Artemides Zatti was born in Boretto (Reggio Emilia) on October 12, 1880. It did not take long for him to experience the hardships of sacrifice, so much so that by the age of nine, he was already earning a living as a farmhand. Poverty forced the Zatti family to emigrate to Argentina at the beginning of 1897, where they established themselves in Bahía Blanca. Young Artemides immediately began attending the parish run by the Salesians, and found that the parish priest, Fr. Carlo Cavalli, was a devout and extraordinarily kind man, and became his spiritual director. It was he who guided him to Salesian life. He was 20 years old when he went to the aspirantate in Bernal.
While assisting a young priest who had tuberculosis, Artemides caught the disease himself. Fr Cavalli – who was following him from a distance – showed particular and fatherly interest in him and saw that he was chosen to go to the Salesian house in Viedma, where the climate was more suitable. There was a missionary hospital there with a good Salesian nurse who effectively functioned as a doctor: Father Evasio Garrone. He invited Artemides to pray to Mary Help of Christians for his recovery, suggesting he make a promise: “If she cures you, you will dedicate the rest of your life to the sick people here.” Artemides willingly made such a promise and was mysteriously cured. Later, he would say, “I believed, I promised, I was cured.”
The path was now clearly laid out for him, and he embarked on it enthusiastically. In all humility and docility, he accepted the suffering that he would need to renounce thoughts of the priesthood. It was no small thing. He professed his vows as a Salesian brother at his first profession on January 11, 1908, and his perpetual profession on February 18, 1911. Consistent with his promise to Our Lady, he dedicated himself immediately and totally to the hospital, initially working in the pharmacy. However, when Fr. Garrone died in 1913, responsibility for the entire hospital fell on his shoulders.
He became its vice-director, administrator, and expert nurse, respected by everyone, sick and healthy alike. He was gradually given greater freedom of action. It was said that his main medicine was himself: his approach, his jokes, joy, and affection. He did not only want to administer medicines but to help patients see signs of God’s will in their situation, especially when death was imminent. He was not just a nurse but an educator to the faith for everyone in their time of trial and illness. A “good Samaritan” in Don Bosco’s style, “sign and bearer of God’s love.”
His service was not limited to the hospital but extended to the rest of the city, even to the two localities situated on either bank of the Rio Negro: Viedma and Patagones. In case of necessity, he would go out at any hour of the day or night, to the hovels on the outskirts, doing it all free of charge. He would pray while he was pedalling on his inseparable bicycle, and the few free hours left to him he would dedicate to study and reading. Even when he went to bed, he was always available for any calls. His reputation as a nurse spread throughout the South, and the sick came from all of Patagonia. It was by no means rare for sick people to prefer a visit from the saintly nurse rather than their doctors.
Artemides Zatti loved his patients in a truly moving way. He saw Jesus himself in them to the extent that, when he asked the Sisters for clothing for a new youngster who had arrived, he would say: “Sister, do you have some clothes for a twelve-year-old Jesus?” The attention he showed them was as delicate as it could be. Some recall having seen him carry away the corpse of a patient to the mortuary on his shoulders if that person had died during the night, so that other patients would not see the deceased person, and did so while reciting the De profundis. Faithful to the Salesian spirit and the motto that Don Bosco left his sons as a legacy – “work and temperance” – he carried out a prodigious activity with habitual readiness of mind, heroic spirit of sacrifice, and absolute detachment from any personal satisfaction, without ever allowing himself holidays or rest. Some said that the only five-day rest he ever had was the ones spent in … prison! Yes, he also experienced prison after a prisoner who was being kept at the hospital escaped, and the blame for the escape fell on him. He came away absolved of his crime, and his return was a triumph.
He was a man of uncomplicated human relationships, visibly sympathetic and happy to work with humble folk. But above all, he was a man of God who radiated the light of his presence. A doctor at the hospital, somewhat of an unbeliever, said later: “When I saw Brother Zatti, I wavered in my disbelief,” and another said: “I believed in God when I came to know Brother Zatti.”
In 1950, the tireless nurse fell from a ladder, and it was then that the first symptoms of cancer appeared, which he himself clearly diagnosed. He continued with his mission just the same for a further year until, after heroically accepting his suffering, he died on March 15, 1951, fully conscious, surrounded by the affection and gratitude of the entire population.
Source: Like Stars in the Heaven (2022)
