CHICAGO — A suburban Detroit woman and South Side Chicago man are recovering in a Chicago hospital following rare triple transplant surgeries that gave them the healthy heart, liver and kidney each needed — and a new friendship they never expected.

University of Chicago Medicine doctors announced Friday that they successfully completed the triple organ transplants on Sarah McPharlin, a 29-year-old woman of Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan, and Daru Smith, a 29-year-old father from Chicago’s South Side, within 30 hours of one another.

McPharlin had two transplants canceled earlier in the year, pushing her surgery back.

“Maybe because it’s only luck that both of those transplants were supposed to be at the same time,” Nir Uriel, the director of heart failure, transplant and mechanical circulatory support for the hospital, said at a news conference Friday. University of Chicago Medicine has performed the most heart-liver-kidney transplants in the world.

Just eight minutes after a medical team finished Smith’s liver transplant on Dec. 20, hospital staff learned that donor organs were available for McPharlin. Smith, who finished surgery that day, became only the 16th person in the U.S. to undergo a heart-liver-kidney transplant and hours later on Dec. 21 McPharlin became the 17th.

Each surgery required a 22-person team, with some staffers working on both patients. The hospital also performed five other organ transplants during that time period.

Smith and McPharlin, who had her first heart transplant at the age of 12, arrived at the Chicago hospital in November. But neither knew they were both seeking a triple transplant when they first met during pre-therapy sessions ahead of surgery. The sessions were quiet and patients didn’t share details about their transplants.

But McPharlin’s mother, who quit her job as a school teacher in Michigan to be with her daughter for treatment, pried out of Smith that he was awaiting the same organs as McPharlin.

“It’s been mind-blowing and amazing, having someone go through the process with me, gave me more motivation,” Smith, a truck driver, said during a video interview at the hospital Friday.

The pair, who are recovering on the same hospital floor, share walks and give each other high-fives when they pass one another in the hallways. Their families are already planning a dinner together in the city once the two are released and feeling better. Nurses say they notice a difference in recovery for the two compared to other transplant patients, because they have gone through the same unusual and debilitating surgery together.

McPharlin and Smith notice too.

“It was so cool to know we would be able to see each other progress together,” McPharlin, an occupational therapist, said Friday. “It was really cool to see how Daru was getting up in the hall and I knew eventually, or pretty soon, I would be doing the same.”

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — The Vatican has confirmed that an Argentine bishop, who resigned suddenly in 2017 for stated health reasons and then landed a top administrative job at the Holy See, is under preliminary investigation after priests accused him of sexual abuse and other misconduct.

The case could become yet another problem for Pope Francis, who is already battling to gain trust from the Catholic flock over his handling of sex abuse and sexual misconduct, stemming in particular from the scandal of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

In a statement to The Associated Press, Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti stressed that the allegations against Argentine Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta only emerged in recent months, nearly a year after Francis created the new position for him as “assessor” of the Holy See’s office of financial administration.

At the time of his resignation, Zanchetta had only asked Francis to let him leave the northern Argentine diocese of Oran because he had difficult relations with its priests and was “unable to govern the clergy,” Gisotti said. Pending the preliminary investigation into allegations of sexual abuse underway in Argentina, the 54-year-old Zanchetta will abstain from work at the Vatican, he said.

Francis’ standing would take another hit if he personally intervened to help out a bishop from his native Argentina — finding a job for him during a Vatican hiring hold-down — and the man later turned out to have credible allegations of misconduct against him.

Zanchetta’s hasty departure from Oran on July 29, 2017 was mired in mystery. He didn’t celebrate a farewell Mass, as might be expected, and he issued a cryptic statement saying he had been suffering a “health problem” for some time, had just returned from the Vatican where he presented his resignation to Francis, and needed to leave immediately for treatment.

