Brief Profile of Blessed Artemides Zatti
and the Miracle Obtained Through His Intercession

by Fr. Pier Luigi Cameroni
postulator general for the Causes of the Saints of the Salesian Family

(ANS – Rome – October 9, 2022) – Artemides was born to Luigi and Albina Zatti in Boretto (Reggio Emilia, Italy) on October 12, 1880, the 3d of 8 siblings. They were a poor family but rich in faith and affection. Forced by poverty, early in 1897 the family emigrated to Argentina and settled in Bahia Blanca.

There were other “migrations” in Artemides’ life: the one from Bahia Blanca to Viedma sick with tuberculosis while traveling on the Galera, when it seemed that all his dreams were to vanish; when he migrated from the San José hospital to the San Isidro hospital on a wagon adorned with flowers and amid songs.

In Bahia Blanca, young Artemides attended the parish run by the Salesians, where Fr. Carlo Cavalli was the pastor. Artemides found in him the father and spiritual director who oriented him to Salesian life. In Viedma, he met Father Evasio Garrone, who invited him to pray to Mary Help of Christians to obtain healing, but also suggested he make a promise: “If she heals you, you will devote your whole life to these sick people.” Artemides gladly made this promise and was miraculously healed.

He made his first profession as a Salesian coadjutor on January 11, 1908, and his perpetual profession on February 18, 1911, convinced that “one can serve God either as a priest or as a brother: one thing can be as valid for God as the other, provided one does so with vocation and love.”

Throughout his life, the hospital was the place where he exercised, day after day, a charity abounding with the compassion of the Good Samaritan. When he would wake the sick in the wards, his signature greeting was, “Good morning! Long live Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. Is everyone breathing?”

He routinely cycled with his medicine bag around the town of Viedma in his white coat – one hand on the handlebar and the other with the rosary. He did everything for free. A farmer who wanted to express his gratitude, greeting him, said, “Thank you very much, Brother Zatti, for everything. I take my leave of you and ask you to convey my best regards to your wife, although I do not have the pleasure of knowing her....” “Neither do I,” Zatti replied, laughing heartily.

Artemides Zatti loved his sick, seeing and serving Jesus himself in them. One day he said to the wardrobe attendant, “A change of clothes for our Lord,” meaning for the patient. Zatti sought the best for his patients because “to our Lord, we must give the best.” A poor country boy needed a little suit for his first Communion, and Artemides asked for “a little suit for our Lord.”

He knew how to win everyone over; with his poise he could resolve even the most delicate situations. One of the hospital doctors testified, “When I saw Mr. Zatti, my disbelief wavered.” And another, “I have believed in God ever since I met Bro. Zatti.”

In the community, he was the one who rang the bell, the one who preceded all the confreres in community appointments. As a good Salesian, he knew how to make cheerfulness a component of his holiness. Always pleasantly smiling: that is how all the photos portray him.

In 1950 he fell from a ladder, and at the time of this accident, the symptoms of cancer manifested themselves, which he lucidly diagnosed himself. He passed away on March 15, 1951, surrounded by the affection and gratitude of a population of Viedma and neighboring Patagones, who from that moment began to invoke him as an intercessor with God. The chronicle of the Salesian boarding school in Viedma records these prophetic words, “One less brother at home, and one more saint in heaven.”

The miracle for canonization

The recognized miracle concerns the miraculous healing of Renato, a Filipino, who was stricken in August 2016 with a “right cerebellar ischemic stroke complicated by a massive hemorrhagic lesion.” Due to worsening symptoms and the appearance of difficulty in walking, he was hospitalized. In the following days as there was no improvement; indeed, disoriented and confused in speech, he was transferred to intensive care.

His brother Roberto, a Salesian coadjutor, learning of the serious situation, began praying during community Vespers on the very day of his hospitalization, asking for healing through the intercession of Blessed Artemides Zatti.

Subsequently, a neurosurgical checkup advised the need for surgery, which was not possible due to the family’s situation of poverty. Consequently, the family members decided to bring their relative home so that he could spend the last days of his life with his family. The dying man received the anointing of the sick and wanted family members and relatives around him to take leave of them.

Roberto invited relatives to join together to pray, intensely invoking Blessed Artemides Zatti.

On August 24, 2016, against all expectations, Renato took off his tube and oxygen, called relatives saying he was fine, wanted to take a bath, and asked to eat. He was a man who had been brought home to die, and after a few days was healthy again!

This miracle confirmed the charism of Artemides Zatti, called “the relative of the poor.” In fact, Artemides in his hospital in Viedma, Argentina, welcomed and cared for the very people who could not afford the cost of medicines and hospitalizations.

The miracle did not happen only as a physical healing. For God’s grace, while healing bodies, touches people’s hearts and lives, renewing them in faith, in relationships, in witnessing a new life.

One day one of the doctors at San José Hospital asked, “Don Zatti, are you happy?” “Very. How about you, doctor?” “I’m not.” “You see, each person carries happiness within himself. Be content and satisfied with what you have, be it little or nothing: that’s what the Lord wants from us. He takes care of the rest.”

That is the wish and the message that Bro. Zatti sends to each of us today. As he wrote in a letter to his father Luigi in 1908: “I will not stand there enumerating the graces you must ask for, well you know. Only I place before your eyes one, and that is that we may all love and serve God in this world and then enjoy him forever in the next. Oh! What happiness then, to be able to be all together, without fear of ever being separated again!... oh, yes, this grace you must ask for. And if sometimes we have to suffer something, patience!... in heaven we will find the reward, if we have suffered for the sake of our dear Jesus. Let us remember that momentary are the sufferings and eternal is the joy!”