Salesian Brother Artemides Zatti to Be Canonized

Salesian Brother Artemides Zatti 

to Be Canonized

(ANS – Vatican – April 8, 2022) – On April 9, 2022, the Holy Father received in audience His Eminence Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints. During the audience, the Supreme Pontiff authorized him to promulgate the decree concerning the miracle attributed to the intercession of Blessed Artemides Zatti, professed layman of the Salesian Society of St. John Bosco, born on October 12, 1880, in Boretto, Italy, and died on March 15, 1951, in Viedma, Argentina.

The miracle recognized on Saturday for canonization dates back to 2016 with the healing of a Filipino man from Tanauan Batangas, who suffered near fatal severe ischemic stroke, worsened by heavy bleeding. His family did not have the means to pay for his operation and brought him home on August 21.

On August 24, however, he suddenly removed the nasogastric tube providing him with nourishment and oxygen, asked for something to eat, and in the following days, resumed his normal life. It was his brother, a Salesian coadjutor in Rome, who, on the same day he was admitted to hospital, had begun to pray for the intercession of Blessed Artemides Zatti.

This act of the Holy Father opens the way for the canonization of Blessed Artemides. The date of the canonization will be decided by the Supreme Pontiff during an ordinary consistory.

Artemides Zatti was born in Boretto (Reggio Emilia). It did not take long for him to experience the hardship of sacrifice, so much so, that at the age of nine he was already earning his living as a farmhand. Forced by poverty, the Zatti family emigrated to Argentina at the beginning of 1897 and settled in Bahia Blanca. Young Artemides immediately began to frequent the parish run by the Salesians, finding his spiritual director in Fr. Carlo Cavalli the pastor, a pious man of extraordinary goodness. It was he who directed Artemides toward Salesian life. He was 20 years old when he went to the aspirantate in Bernal.

While caring for a young priest suffering from tuberculosis, he contracted the disease. The paternal concern of Fr. Cavalli – who followed him from afar – facilitated Zatti to go to the Salesian house in Viedma, where there was a more suitable climate and above all a missionary hospital with a good Salesian nurse who was like a doctor: Fr. Evasio Garrone. Fr. Garrone invited Artemides to pray to Mary Help of Christians to be healed, suggesting that he make a promise: “If she heals you, you will dedicate your whole life for these sick people.”

Artemides made this promise willingly and was mysteriously cured. He would later say: "I believed, I promised, I got healed.” His path was now clearly marked out, and he embarked on it with great enthusiasm. With humility and docility, he accepted the renunciation of the priesthood, tho it cost him much. He made his first profession as a coadjutor brother on January 11, 1908, and his perpetual profession on February 8, 1911. In keeping with the promise he had made to our Lady, he immediately consecrated himself totally to the hospital, initially taking charge of the adjoining pharmacy, and when Fr. Garrone died in 1913, the entire responsibility of the hospital fell on his shoulders. He became deputy director, administrator, and an expert nurse, esteemed by all the patients and by the doctors themselves, who gave him greater and greater freedom of action.

His service was not limited to the hospital but extended to the whole city, and even to the town on the opposite bank of the Negro River, Patagones. In case of necessity, he travelled at all hours of the day and night, in any weather, to the hovels of the suburbs, and doing everything free of charge. His fame as a saintly infirmarian spread throughout southern Argentina, and he received sick people from all over Patagonia. It was not uncommon for the sick to prefer the visit of the holy infirmarian to that of the doctors.

Artemides Zatti loved his sick in a very touching way. He saw Jesus himself in them, so much that when he asked the sisters for clothing for a new boy who had just arrived, he would say: “Sister, do you have a shirt for a 12-year-old Jesus?” His care for the sick was done with great care that had its own delicate nuances. Some people remember seeing him carrying the body of a patient who had died during the night on his shoulders toward the mortuary, to remove it from the sight of the other patients: and he did this while reciting the De profundis. Faithful to the Salesian spirit and to the motto bequeathed by Don Bosco to his sons – “work and temperance” – he carried out a prodigious activity with habitual readiness of spirit, with a heroic spirit of sacrifice, with absolute detachment from any personal satisfaction, without ever taking holidays or rest. It’s said that the only five days of the rest he had were spent in prison! Yes, he had also known the prison, because of the escape of a prisoner from the hospital, for which the blame was on him. He was absolved, and his return home was a triumph.

He was a man very easy to deal with, with a great energy of sympathy that he manifested and gladly spent time to talk with the simple people. Above all, he was a man of God, and he radiated Him. One doctor at the hospital, who was an unbeliever, said, “When I saw Bro. Zatti my disbelief faltered.” And another exclaimed: “I started believing in God ever since I met Bro. Zatti.”

In 1950, the tireless infirmarian fell from a ladder, and it was then that the symptoms of a cancer appeared, which he himself clearly diagnosed. He continued to carry out his mission for another year, however, until after heroically accepting his suffering, he passed away on March 15, 1951, in full consciousness, surrounded by the affection and gratitude of an entire population.

He was declared Venerable on July 7, 1997, and beatified by St. John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square on April 14, 2002.