Florida Catholic | Priest Donates Kidney

Priest donates kidney to former parishioner

Suffering with kidney failure, Margarita Chavez was near death until pro-life activist, Father Alfred Cioffi decided to act on his convictions.

ANNE DIBERNARDO | FLORIDA CATHOLIC CORRESPONDENT

Published: 01.18.08

Chances are, if you’ve ever had to hold your breath for more than a few seconds, you can imagine what it is like to fight for your life. Now imagine having the power to save the life of another human being.

When faced with that opportunity, Father Alfred Cioffi did not hesitate. He donated one of his kidneys to save the life of his friend and former parishioner, Margarita Chavez, whom he calls a “living, walking miracle.”

Two months later and doing just fine, Father Cioffi, recipient of the 2007 Archdiocese of Miami Respect Life Award, seeks to dispel common myths about living organ donations while encouraging others, especially priests and religious, to do the same.

Chavez, having been given a new lease on life, is now the respect life representative for her parish.

“There are many compelling reasons to promote living organ donations, since the demand is considerable,” said Father Cioffi. He explained that kidneys from living donors last twice as long as kidneys from cadavers — about 16 years compared to eight.

According to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, about 100,000 people are waiting for kidneys in the United States alone; 15 to 17 of them die each day for lack of a donation.

Father Cioffi said this tragic situation is due in large part to a distorted perception of the risk involved in a living kidney donation. “In reality, the risk factor for a healthy donor is rather low.”

He compared the fear of donating a kidney to the fear of flying. “The actual risk of having a car accident is many, many times greater than when flying. Yet more people have a fear of flying rather than a fear of driving.” In fact, he said, according to Dr. Linda Chen, who operated on him, “the chances of being killed by a bus are 10 times greater than from donating a kidney.”

GOD’S ‘TRAIL’

It makes for a great story: “Priest donates kidney to save life of parishioner.” However, there is much more to this tale. Those involved say that, with each twist and turn, God left a brilliant trail of spiritual gems — a signature assortment of events that add up to much more than mere coincidences.

For starters, Father Cioffi’s credentials more than qualify him to champion this cause. Ordained for the archdiocese in 1985, the 55-year-old native of Cuba was teaching biology at Miami’s St. Brendan High School when he felt the calling to reach people at a more spiritual level. After he became a priest, he never thought he would use biology again.

But when bioethical issues started emerging, the late Archbishop Edward A. McCarthy sent Father Cioffi to study for a doctorate in bioethics at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. In 2000, he was chosen by Archbishop John C. Favalora to pursue a doctorate in genetics at Purdue University in Indiana.

Science has become an integral component of his priestly vocation, as Father Cioffi now works with the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia and is noted for his vigorous work opposing human embryonic stem-cell research.

It was during Father Cioffi’s five-year assignment as pastor of St. Kevin Parish in Miami (1995-2000) that he met the Chavez family: Margarita and her husband, Miguel, her parents, and their young son, Christopher.

Although Margarita Chavez, who then taught religious education at St. Kevin’s, had a history of poor health, it did not prevent her from being involved in parish activities. For the last two years, she has been a member of a team of volunteers working with Father Cioffi on a petition drive to oppose state funding of human embryonic stem-cell research in Florida.

Chavez developed diabetes when she was 12 years old. Complications stemming from her son’s birth led to chronic kidney failure three years later, forcing her to go on dialysis in 1989. Three months after starting dialysis she suffered a stroke, which left the right side of her body paralyzed.

After several months of therapy, she regained some movement on her right side, enabling her to walk. She is able to drive a car and do practically everything else solely with her left hand.

COMA

In 1991, Chavez received both a kidney and a pancreas transplant. The kidney lasted for a dozen years — longer than average for a kidney from a cadaver. The pancreas — only the third such transplant done in Miami — is still working. A second kidney transplant, again from a deceased donor, lasted only three years, and she had been on gradual renal failure for the past two years.

Last April during Holy Week, a serious bout with pneumonia led to acute renal failure and put Chavez in a coma. Her condition was so severe that she was given a breathing tube and became 100 percent dependent on a respirator. Her lungs were failing and her prognosis was extremely poor.

Father Cioffi heard about her condition and flew into Miami to be with her family, who were keeping vigil at the hospital and beginning to make funeral arrangements.

