St. Artemide Zatti, the Nurse of Patagonia

Who was St. Artemide Zatti?

St. Artemide Zatti was an Italian farm boy who became the beloved nurse of a whole region of Patagonia. For about forty years this Salesian lay brother ran the small mission hospital at Viedma, on the Río Negro in southern Argentina, and pedaled his bicycle through the town and across the river to anyone who was sick. He asked no money from the poor, and he treated the rich and the poor the same.

For twenty years he was Blessed Artemide Zatti. On October 9, 2022, Pope Francis canonized him in St. Peter's Square, calling him "a living example of gratitude." We keep his memorial on November 13.

A farm boy from Boretto

Artemide Zatti was born on October 12, 1880, at Boretto in the province of Reggio Emilia, Italy. His family was poor, and by the age of nine he was working as a hired hand in the fields. Early in 1897, the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints records, the family emigrated to Argentina and settled at Bahía Blanca. He worked in a hotel and then in a brick factory.

Guided by his parish priest, Artemide was drawn to the life of Don Bosco's sons. At about twenty he went to the Salesian house at Bernal as an aspirant.

The promise to Mary Help of Christians

At Bernal he was asked to care for a young priest with tuberculosis, and he caught the disease himself. His superiors sent him to the Salesian house at Viedma, hoping the dry climate would help. There he met Father Evasio Garrone, a Salesian who served the mission hospital as nurse and, in practice, as its doctor.

Father Garrone urged him to pray to Mary Help of Christians for healing and to promise her, if she cured him, that he would spend his life caring for the sick. Artemide made the promise. He recovered, and he kept his word for the rest of his life. On February 8, 1911, he made his perpetual vows as a Salesian brother.

The hospital at Viedma

He began in the hospital pharmacy. When Father Garrone died in 1913, Zatti took on the running of the whole hospital as vice-director and administrator, and he worked as its nurse besides. In 1914 he became an Argentine citizen; the small card from that year, with his photograph and signature, is kept at the Salesian museum in Viedma.

He was known for punctuality and for the motto Don Bosco left his sons, "work and temperance." Every day he made his rounds of the town and crossed the river to Carmen de Patagones, carrying his white coat and medicine bag on his bicycle. Whatever donations came to him went to the hospital. Pope Francis recalled in his canonization homily that Zatti "devoted his entire life to serving others, caring for the infirm with tender love," and that "he was said to have carried on his shoulders the dead body of one of his patients."

His last illness

In 1950 he had a serious fall, and afterward a cancer was found, which he recognized himself. He kept working for months. He died on March 15, 1951, and the people of Viedma and Patagones filled the streets for his funeral. His grave has been a place of prayer ever since.

The miracles of St. Artemide Zatti

• Approved: for his canonization, the healing of a man in the Philippines who suffered a cerebellar stroke with a large hemorrhage in August 2016. Doctors expected him to die, and he was taken home. His brother, a Salesian coadjutor in Rome, asked Zatti's intercession. On August 24 the man got up, took off his medical devices and asked to wash and eat. The decree called the cure "rapid, complete and lasting."
• Reported: his own healing from tuberculosis, which he credited to Mary Help of Christians.

John Paul II beatified him on April 14, 2002. He was the first Salesian coadjutor brother who was not a martyr to be raised to the altars, and twenty years later Pope Francis canonized him alongside St. Giovanni Battista Scalabrini.

Symbols of St. Artemide Zatti in art

As a modern saint, Zatti is shown from his photographs, and his images are simple:

• A white hospital coat, his everyday dress as nurse and pharmacist;
• A bicycle, on which he made his rounds of Viedma and Patagones;
• A medicine bag, carried to the homes of the sick;
• Patients or children at his side, the people he served.

He is never shown in a priest's vestments, because he was not a priest but a lay brother of the Salesians.

Feast day and prayer

We keep the memorial of St. Artemide Zatti on November 13. See the feast day calendar and the patron saints of nurses.

There is no single traditional prayer to St. Artemide Zatti in wide use. Let us ask him, as the Salesians do, to pray for the sick and for nurses, doctors and all who care for them, and for emigrant families making a new life far from home, as his own family did.