In the living room of Julia Bruzzese’s Brooklyn home hangs a photo that captures the moment she says changed everything.

“It was like God extending his hand and saying it would be okay,” she recalled.

That hand belonged to Pope Francis. The moment came during his 2015 visit to New York City—at a time when a then-12-year-old Bruzzese was grappling with a mysterious illness and a crisis of faith.

“Why is this happening to me? Why God did this happen to me?” she remembered asking.

Bruzzese had been a happy, healthy child until she suddenly wasn’t. Her health declined rapidly, and doctors were unable to determine what was wrong.

“I was going from hospital to hospital, misdiagnosed, undiagnosed,” she said.

She relied on a wheelchair, could no longer attend school and her family was left w

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