A statement issued the same day from his vicar general said Zanchetta had already left Oran, a deeply conservative and poor diocese near Argentina’s northern border with Bolivia that Zanchetta had run since Francis made him a bishop in 2013 in one of his first Argentine episcopal appointments. Zanchetta, the vicar said at the time, would be staying in Corrientes — several hundred kilometers (miles) away — as a guest of the archbishop until Francis accepted his resignation.

Often such procedures can take months, but the Vatican announced Francis had accepted it three days later, on Aug. 1.

Zanchetta then disappeared from view until Dec. 19, 2017, when the Vatican announced that he had been named assessor of APSA, the office that manages the Vatican’s vast real estate and other financial holdings. The appointment immediately raised eyebrows, but Zanchetta appeared nevertheless to have settled in well at APSA, and Gisotti said Francis appointed him because he had an established capacity for administrative management.

It wasn’t immediately clear what Zanchetta’s health problems were at the time of his resignation, but by all indications there were grave problems with his leadership and divisions within the diocesan clergy.

“The reason for his resignation is linked to his difficulty in handling relations with the diocesan clergy, some of which were very tense,” Gisotti said. “At the time of his resignation there were accusations against him of authoritarianism, but there were no accusations of sexual abuse against him.”

Zanchetta spent a period of time in Spain before joining APSA.

The allegations were leveled internally in recent months, Gisotti said, and last week the provincial newspaper in Salta, El Tribuno, reported that three priests had brought accusations against him to the Vatican’s ambassador, or nuncio, in Buenos Aires. The newspaper said the priests had lodged accusations of abuse of power, economic abuse and sexual abuse inside the seminary.

It wasn’t immediately clear how Zanchetta responded to the accusations.

The current bishop of Oran, which is in Salta province, is still gathering evidence and testimony and will forward it to the Vatican, Gisotti said. If the allegations are deemed credible, the case will be forwarded to Francis’ special commission for bishops — an ad hoc group of canon lawyers who have been examining allegations of misconduct against bishops.

The issue of sexual abuse within seminaries has risen to the forefront in the scandal over McCarrick, the retired archbishop of Washington. Francis removed McCarrick as a cardinal in July after a U.S. church investigation determined that an allegation that he fondled an altar boy in the 1970s was credible. After the allegation became public, several former seminarians came forward to report they had been abused or harassed by McCarrick and pressured to sleep with him.

Francis became implicated in the McCarrick scandal after a former Vatican ambassador accused him of knowing of McCarrick’s penchant for seminarians, and rehabilitating him anyway from sanctions imposed by Pope Benedict XVI. Francis hasn’t responded.

Zanchetta had opened his own seminary in Oran in 2016 with six seminarians. According to El Tribuno, the St. John XXIII seminary is due to close soon.

The diocese hasn’t responded to questions about Zanchetta’s departure or the status of the investigation against him. It has, however, issued a statement responding to media reports that the priests who lodged complaints against Zanchetta had suffered retaliation. The new bishop of Oran said the priests had been transferred to respond to the pastoral needs of the faithful.

“Knowing the gravity of all types of abuse, the bishop is available to anyone who would like to present a complaint to begin the corresponding procedure for canonical justice, while recalling the right of all victims of abuse to seek ordinary justice,” via civil authorities, the statement said.

___

Nicole Winfield reported from San Vigilio, Italy.

WASHINGTON — On their first day in the majority, House Democrats on Thursday night passed a plan to re-open the government without funding President Donald Trump’s promised border wall.

The largely party-line votes came after Trump made a surprise appearance at the White House briefing room pledging to keep up the fight for his signature campaign promise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Trump and Senate Republicans should “take yes for an answer” and approve the border bill, which was virtually identical to a plan the Senate adopted on a voice vote last month.

“We’re not doing a wall. Does anyone have any doubt that we’re not doing a wall?” Pelosi told reporters at a news conference Thursday night.

Pelosi, who was elected speaker earlier Thursday, also took a shot a Trump, calling his proposal “a wall between reality and his constituents.”

