Negro Recognized by Pope Leo as Miraculous has been Arrested for Double Shooting.
The recent arrest calls the supposed miracle and a recent veneration into question.
A negro man from Rhode Island—whose birth was recognized by Pope Leo as a miracle after he was deprived of oxygen for over an hour before recovering without medical intervention more than a decade ago—has been arrested for a double shooting.
Tyquan Johnson, 19, was captured by the US Marshals fugitive task force at an apartment in Virginia this Wednesday morning after he was wanted to shooting two people.
The shooting occurred in Newport, RI, on July 9th and he fled to Virginia as officials issued a warrant for his arrest.
Thankfully, none of the victims sustained life threatening injuries.
Johnson has been charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon and firing in a close environment.
The arrest comes almost exactly a year after Pope Leo XIV declared Johnson’s 2007 birth the first miracle of his papacy and the first ever miracle recognized in Rhode Island.
The connection was made when law enforcement released his arrest warrant with Johnson’s photo, name and date of birth matching those of the man Pope Leo had recognized in July of 2025.
Johnson was born prematurely on Jan. 14, 2007, at the former Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island in Pawtucket.
According to the Diocese of Providence, Johnson was suffering from oxygen deprivation and other symptoms that showed no improvement after an hour, leaving doctors with little hope he would survive.
The attending physician, Juan Sanchez-Esteban, prayed to 19th-century Spanish priest Valera Parra for intervention in saving the child’s life. Just as Sanchez-Esteban was about to deliver the devastating news to the child’s parents, a nurse stopped him and told him the child “suddenly recovered” and his heart had started beating without medical intervention, he told the outlet.
The doctor—who is from the same region of Spain where Parra was a priest— said that Johnson should have suffered permanent brain damage from the lack of oxygen, but instead lived a life completely free of any complications. However, it appears that the doctor was wrong.
One thing that should be noted is that Father Valera Parra was not a canonized Catholic saint until 2026. Catholic Saint Robert Bellarmine (AD 1542-1621) wrote in Disputationes de Controversiis Christianae Fidei, De Ecclesia Triumphante, Book I, Chapter 19:
“We do not ask the saints to grant us anything as though they were gods or the authors of divine gifts, but we ask them to pray for us, just as we ask holy men living on earth to pray for us.”
The Council of Trent (AD 1545-1563) (Session 25) states:
“The saints, who reign together with Christ, offer up their own prayers to God for men; and that it is good and useful suppliantly to invoke them.”
However, there is nothing that states that the doctor invoking Father Valera Parra was acceptable to God. And the recent crime involving Johnson calls the veneration of Parra and Pope Leo’s haste to declare this a miracle into question.
So distasteful. The veneration of regional saints is the leftover of when the expanding church had to incorporate local pagan deities into its canon.