(RNS1-JUNE25) Journalists Cathleen Falsani and husband Maurice Possley with their adopted son, Vasco. For use with RNS-LETTER-MADONNA, transmitted June 25, 2010. Religion News Service photo courtesy of Cathleen Falsani.

(RNS) Dear Madonna,

Thank you.

My family arrived home in California this week with our newly adopted son, Vasco Fitzmaurice Mark David Possley.

His adoption would not have been possible without the bold actions you took in Malawi last year when its High Court denied the adoption of your daughter, Chifundo “Mercy” James.

You didn’t take no for an answer.

You didn’t buy their argument that allowing the adoption would encourage human trafficking. You didn’t agree when they said Mercy would be fine at an orphanage without a loving family from a foreign land.

When you contested that ruling and won approval from the Malawi court of appeals, you effectively kicked open the door for other families to adopt some of the 1 million children orphaned by HIV, AIDS and other diseases.

Your actions paved the way for families to be created across thousands of miles, through bundles of diplomatic red tape and seemingly unbridgeable cultural chasms.

My husband and I met Vasco in 2007 while we were traveling in Africa on holiday. We spent most of our first day visiting with a few dozen teenage boys — “street kids,” in the parlance of Malawi — at a drop-in center in Limbe.

On our way back to the motel, our guide asked if we would mind making one more stop to visit a street kid that, in his words, was “just kind of special.”

We clambered down a muddy embankment and saw a clutch of mud-and-wattle huts. Our guide yelled something and we heard a squeaky boy’s voice shout back — “I’m coming!” in Chichewa, his native language.

Out came this little fellow Vasco — maybe 35 pounds soaking wet — with huge eyes and a smile that would split your heart in two. He was about 8, but the size of a 5-year-old American child.

While we visited with Vasco, who had lived alone on the streets of Blantyre for months after his mother and father had died, he sat on my lap. When he pressed his bony back into my chest, his heart beat so violently it was shaking his little body and moving mine.

“What’s wrong with him?” I asked.

“He has a hole in his heart,” we were told.

My husband and I tried to get him medical attention, to no avail. When we left to continue our holiday in Africa, we stopped to see Vasco one last time. We hugged him close, told him that we loved him, and headed to the airport.

As the plane took off, I knew that if Vasco were the poorest child in the U.S. he’d be in the hospital that night receiving the care he needed. I began to cry, and then to wail, making a scene on the flight all the way back to Kenya. My tears were fueled by righteous anger knowing that Vasco would likely die a sinfully early death because he was poor and African. That is the worst kind of injustice.

I felt impotent, helpless. Then I remembered something our family friend, Bono, had told me a few years earlier: “We can’t do everything, Cathleen, but what we can do we must do.”

I couldn’t fix his heart, but I could tell his story.

When we returned to Chicago, where we lived at the time, I told Vasco’s story in the pages of the Chicago Sun-Times, where I was a columnist. The piece ran on a Friday morning. By Saturday afternoon, three hospitals had offered to fix Vasco’s heart for free if we could just get him to Chicago.

It took 18 months to get him to there, but in April 2009, Vasco arrived. Two weeks later he spiked a fever; he was suffering from malaria.

As Vasco recuperated from malaria and a host of other parasites he’d brought with him from Malawi, surgery was pushed back for more than a month. During that time, we got to know Vasco better. We saw the amazing person that he is — bright and curious, intuitive and compassionate, soulful, grounded and funny.

We also learned more about what his life would be like once he returned to Malawi.

The plan had been: Get him to Chicago, fix his heart, and send him home. It didn’t matter that we had fallen in love with him, or that he could really use a family, love and security. International adoption, we were told, was all but impossible.

We prayed for an answer and waited, filled with hope and terror.

Vasco underwent successful open-heart surgery in June 2009. Two days later, we heard the news that the appeals court in Malawi had approved your adoption of Mercy.

Legal precedent! Case law! A miracle!

A door swung open and a way had been made for us to become a family. It was a mitzvah created by many human (and divine) hands, including yours.

Shortly after Vasco was released from the hospital, we moved to California and began the process of adopting him.

Meanwhile, Vasco absolutely flourished. He’s grown more than six inches and put on more than 30 pounds. He enrolled in school for the first time and excelled beyond anyone’s expectations, learning English and how to read in record time, playing soccer on the town’s championship team, learning to swim and ride a bike, to snowboard, skateboard and even surf.

In May, the three of us — Vasco, my husband and I — returned to Malawi for our adoption hearing. We prayed to God for favor and mercy and tried not to panic.

Hearts in our throats, on June 1 we walked into the chambers of Judge John Chirwa at the High Court in Blantyre. The judge began reading his ruling; I cried tears of joy when Chirwa announced that he was legally bound by decision in the “Mercy James case” in making his ruling. He approved our adoption.

Because of Mercy.

Because of you.

Vasco now has a family. I have a beautiful, healthy, happy son — my first and only child. We are blessed and grateful beyond words.

The blessing you helped create will not stop with us. We tell Vasco’s story to anyone who will listen, and we are creating a road map to guide other families on their sacred journeys to adopt Malawian children who need them desperately.

From the bottom of this new mother’s heart, thank you.

For your generosity of heart and spirit, as well as your perseverance, bravery and chutzpah — just like the biblical Queen Esther whose name you’ve aptly taken as one of your own — thank you.

You have been a mighty vessel of chisomo — grace — in our lives. And in my heart, you will always be Vasco’s fairy godmother.

God bless you, Madonna.

Zikomo kwambiri, amai.

(Cathleen Falsani is the author of “Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace” and the new book, “The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers.”)