He knew that the church allows for the donation of a paired organ (a kidney or a lung) if it can save the life of another person. Discreetly, he inquired with her lung specialist if he could donate one of his lungs. The doctor explained that, in her critical condition, she simply was not a candidate for a major transplant.

MYSTIC

Then an unexpected sequence of events began to unfold. For many years, Chavez had been involved in the cause of beatification of the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta, an Italian mystic from the 19th century. Chavez and her family had made a pilgrimage to her home in 2006.

A close friend of Chavez, hearing of her condition, brought a relic of Luisa to the hospital. Before flying back to Philadelphia, Father Cioffi imposed the relic on Chavez and invoked the Blessed Trinity, leaving her fate in God’s hands.

The next morning, with no medical explanation, a chest X-ray revealed that one of Chavez’s lungs had begun to clear. Within days, the doctors declared her pneumonia gone and Chavez started breathing on her own.

After 21 days in intensive care, she had pulled out of the coma, but she was not out of the woods. She required three months of therapy to get her muscles working again and she still had to contend with the renal failure. She still needed another kidney.

A couple of months later, Father Cioffi visited Chavez at the dialysis center. He observed about two dozen people sitting in reclining chairs, strapped to dialysis machines and hooked up to transparent tubes pumping their blood in and out of the filtering machines.

“A dialysis center is a very depressing place to visit,” he said. “A typical dialysis regimen is three times a week, with an average of four hours on the machine; some persons require five and six hours. Some persons were awake, mostly looking blankly into silent TV screens hanging from the ceiling, and some were asleep. At that moment the thought came to me: These are the poor of Yahweh! And a further thought came: Why are most of these people here? Could it be that they have less access to kidney donations, for any number of reasons?”

It was then that he thought of donating a kidney to his friend, since Chavez’s own mother and other family members had not been a match.

“If I was willing to give her a lung before, certainly I could give her a kidney now,” he said. “I did some research on the Internet. Then, since I knew that her previous operations had been done at the transplant center of Jackson Memorial Hospital, I called up to inquire what one must do to donate a kidney. They told me that the first step was to see if there is a blood-type and immune-system match. So they mailed me a set of test tubes for my blood samples. When I got them, a nurse from the parish (in Philadelphia) drew my blood and I mailed the tubes back to Miami the next day. I said to myself, ‘After all, if there is no match, there is no point in even talking about a donation.’”

RETREAT

Shortly thereafter, Father Cioffi invited Chavez to attend a retreat at the Holy Spirit Monastery in Conyers, Ga., in thanksgiving for her total recovery from the pneumonia. She accepted, even though she was still in a wheelchair.

“I remember that it was the feast of St. Benedict and we had just finished doing a Holy Hour,” Chavez said, recalling the moment when she discovered what her former pastor had in mind. “As we were leaving the Blessed Sacrament, Father (Cioffi) received a call on his cell phone.

“He then told me to sit down because he had something to tell me. ‘That phone call was from the transplant center and we have a match,’ he said. I asked him what he was talking about and he explained that he had called the Jackson transplant center and sent in his blood. He then told me that he wanted to donate a kidney to me.

“I said, ‘Father, are you kidding? You are a scientist and a priest — how are you going to do this?’ He explained that, obviously, he didn’t have any family of his own to maintain and that he had already researched the matter on the Internet, reassuring me that everything was OK.”

Father Cioffi still had to pass additional checkups to ensure he was in good health and able to live on a single kidney. He emphasized these tests are done at no cost to the donor and do not compromise the donor’s health.

The transplant was completed in October 2007. Father Cioffi spent four days at the hospital, and Chavez spent six. He is now back in Philadelphia, carrying out his regular duties at the parish and at the Bioethics Center.

Chavez is also doing very well.

“The Lord has given me a lot,” she said. “Now, with my new kidney, I will be driving soon and resuming my normal life again. In gratitude, I recently accepted a call from my pastor to be the pro-life rep for my parish.”

“It is such a joy to see her alive and well, and disconnected from the dialysis machine,” Father Cioffi said. “It has been a very fulfilling and beautiful experience. To be able to give someone else life in exchange for a few days of discomfort gives one pure joy.”

To find out how you could be a kidney donor, visit the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network at www.optn.org or call 1-888-894-6361.

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Priest donates kidney to former parishioner

Suffering with kidney failure, Margarita Chavez was near death until pro-life activist, Father Alfred Cioffi decided to act on his convictions.

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