Trump strode into the White House briefing room Thursday – the 13th day of the partial government shutdown – and declared that “without a wall you cannot have border security.” He then left without taking questions from reporters.

The appearance came hours after the new Congress convened, with Democrats taking majority control of the House and returning Pelosi to the speakership after eight years of GOP control. The Democratic legislation to re-open the government without funding the wall is going nowhere in the Senate, where Republicans want Trump’s endorsement before voting on a funding package.

Trump is demanding billions of dollars to build his wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, which the Democrats have refused.

Asked if she would give Trump USD$1 for a wall to reopen the government, Pelosi said: “One dollar? Yeah, one dollar. The fact is a wall is an immorality. It’s not who we are as a nation.”

Congressional leaders from both parties met with Trump at the White House Wednesday, but failed to make progress during their first sit-down in weeks. The White House has invited the leaders back Friday for another round of talks that officials have suggested might be more successful now that Pelosi has been sworn in.

Reporters were told Thursday that White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders would be holding a hastily called late afternoon briefing. Instead, out walked Trump, flanked by members of the unions that represent border patrol and immigration enforcement agents. It was his first time delivering remarks at the briefing room podium.

“You can call it a barrier, you can call it whatever you want,” Trump said. “But essentially we need protection in our country. We’re going to make it good. The people of our country want it.”

Trump said his meeting with the union officials had long been planned and just happened to come at “a very opportune time.” He also claimed his refusal to budge was winning praise, telling reporters, “I have never had so much support as I have in the last week over my stance for border security.”

Polls show a majority of Americans oppose the border wall, although Republicans strongly support it.

White House and Department of Homeland Security officials have spent recent days trying to make a public and private case that the situation at the border has reached a “crisis” situation that demands more money than Democrats have offered.

Trump tweeted an ominous video Thursday with images of what appeared to be migrants trying to rush the border and clashing with law enforcement, beneath the words “crisis at the border,” ”drugs” and “crime.” The video concludes with footage of Trump at the border along with audio from one of his rallies in which he vows to build his promised border wall and the crowd chants “Build the wall!”

The Democratic package to end the shutdown includes a bill to temporarily fund the Department of Homeland Security at current levels – with $1.3 billion for border security, far less than Trump has said he wants – through Feb. 8 as bipartisan talks would continue. It was approved, 239-192.

Democrats also approved a separate measure to fund the departments of Agriculture, Interior, Housing and Urban Development and others closed by the partial shutdown, at levels Senate Republicans had largely agreed to last year. The bill, which would provide money through the end of the fiscal year Sept. 30, was approved, 241-190, with several House Republicans joining Democrats.

The White House has rejected the Democratic package.

“Why not fully fund the Department of Homeland Security? Why doesn’t the Pelosi bill do that?” said White House counselor Kellyanne Conway.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer urged Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to put the House Democratic package on the Senate floor and send it to the president, saying it would show Trump “the sweet light of reason.”

McConnell has dismissed the idea as a “total nonstarter” and a waste of time.

But some Republican senators appeared open to at least part of the Democrats’ proposal.

“I’m not saying their whole plan is a valid plan, but I see no reason why the bills that are ready to go and on which we’ve achieved an agreement should be held hostage to this debate over border security,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

“Congress needs to take further action on border security, but that work should be done when the government is fully open,” added Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo.

Vice President Mike Pence, who was on the Hill Thursday to swear in new senators, took a hard line, telling Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson, “Bottom line, if there’s no wall, there’s no deal.”

Trump has said the partial shutdown, which began Dec. 22, will last “as long as it takes” to get the funding he wants.

The White House said Trump made calls Thursday to the family of Cpl. Ronil Singh, the Newman, California, police officer shot to death during a Dec. 26 traffic stop. The suspected shooter is a Mexican man accused of living in the U.S. illegally. Republicans have seized on the case to call for tougher border security.

Story: Matthew Daly, Catherine Lucey, Jill Colvin