Saturday, October 1, 2022

Bro. Zatti, Salesian

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.

Salesian coadjutor Bro. Artemides Zatti (standing at rear) is portrayed in this photograph together with the medical staff of the San José Hospital, which the Salesians ran from the end of the 19th century and of which he was the real soul. In the image, dating from 1916, it is possible to see, in addition to Zatti, Salesian coadjutors Giovanni Cartella and Angelo Mori and Fr. Andrea Pestarino. The photograph, along with many others, is available at www.zatti.org. All images belong to the Salesian Historical Archives of Southern Argentina, Bahia Blanca office.

(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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