In Bahia Blanca, young Artemide attends the parish run by the Salesians where Fr. Carlo Cavalli is the parish priest. Artemide finds in him the father and spiritual director who orients him to Salesian life. In Viedma, he meets Father Evasio Garrone who invites him to pray to Mary Help of Christians to obtain healing, but also suggests he make a promise: "If She heals you, you will devote your whole life to these sick people." Artemis gladly makes this promise and is miraculously healed. He made his first Profession as a Salesian coadjutor on January 11, 1908, and his Perpetual Profession on February 18, 1911, convinced that "one can serve God either as a priest or as a brother: one thing can be as valid for God as the other, provided one does so with vocation and love."
Throughout his life, the hospital shall be the place where he exercises, day after day, a charity abounding with the compassion of the Good Samaritan. When he would wake the sick in the wards, his signature greeting was, "Good morning! Long live Jesus, Joseph, and Mary - Is everyone breathing?"
He routinely cycles around the town of Viedma in his white coat and medicine bag. One hand on the handlebar and the other with the rosary. He does everything for free. A farmer who wants to express his gratitude, greeting him, says, "Thank you very much, Brother Zatti, for everything. I take my leave of you and ask you to convey my best regards to your wife, although I do not have the pleasure of knowing her...." "Neither do I," Zatti replies, laughing heartily.
Artemide Zatti loves his sick, seeing and serving Jesus Himself in them. One day he says to the wardrobe attendant, "A change of clothes for Our Lord...." Zatti seeks the best for his patients because "to Our Lord, we must give the best." A poor country boy needs a little suit for his first communion and Artemis asks, "A little suit for Our Lord."
He knows how to win everyone over and with his poise he can resolve even the most delicate situations. One of the hospital doctors will testify, "When I saw Mr. Zatti my disbelief wavered." And another, "I have believed in God ever since I met Br. Zatti."
In the community, he is the one who rings the bell, the one who precedes all the confreres in community appointments. As a good Salesian, he knows how to make cheerfulness a component of his holiness. Always pleasantly smiling: that is how all the photos portray him.
In 1950 he fell from a ladder, and at the time of this accident, the symptoms of cancer manifested themselves, which he lucidly diagnosed himself. He passed away on March 15, 1951, surrounded by the affection and gratitude of a population of Viedma and Patagones who from that moment began to invoke him as an intercessor with God. The chronicle of the Salesian boarding school in Viedma records these prophetic words, "One less brother at home and one more saint in heaven."
The miracle for canonization
The recognized miracle concerns the miraculous healing of Renato, a Filipino, who was stricken in August 2016 with a "right cerebellar ischemic stroke complicated by a massive hemorrhagic lesion." Due to worsening symptoms and the appearance of difficulty in walking, he was hospitalized. In the following days as there was no improvement, indeed being disoriented and confused in speech, he was transferred to intensive care.
His brother Roberto, a Salesian coadjutor, learning of the serious situation, began praying during community vespers on the very day of his hospitalization, asking for healing through the intercession of Blessed Artemide Zatti.
Subsequently, a neurosurgical checkup advised the need for surgery, which was also not possible due to the family's situation of poverty. Consequently, the family members decided to bring their relative home so that he could spend the last days of his life with his family. The dying man received the anointing of the sick and wanted family members and relatives around him to take leave of them
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Roberto invited relatives to join together to pray, intensely invoking Blessed Artemide Zatti.
On August 24, 2016, against all expectations, Renato took off his tube and oxygen, called relatives saying he was fine, wanted to take a bath, and asked to eat. He was a man who had been brought home to die and who, after a few days, was healthy again!
This miracle confirms the charism of Artemis Zatti, called "the relative of the poor." In fact, Artemis in his hospital in Viedma, Argentina, welcomed and cared for the very people who could not afford the cost of medicines and hospitalizations.
The miracle did not happen only as a physical healing. For God's grace, while healing bodies, touches people's hearts and lives, renewing them in faith, in relationships, in witnessing a new life.
One day one of the doctors at San José Hospital asked, "Don Zatti, are you happy?" "Very. How about you, doctor?" "I'm not." "You see, each person carries happiness within himself. Be content and satisfied with what you have, be it little or nothing: that's what the Lord wants from us. He takes care of the rest."
It is the wish and the message that Br. Zatti sends to each of us today. As he wrote in a letter to his father Luigi in 1908: "I will not stand there enumerating the graces you must ask for, well you know. Only I place before your eyes one, and that is that we may all love and serve God in this world and then enjoy Him forever in the next. Oh! What happiness then, to be able to be all together, without fear of ever being separated again!... oh, yes, this grace you must ask for. And if sometimes we have to suffer something, patience!... in heaven we will find the reward, if we have suffered for the sake of our Dear Jesus, and let us remember that momentary are the sufferings and eternal is the enjoyment!"
Fr. Pier Luigi Cameroni, Postulator General for the Cause of the Saints of the Salesian Family
