Prime Minister Edi Rama, in a podcast where Archbishop Joan was a guest, recalled the difficult moments in the hospital when his son, Greg, was battling the disease.
He confessed that the boy fell into a coma and the next 24 hours were crucial.
"My son went through a very dramatic moment with cancer, in fact things got so bad that he went into a medically induced coma, and it was not known whether he would come back or not. I was with the doctor while the boy was in a coma and I said, 'What now?' She said, 'For the first 24 hours, any news will be bad news, let's hope we don't have any news.' The first 24 hours were terrifying. At any moment, someone could come out of that intensive care unit and say..."
Rama recounted the conversation with the doctor, who invited him to pray,
"When I said, 'How's it going?', she raised her head and waved her hand up... I said, 'What are you showing me, the ceiling? I'm talking to a scientist, not a priest.' And she said, 'On this floor, (it was the floor for children with cancer) I've seen things that science hasn't been able to explain to me yet.'"
The hospital had a Chapel and the doctor would bring me announcements that in x hours I and the team would pray for Greg, or for other children. I said, 'What's this story about going to the Chapel and praying, what does this have to do with therapy?'
He told me 'we need it, we feel very good when we do it, we get energy'. He was a man who believed. He told me 'call it what you want, I know there is mystery and from that area of mystery come things to this floor that we cannot predict, or cannot explain later'".