Rome (Italy). On 9 April 2022, during the Audience granted to His Eminence Most Reverend Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the Supreme Pontiff authorized the same Congregation to promulgate the Decree concerning the miracle attributed to the intercession of Blessed Artemis Zatti, professed lay person of the Society of St. Francis de Sales; born on 12 October 1880 in Boretto (Italy) and died on 15 March 1951 in Viedma (Argentina).
Blessed Artemide Zatti will therefore be recognized by the universal Church as a Saint. The date of the canonization will be decided by the Supreme Pontiff in the course of an ordinary consistory.
The inexplicable healing that paves the way for the canonization of Artemide Zatti took place in the Philippines in August 2016 and concerns a man who had suffered an ischemic stroke, accompanied by further complications.
The news is a source of great joy for the Salesian Congregation which will have the first Salesian Brother – consecrated, but not a priest – to be proclaimed a Saint, and for the whole Salesian Family.
Pope Francis knows Artemide Zatti and has great faith in his intercession, thanks to which, when he was Provincial of the Jesuits in Argentina, he obtained numerous vocations as lay brothers for the Society of Jesus. He himself testified to this in a letter he wrote to an Argentine Salesian in 1986 and that Fr. Juan Edmundo Vecchi, VIII Successor of Don Bosco at the head of the Salesian Congregation, included in the Letter published in view of the beatification of the Salesian Coadjutor.
Born in Italy, Artemide Zatti emigrated to Argentina with his family because of poverty, and settled in Bahìa Blanca, where he attended the parish run by the Salesians. At 20, he went to Bernal’s Aspirantate. While assisting a young priest suffering from tuberculosis, he contracted the disease. A Salesian invited him to pray to Mary Help of Christians for healing, suggesting that he make a promise, “If she heals you, you will dedicate yourself all your life to these sick ones.” Artemis gladly made that promise and was mysteriously cured.
He made his first profession as a lay confrere on 11 January 1908 and his Perpetual one on 8 February 1911. In keeping with the promise made to Our Lady, he immediately and totally consecrated himself to the hospital, esteemed by all the sick, by doctors and nurses. His service extended to the two localities located on the banks of the Negro River: Viedma and Patagonia. The fame of a holy nurse spread throughout the South and sick people arrived from all over Patagonia. Artemide Zatti loved his sick in a moving way.
He was a man of easy human relationships, with a visible charge of sympathy, happy to be able to mingle with humble people. But he was above all a man of God, he radiated Him. A non-believing hospital doctor will say, “When I saw Mr. Zatti my disbelief wavered.” And another, “I believe in God from when I have known Mr. Zatti.”
In 1950, he fell from a ladder and on that occasion the symptoms of a cancer manifested itself that he himself lucidly diagnosed. He passed away on 15 March 1951 in full consciousness, surrounded by the affection and gratitude of an entire population.
He was declared Venerable on 7 July 1997 and Beatified by Saint John Paul II in Saint Peter’s Square on 14 April 2002.
Source: InfoANS
