Italian doctor pens inspiring letter from COVID-19 trenches: Can’t take anything for granted … all is ‘gift’

Apr 5, 2020 by

by Dorothy Cummings McLean, LifeSite:

A doctor at the frontlines of Italy’s battle against the coronavirus has written a moving letter about prayer, gratitude, and human solidarity.

The letter, first published in Italian on March 18, has begun to be circulated in English. 

Dr. Amedeo Capetti, an infectious disease specialist at the Luigi Sacco Hospital in Milan, wrote to the editor of Il Foglio, a centrist national newspaper, to describe the psychological and spiritual phenomena he is witnessing as a physician at the center of the pandemic.

Capetti dismisses the shallow expressions of bravado that are obscuring deeper spiritual realities. He wrote that he was not convinced by the “new idolatry” of medical professionals caused by the pandemic. He believes this is merely a “completely understandable attempt to exorcise a most human fear.” He is likewise unimpressed by cries that “we are going to make it.”

“Who is going to make it?” he asked. “You to whom I am writing and I? The Italian people understood abstractly? All this doesn’t convince me and leaves me frankly perplexed.”

The virologist objects to a desire for everyone to “leap over” the “drama of the present” toward the end of the epidemic because he believes there is something transformative to be learned now.

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