Surgeon meets a poor priest again

This has nothing to do with transplantation but I was intrigued by reading this note in Vascular News (Feb 4, 2015) about a surgeon in Buenos Aires (Juan Parodi) who recollects that 34 years ago he was called by a friend of his who was an internist to ask if he could help a very poor priest who has fallen ill and could not afford any treatment in a private hospital.  Juan Parodi went to this small hospital and found a very sick priest who was septicaemia and anuric lying in an old bed. He had been on antibiotics but with no response and to cut a long story short he did an emergency laparotomy  and found a gangrenous gall bladder with localised peritonitis. Following cholecystectomy and drainage the patient improved rapidly and two days later was off dialysis, and was discharged 10 days after his surgery. This poor priest, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, became Pope Francis in 2013 and his friend called Parodi to remind him of the night when he operated on the priest who Parodi said he did not remember in any detail and certainly not his name.

Recently after attending a meeting in London, Parodi flew to Rome to have an invited audience with the Pope who did indeed remember his admission to hospital and Parodi operating on him and saving his life. The Pope said “I remember your face. That night I thought I was going to die and all of a sudden a crazy young surgeon arrives and starts to give orders and prepare the operating room”. This is a great story and hence I have taken the editorial privilege of putting it as a blog on the CET web page.