The doctor recalled how the pontiff did not want to be intubated
Monday 21 April in the residence of Casa Santa Marta, in the last moments of life of Pope Francis, there was also the Dr. Sergio Alfieri, The doctor who took care of him during hospitalizations at the Gemelli Polyclinic. “We are linked by a deep estimate” he confided in a long interview with Corriere della Sera in which he told the privileged relationship he had with the Holy Father.
The last moments of Pope Francis
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Dr. Alfieri retraced what happened on Monday starting from the call received at 5.30 in the morning by Massimiliano Strappetti, the personal health assistant of Pope Francis. “We have to return to the Gemelli” Strappetti told him and the professor immediately put the hospital operating machine in a way but when he arrived in Santa Marta he practically immediately realized that hospitalization would not have been necessary. “I entered the room and had my eyes open. I found that he had no respiratory problems and then I tried to call him but he did not answer me. He did not answer the stimuli, not even the painful ones. At that moment I realized that there was nothing more to do. It was in a coma”. Transporting it to the hospital would probably have meant make it die in an ambulance: “Strappetti knew that the pope wanted to die at home, when he was at Gemelli he always said. I remained there with the other nurses and secretaries, then everyone arrived and Cardinal Parolin asked us to pray. I felt a privileged one, that morning I gave him a caress as the last farewell”.
memory
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The last meeting between the Holy Father and his doctor It had been on Saturday after lunch: “He was fine, he told me too. I brought him a dark tart as he likes him. ‘I’m very well, I started working again and I want to tell me.” Al Corriere della Sera Professor Alfieri reiterated that he did not reproach him for the too many commitments despite the prescription of 60 days of convalescence: “He is the Pope, working was part of the therapy, he never exposed himself to the dangers. It is as if approaching the end he had decided to do everything he had to. On Sunday he accepted the proposal of tear of turning around the crowd. Or ten days ago when he wanted to meet him. 70 people, I had proposed to him to do it after Easter, insisted to do it immediately.
The first meeting
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Alfieri told the emotion of First meeting with the Pope in 2018. “I was a surgeon consultant of the Holy See and he invited us to participate in a mass in Santa Marta. He was like a parish priest, he did the preaching and then at the end of the celebration he left the church and greeted all one by one”. Their relationship became narrower when two years later the abdominal pain with the discovery of diverticular disease. “The Pope was informed that I had the greatest experience in Italy of rectal colon interventions and chose to be operated by me” and on that occasion the Pope had claimed the maximum secrecy: “I will arrive on Sunday after Angelus. Nobody will have to know. If the news comes out, you don’t operate me anymore” he had told him. Dr. Alfieri explained that to maintain the secret they said that a foreign head of state had to arrive. During those days, something happened that only today Dr. Alfieri can reveal: “The Pope specified that any decision in his place should have taken it to the sake. Then a few minutes before the intervention he wanted to see me. I entered his room and he blessed my hands. It was an incredible emotion, I understood the meaning only afterwards. He wanted to tell me use your hands for your work, but use your hands in the next few years. Catholic but now you have something more. On that occasion there were one Clorse week: “On the third day he offered the pizza, he put himself on the garment and eating at the table with him is another privilege that life has given me”.
The night snacks
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Also the second intervention He was organized in secret: “After the first operation when he returned home he had appeared to say clearly what was the importance of public health and the importance of keeping Catholic hospitals with a certain mission. He showed him returning to Gemelli”. Before these operations, the Pope had clarified that he did not want to be intubated and that they had to avoid therapeutic fury. “He knew it would be difficult to go back with the lungs in his condition, we would only prolonged his life of a few days.” Alfieri told how he trusted only of tears: “After his nod of consent he followed our advice”. It was a very greedy man And during the convalescence after the 2021 operation despite the prescriptions and the diet to follow, often went at night in the kitchens of Santa Marta for a snack. “Sometimes I seemed too rigorous to him, he apostrophized me telling me to live with irony.”
Fear during hospitalization
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During the last hospitalization there was a time when the procedures were started then performed on Monday: “We feared the worst and surprised us. He wanted to go home to do the Pope until the last instant”. Now Dr. Alfieri will try to perform the Last wishes of the Pope: “In January he told me that we had to deal with abandoned embryos. ‘I am life we cannot allow that they are used for experimentation or that they should be lost. It would be murder’. We were evaluating, even with the Ministry of Health, among the various options, the way to grant them for adoption but there has not been time. My commitment will now be, if there will be the conditions, to realize this desire”.
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