Bro. Zatti, Salesian
A joyful response that harkens back to Don Bosco
On October 9, Pope Francis will canonize Salesian Brother Artemides Zatti, a fellow Argentinean.
(ANS - Buenos Aires – September 27, 2022) – We are in Viedma, around 1940. For a few years now, Salesian coadjutor Artemides Zatti has been the soul of the San José Hospital that the Salesians have been running since the end of the 19th century in this city in Argentina’s Patagonia. It’s a place where the care of life is not limited to physical health but is offered to people in an integral way to all people.
A poor sharecropper
had been hospitalized for several months. He was grateful for what Artemides
Zatti had done for his health and for his whole person – without asking
for anything since he was unable to pay. He wants to express his gratitude to
him. Not knowing how to do so, he tells him, “Thank you for everything, Mr.
Zatti. I salute you and extend many greetings to your wife as well, although I
haven’t had the pleasure of meeting her....” “Neither have I,” Zatti replied,
laughing.
In big things, one
can pretend. In small things, one shows oneself as he is. And in this answer,
we can trace something of Bro. Zatti’s life and heart.
Neighbor, Brother
Zatti had had to
experience uprooting, emigration, the economic constraints that forced him to
stop studying and to work, the difficulties in making his way in his community.
All aspects that are symptoms of poverty – and this, paradoxically, help
himed understand the pains and needs of the poor.
Living his Salesian
vocation as a Salesian “coadjutor” or “brother” facilitates this
closeness. Don Bosco thinks of Salesian coadjutors as having a close
educational presence among young people and in working-class sectors. Don Bosco
does this in a social context, that of Italy at the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution, in which there is a lack of empathy on the part of the people
toward anything “conventual” or “cloistered.”
This simplicity and
the absence of ecclesiastical “forms” in the Salesian coadjutors – which is not
only about the habit or the tasks one performs, but also about the way of
thinking, of looking at the world by understanding it as a place where the
Kingdom of God grows and develops – allows them to be close and to be one more
among others, and to reach out even to environments and people who,
otherwise, would be far from the faith.
Thus, this vocation
of the Salesian coadjutor will refer not so much to what one
can or cannot do, but how to be in the
doing. Thus, many times we find coadjutors doing tasks or proposals that are
not usual in Salesian activity, as it was for Bro. Zatti to be a nurse.
Zatti’s vocation as
a Salesian coadjutor is not the result of a lack or shortage because “he
has no other choice,” given that the tuberculosis he had suffered while in the
Salesian seminary in Bernal prevented him from continuing his dream of being a
Salesian priest. Rather, based on that circumstance, he finds another way to
develop his life and his desire to serve and be happy. As is often the case,
out of pain and limitation can emerge a surplus of love and much broader
horizons than foreseen.
This closeness of Bro. Zatti also expresses itself in another detail: he continued to move around on a bicycle. They offered to buy him a car, to move “faster” and “reach more people,” to be more effective – an offer he always refused. He prefered his bicycle, which allowed him to stop and spend time with people.
With joy
Dr. Ecay, a doctor
at the hospital, once asked him, “Bro. Zatti, how is it you’re always in a good
mood?” To which Zatti replied, “It’s easy, doctor: swallow bitter and spit out
sweet.”
Having a cheerful
face and responding with humor, even in the most difficult circumstances, comes
from a heart that is at peace with God and feels loved by him, that
knows how to relativize situations, identifying the essential.
Perhaps Bro. Zatti
could have answered with an argument focused on the theology of religious life
to that person sending his greetings to his wife. But his response was
different, showing an understanding also that the vocation of the Salesian
coadjutor is a bit more unknown and misunderstood, sometimes even with a lack
of social recognition given the value society has of the figure of the priest.
But this did not worry or sadden Zatti. He understood that what is
essential continues to be the “people” – Da mihi animas, caetera
tolle – and their well-being, and he devoted himself to them.
The nurses who
would sometimes catch him at 5:30 a.m., before prayer with the Salesian
community, prostrate in the chapel with his face pressed to the floor in
deep prayer, knew where Zatti found the strength to continue on the sometimes
bumpy and difficult path of service to others.
In community
There was always an
excellent team at the hospital, which Zatti formed in his own image. Other
Salesians and Daughters of Mary Help of Christians worked there, as well as
several lay doctors and nurses. In everyone, the initial motivation was to be
able to help those most in need with professionalism and an integral vision of
the human being – and, from Zatti’s perspective, to help those who worked
with him grow in faith.
One doctor who had
serious doubts about his faith even said, “Here, in front of Zatti, my
disbelief wavers. If there are saints on earth, he is one of them. When I am
about to take the scalpel in the operating room and I see him helping in the
operations, with his wisdom as a nurse and with the rosary in his hand, the
atmosphere is filled with something supernatural....”
The prayer invoking
Bro. Zatti’s intercession reads, “May the joy of seeing him shining in the
Heaven of your saints help us to witness your Light.” May his life as a
follower of Jesus in the style of Don Bosco encourage us all to know how to
reexamine our path and, in our respective vocations and professions, to allow
ourselves to be shaped by God in our daily actions.
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