The atheist physician who built the pope’s hospital
Antoine Mekary | ALETEIA
When Pope Francis was discharged after 38 days at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital, some may have wondered if the name Gemelli — Italian for “twins” — was a nod to Sts. Cosmas and Damian, the twin physician-martyrs of early Christianity. But the hospital is named for just one man: Agostino Gemelli, a former atheist and military doctor whose dramatic conversion and lifelong pursuit of truth left an enduring mark on Catholic education, science, and health care.
Born Edoardo Gemelli in Milan in 1878, he was raised in a staunchly secular environment. His father was a Freemason, and his family rejected religion entirely. Edoardo pursued medicine at the University of Pavia, where he encountered Ludovico Necchi, a devout Catholic who influenced him not through preaching but through deep philosophical conversation and scientific dialogue. Slowly, Edoardo’s convictions began to shift.
His turning point came during World War I, while serving as a military doctor. In a hospital in Milan, a dying soldier, disfigured by leprosy, looked at him and said, “If my mother were here, she’d kiss me … could you?” Moved to the core, Edoardo kissed the man on the cheek. The gesture, simple yet profound, led to a spiritual awakening.
On Holy Thursday in 1903, Edoardo received Holy Communion for the first time and decided to become a Franciscan. Despite fierce opposition from his family — including an attempted kidnapping to prevent his entrance into religious life — he joined the order and took the name Agostino. He was ordained in 1908.
Rather than leaving science behind, Fr. Gemelli became a pioneer of experimental psychology in Italy. He founded the Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica and championed the harmony of faith and reason. In 1921, with Pope Benedict XV’s support, he established the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome, aimed at forming lay Catholic intellectuals. In 1964, its medical faculty opened the doors of what would become one of Italy’s most renowned hospitals: the Agostino Gemelli University Polyclinic.
The Gemelli Hospital gained international recognition after the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. Rushed there with four gunshot wounds, the Polish pope would return many times during his pontificate — over 150 days in total. He affectionately nicknamed it “Vatican III,” a nod to his other residences at the Vatican and Castel Gandolfo.
Today, a 200-square-meter suite on the 10th floor remains permanently reserved for pontifical use. Gemelli Hospital is not only the largest in Rome but also one of Italy’s top-ranked medical centers, known for its excellence in research and education.
Agostino Gemelli’s journey from skeptic to saintly scholar is a testament to the power of compassion and intellect working together. His legacy continues in every student trained, every patient healed, and in the quiet dignity with which the Church continues to serve the sick.
On your purported letter from my nephew about your ridiculous "olive branch", you printed a photograph you claimed to be of my grand-daughters. When I later posted the reactions of my actual grand-daughters [aged 20 and 17], you claimed that I was lying, and that my grand-daughters are actually aged 17 and 11. It follows therefore you claimed that the younger of the two girls on that picture was my 11 year grand-daughter in a bikini.
ReplyDeleteThis was the picture that you, in your Gary Bandall identity perved over, describing a pre-pubertal eleven year old as a "corker".
If that is not paedophilia, then what is it?
Well, we'll see what Fr Nicholas and Angela Atkins make of it, shall we?
"Well, we'll see what Fr Nicholas and Angela Atkins make of it, shall we?"
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely malicious. Detterling in over twenty years of correspondence with me you have learned nothing. You will not fight your battles like a man.
GENE
And so how do you suggest I fight against an unprincipled bully and coward like you who uses anonymity to mount relentless personal attacks on me? Who publishes filth alleging that he has had sex with my wife? That he has fathered my son? Who publishes a photograph of a young girl in a bikini who he claims to think is my youngest 11 year old granddaughter and slavers over her as a “corker” like a paedophile? Who publishes plans to take both her and her 17 year old cousin to an hotel in Torquay, posing as their grandfather - Humbert Humbert with two Lolitas?
DeleteTell me what weapon I have at my disposal to stop this relentlessly nasty behaviour? Appeal to your Catholic conscience? appeal to your better nature? You appear to have neither. Point out that, while you may feel justified in insulting me, smearing me as a supporter of paedophilia, callling me a neo Nazi and an apology for a man simply because I hold views that differ from yours that you unable to dismiss or refute, it is WRONG to attack and insult my family purely in order to cause me pain? How do you fight fairly against a cowardly bully who uses anonymity to mount personal attacks?
