in Manila, and Sunderland Catholic reports that he was “hearing confessions, preaching, and going to daily Mass right up until the end even though the disease confined him to a wheelchair.” Pope Francis declared him venerable in 2015.
Laura will be undergoing a brain resectioning surgery. Trent shared at the end of the video that there is some fear of how the surgery could go poorly, with one risk being that it alters her personality. After noting that he loves her personality, Trent said, “that [change] would be hard, but at the end of the day you’re always going to be Laura. You’re always going to be the girl I knew I was supposed to marry, and I still know that…
“I am optimistic and I am grateful to have that with you, and, yeah, I think about what could go wrong and that makes me sad, but you can’t live that way,” Trent said. “All you can do is, think about, ‘where has God blessed me,’ and just rest in that joy and know that no matter what you face in the future, that joy will be there in the end, in one shape or another. And you just have to ask for His help to walk towards it, and marry a good person to walk towards it with you.”