Pope Francis will canonize next Sunday Artemides Zatti who will thus become the third Argentine saint and the first non-religious, since it belonged to salesian community but he worked as a nurse in Viedma and Carmen de Patagones at the beginning of the last century.
The canonization ceremony of the Patron Saint of the city of Viedma will take place in the Vatican at 5:00 (Argentine time) and will be presided over by the Supreme Pontiff and will be attended by a delegation of Salesian priests from the center and south of the country.
Spokesmen for the Salesian community expressed that this canonization “is very important” because it is the first Saint belonging to the community, but who was not the founder of that congregation.
Zatti will thus become the third Argentine saint. The first was Hector Baldiviezowho served his priesthood in the city of Buenos Aires and the second Jose Gabriel Brocherowho did it in the province of Córdoba.
Artemides Zatti is the first “non-religious” saint since he only belonged to the Salesian community where he became “Salesian Coadjutor”.
hecalled “nurse of the poor”` He went with his bicycle to the most remote places of Viedma and Carmen de Patagones, where he went to cure the sick from house to house.
A Zatti, who died on March 15, 1951, is credited with a miracle that occurred in 1980.
In that occasion Carlos Bossionow director of the Salesian House in the Cordovan town of Colonia Vignaud , He had septicemia and the doctors gave him no chance of survival.
The familiars raised prayers to Artemides Zatti Y Bossio was cured of his illness “from one day to the next”, according to the religious during a press conference held today at the Salesian educational headquarters in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Almagro.
On April 14, 2002, Pope John Paul II proclaimed him Blessed of the Catholic Church.
The Bishop of Viedma, Marcelo Laxague, He stressed that “hopefully the figure of Zatti wakes us all up for doing good, I work hard for something that Pope Francis always highlights, fraternity. For him, everyone was friends and brothers.”
The parish priest of Carmen de Patagones, Pedro Narambuena, He stressed that “Zatti was on his bicycle, for which you have to bend your knee and force yourself to pedal. His life was a lot of that, but nothing discouraged him from his mission.”
Narambuena reported that the canonization ceremony will be at 5 Argentine time and that it will be done together with an Italian bishop, then the relics will be delivered.
The previous day the Salesian family that will travel to the Vaticanwill have a audience with Pope Francis partly because the Supreme Pontiff knows the trajectory of Artèmides Zatti.
In Argentina, in the Basilica Maria Auxiliadora in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Almagro, there will be a mass on Saturday the 8th and in Bahìa Blanca, where Zatti lived for many years recently arrived from Italy, there will be a Eucharist on Monday the 10th.
in viedma, A giant screen will be installed at the Zatti school to broadcast the canonization ceremony live, then a mass will be held at the Don Bosco parish temple, where the relics of the Saint are kept.
The parish priest also explained that later “there will be a caravan through the streets of the city, recalling that expression of popular affection that was experienced when Zatti died.”
after which there will be a bike ride from the Salesian parish of Nuestra Señora del Carmen to the Artémides Zatti parish, in one of the peripheral neighborhoods of Carmen de Patagones. There will also be events in Colonia Vignaud, in the province of Córdoba.
