Pope Francis will canonize the Salesian nurse and coadjutrice Artemide Zatti, an Argentine born in Italy, who dedicated his life to helping the sick this Sunday, and said that the famous “bicycle saint of Patagonia” was the “relative of all poor “.
A few days ago Zatti was proclaimed patron saint of the city of Viedma, the capital of the Río Negro, where according to Francis his gesture “rewrote a page of the Gospels”.
In a special audience in the immense Vatican Audience Hall, Jorge Bergoglio, personally devoted to Artemide Zatti, he received pilgrims from Argentina and Borettothe Emilian town where he was born on 12 October 1880.
With the seven brothers, the family arrived in our country at the end of the century and settled in Bahía Blanca, where Zatti worked for years as a laborer before going to Viedma, where he manifested his religious vocation as a Salesian curate.
In 1914 he received Argentine citizenship and the University of La Plata awarded him the title of “Ideal in Pharmacy”.
White dungarees and medicine bag
Franciso recalled that in those years there was a serious crisis in Europe that brought millions of immigrants to our country. He praised the Salesians and as former archbishop of Buenos Aires recalled that his city as “great educators of the heart”, the Salesians preferred to go to La Boca, “where communists, socialists and comecuras were, rather than in the important neighborhoods”.
Sick of tuberculosis, the new Argentine saint “promised Mary Help of Christians to dedicate himself to the sick and thus obtain a cure, which has happened”, the Pope said.
“The hospital was the place where the holiness of this man with the white coat and the bag of medicines was manifested, with the rosary in one hand and the bicycle handlebars in the otherFrancesco added.
Bergoglio said that in the sick, “the frontier of his mission”, which he visited day and night, “saw the Lord and, serving him, knew how to honor the Father”.
The pontiff added that “Zatti lived total self-giving to himself and to God in the consecration of all his strength to the good of his neighbor in profound union with the Lord: constant prayer, prolonged Eucharistic adoration, the recitation of the rosary”.
The Bishop of Rome recalled that “Artemis was a man of communion who knew how to work with others and with his example, with his advice that shapes people, shapes consciences and converts hearts”.
Francis highlighted the value of Artemide Zatti as a Salesian brother, who demonstrated how one can serve God not only as a priest: “What matters is that it is done with vocation and love”.
He recalled the “resurrected life after his recovery” from tuberculosis. To the new saint he “affirmed that life was no longer a property but that it belonged entirely to the people.”
A noteworthy fact is that a nephew of Artemide Zatti, the Salesian priest Juan Edmundo Vecchi, became Rector Major, the highest office, of the Salesian Congregation in the whole world, between 1996 and 2002.
The nursing curate worked for 48 years at the San José de Viedma hospital.
On July 19, 1950, he fell off a ladder, and while he was recovering, symptoms of the cancer he had diagnosed himself manifested.
He wanted to continue with his permanent cycling trips to visit the sick, until he couldn’t take it anymore. She managed to maintain her clarity until her end and died on March 15, 1951, at the age of 70.
Venerated in Viedma
His remains rest in the church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in the Don Bosco Institute in Viedma, a place of permanent veneration of the new saint.
The inhabitants of Viedma consider him their best neighbor and have honored his memory. A local hospital, a neighborhood, an avenue, a chapel and two monuments that commemorate him are named after him.
This Saturday, on the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, a large portrait of Artemide Zatti was exhibited, under which the Pope will preside over the ceremony of proclamation of his holiness this Sunday.
Next to that of Zatti there is another large portrait, with the image of another new saint, Giovanccini Battista Scalabrini, founder of the Congregation of the Missionaries of San Carlos Borromeo, who dedicated his life and work to migrants.
The congregation of the “scalabrinarios”, as they are called, includes male missionaries and nuns.
Monsignor Scalabrini (1839-1905) is considered the father of migrants and refugees. Its priests and nuns are present in 27 countries with about a hundred missions. They consider themselves “migrants with migrants, traveling companions”.
Vatican correspondent
CB
Source: Clarin