What alternative do I have than to fight malice with malice?
I have said - and I mean - that you can say what you like about me. Your shallow, feeble invective has all the impact of a wet fart. But leave my family out of it or I will fight back by the only means at my disposal.
As I said, I am leaving home tomorrow for an indefinite period (where and for how long is none of your business) and, if these attacks on my family cease then you will hear no more. But if they continue - or if you continue to justify them as “fair comment”, or to deny that they took place at all, then you will leave me with no alternative than the messy, probably risky tactic of exposing you. But it is a risk, feeling as I do that I have nothing to lose and a great deal to gain. that I am willing to take.
That is all.
"As I said, I am leaving home tomorrow for an indefinite period"
ReplyDeleteWhich direction are you heading? If you are going near to Uxbridge we could meet at Harris & Hoole.
GENE
To be honest Detters I am quite sad that you are leaving.
ReplyDeleteGENE
That may even be true in the sense that I am the only person who takes any notice whatsoever of this pile of plagiarised shite you think of as a blog. As a fake - fake writer, fake Christian, fake Catholic, fake husband, fake parent, fake teacher - you can’t earn any attention or esteem, the only kinds worth having. But your pathological narcissism means that you crave attention of any kind, even the scorn that your ridiculous pretensions to being a professional writer attracts, or the revulsion that your bigotry deserves for your attacks on homosexuals, or, worst of all the contempt you rightly deserve for your arrogant, self- basting fake religiosity. Without even that attention you will have only Mary, Tony, Sebastian, Gary and the rest of your pitiful collection of sock puppets to sustain your delusion that you can write, that you can think, that you matter.
DeleteAnd I have now asked you this question three times and you have failed to answer, because you can’t. You yammer at me that I should “fight my own battles” - but how do I do that against your unprincipled, cowardly bullying, launched from anonymity, so precluding any retaliation? And so I can retaliate only by descending to your level of unprincipled nastiness and exposing you to the communities whose approval you treasure.
You have had chance after chance to stop attacking my family, and you have rejected them all. And so, at long last, the shit will start to hit the fan, but please, no more bleating and whingeing: you have asked for this and you richly deserve it.
Well I guess that it's good news that you haven't left.
ReplyDeleteDetters I was thinking this morning about the comment/post, either on the TES or on this blog, that offended me most. You might be surprised to learn which one it was.
The comment that offended most appeared as a response to an article I published about an American lady who was healed of liver cancer in Medjugorje. You responded in a furious manner. Never really understood why.
GENE
You didn’t publish it. You never publish anything on your blog. You stole it and passed it off as your own. That was offensive. But not nearly so offensive as your insult to the intelligence in expecting anyone to believe such uncorroborated piffle. Stupid people can’t help being stupid; but people gifted with a modicum of intelligence like you who decide to be stupid are beneath contempt. It’s on a par with thinking that God helped you to find your phone charger, for fuck’s sake.
DeleteAnd when are you going to tell me how I fight my own battles against an unprincipled bastard who attacks my family relentlessly while cowering behind a pseudonym. How DO you fight back against a bullying coward without descending to his own perverse and sordid level? The level that makes him slaver over an 11 year old girl in a bikini. Christ, Gene, when are you going to stop stinking the place up?
"You didn’t publish it. You never publish anything on your blog. You stole it and passed it off as your own."
ReplyDeleteI did not pass it off as my own. As I recall the article was in the words of the lady who had this miraculous cure of cancer of the liver.
Still no explanation of why you reacted so furiously. Okay, your first wife died of liver cancer but, even this, dos not explain your fury.
GENE
I owe you fuck-all, Gene, least of all an explanation. Just who do you think you are? And leave my dead first wife out of your perverted drooling mouth or I might lose my temper and let you have the lot now.
DeleteYou heartless bastard. Yesterday was the anniversary of her death.
ReplyDelete