He’s New York’s new archbishop, but to a once-childless Wisconsin couple, Timothy Dolan is the “superhero” who stepped in and made them a family.
“He’s changed our lives forever,” said grateful new dad Charles Nevsimal, who, with wife Deborah, welcomed newborn baby Gianna in a heartwarming adoption set up by the pro-life priest.
“My wife and I think of Archbishop Dolan as a kind of superhero,” Nevsimal told The Post, joking that they even have a superhero name for him: “Arch-D.”
Little Gianna’s happy story started out as anything but.
Before she was born, tests revealed she had Down syndrome. Doctors told her birth parents to abort the pregnancy.
That couple, whose names are being withheld by The Post, wouldn’t hear of it.
Staunch Catholics – they met in Rome and were married by the late John Cardinal O’Connor in Manhattan before moving to Wisconsin – the couple already had five young boys.
Their fourth son has severe special needs that require round-the-clock care. He’s confined to a wheelchair, has cerebral palsy, and is blind and deaf. Oxygen and feeding tubes help keep him alive.
They worried that the attention required by two special-needs kids would ultimately deprive all their children.
Dolan, meanwhile, had recently befriended the Nevsimals. Facing fertility problems, the couple had introduced themselves to the pastor after meeting him at a local church and asked him to pray for them.
For more than a year, the Milwaukee archbishop routinely checked in with them to see if Deborah was pregnant.
“The fact that he cared enough about two parishioners he’d just met – to call us just to let us know he’s still thinking of us – tells you what kind of man he is,” Charles Nevsimal said.
When the Nevsimals called Dolan just after Mother’s Day last year to say they were looking into adoption, the archbishop “was very supportive.”
Coincidentally, Dolan’s next call was to Gianna’s birth parents – who gave him their tough news.
Days later, that family made a soul-wrenching decision to give the unborn child up for adoption.
The archbishop called the Nevsimals.
“I was only a catalyst – it was providential,” Dolan told The Post. “I was in touch with two families – one facing a challenge and the other one needing a blessing.”
“We knew right away this was God putting this child in our lives.” said Charles Nevsimal, who has a cousin and a childhood friend with Down syndrome.
After meeting each other, the two families arranged an open adoption.
“Unless you meet the [birth parents], I don’t think anyone can fully understand the amount of dedication and love that is poured into their little boy,” said Nevsimal.
“They made the incredibly difficult decision to give Gianna to a family that could focus all their attention on her,” he said.
“It is incomprehensible what they went through – the depth of courage and love they had for her to let her go.”
He added, “My wife and I did nothing exceptional – all we did was say yes. The [birth parents], they are the heroes.”
Gianna – named for St. Gianna Beretta Molla, a pregnant cancer victim in the 1960s who insisted doctors save her unborn child’s life instead of her own – was born Sept. 29. Both families were in the delivery room.
In October, both clans celebrated as Dolan baptized the smiling, blue-eyed girl. And just two weeks ago, they all prayed for Gianna as she went through successful surgery to close two holes in her heart.
“We are a family now because of them,” said Charles.
“And because of the archbishop – who cared enough about both families to help.”