‘By this shall all men know you are my disciples if you have love one for another.’ — Jesus of Nazareth.
In the midst of the gloom and doom so many would have us to focus on, there are stories of hope and heroism — of people rising above the ordinary.
In hard-hit Italy, for instance, there are shortages of life-saving equipment, and health care workers are forced to make hard decisions about how to use them. Questions about who can be saved. (Related story: Socialized Medicine In Action: Italian Doctors Now Telling Patients Over 60 To Pound Sand)
For all the negative press Priests have had over the years, many of it justified, it’s easy to forget that the criminal, child-abusing idiots are by no means representative of the whole.
Stories of selfless sacrifice, like that of a 72-year old Italian priest, help bring that fact back into proper focus.
A Catholic priest in Italy is being called a “Martyr of Charity” for refusing a respirator so a younger patient could use it to ward off the coronavirus.
Don Giuseppe Berardelli, 72, died last Sunday at a hospital in Lovere after he lent medical equipment his parishioners bought for him to a stranger.
He is a "Martyr of Charity," a saint like St. Maximilian Kolbe, who in Auschwitz volunteered to take the place of a condemned man with a family, and was killed.
— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) March 24, 2020
You will notice that this isn’t an instance of government and hospial resources being reallocated differently. This was privately-owned, life-saving equipment his own parishioners brough him.
He died, willingly, that someone else might live.
Almost as though he was following someone elses’ example, isn’t it?
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