More than 3,000 employees from the hospital’s six branches, along with patients and families, will be received at a hearing on March 16 in the Paulo VI Room. President Onesti: “This new meeting testifies once again to Francisco’s closeness and affection for ‘our’ Hospital and confirms us in our commitment.”
Vatican News
A festive meeting for the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital: more than 3,000 doctors, nurses, researchers, technical and administrative staff, volunteers, patients and their families will meet Pope Francis in the Paul VI Room on Saturday, March 16.
The occasion of the hearing is the 100th anniversary of the donation of the Hospital to the Holy See by the Salviati family, who founded it in 1869. Since that day (February 20, 1924), the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital, the first Italian hospital entirely dedicated to children , became the “Pope’s Hospital” for everyone.
One of the largest treatment and research centers in Europe
The donation made a hundred years ago by the Salviati family has borne abundant fruit and the small hospital on Gianicolo Hill is today one of the largest academic centers for pediatric research and treatment in Europe. A reference point for families not only in Rome and Lazio, but also in Italy and the world. Spread across six locations, the hospital offers 627 beds and handles approximately 95,000 emergency room admissions, 30,000 hospitalizations, more than 32,000 surgical and invasive procedures and 2,500,000 outpatient services each year. The Hospital da Santa Sé covers all medical and surgical specialties in the field of pediatrics. Among the most innovative areas of care are transplantology, genetic and metabolic diseases, medical and surgical cardiology, neurosciences, onco-hematology and rehabilitation. Along with medical care, there is intense research activity, which is mainly concentrated in the large laboratories of the São Paulo unit outside the Walls and to which almost 2,000 researchers are dedicated. Every year, the hospital carries out around a thousand research projects and clinical studies and produces more than 1,300 scientific publications.
The event schedule
On Saturday (16/03), the most beautiful gift for Pope Francis, explains a note from the hospital, will certainly be the smiles of the more than 200 children with their parents, undergoing treatment at Bambino Gesù, which he will find in the first rows of the Room Paul VI. Among them are also foreign children coming from the “peripheries of the world”, where they would have no possibility of treatment or care, and especially from war scenes that have injured them and deprived them of a home and affection: Ukraine and Gaza, in the first place. . Every year, more than 300 patients are received on a humanitarian basis by the hospital, which is also involved in international cooperation projects in 18 countries to train healthcare professionals and provide highly specialized interventions.
Audience participants will meet in the morning at the Vatican, where, starting at 8:30 am, volunteers from various associations that work with Bambino Gesù will entertain the children present. The Pontiff is expected at 9:30 am. A group of 50 children will welcome you by raising a banner with the slogan “Lives that help life”, which will accompany the various initiatives that will characterize 2024 as the “year of giving”. After his speech, Francisco will greet the president of Bambino Gesù, Tiziano Onesti, Duchess Maria Grazia Salviati, heir to the hospital’s founding family, and the young patients with their families.
President Onesti: a new opportunity to meet
Finally, a committee of patients will offer the Pontiff a basket with messages written for him by children and young people who were hospitalized in the various Bambino Gesù locations in the weeks before the hearing. “We sincerely thank Pope Francis for this new opportunity to meet”, says President Onesti, “because, by receiving us on this occasion, he once again testifies to his closeness and affection for ‘our’ hospital and confirms us in our commitment” . In this regard, Onesti continues: “My thoughts and thanks go to the doctors, nurses and the entire healthcare team who will not be able to attend the hearing because they are engaged in hospital service that can never stop.” “Doing research, curing illnesses, overcoming loneliness in families”: for the president of Bambino Gesù, this is “the objective of our work; this is the privilege that is granted to us because, by treating children and young people from all over the world, We are taking care of our future.”