Another Italian Layman:
Giancarlo Rastelli, MD +1970
It is difficult to retrace the course of this young doctor from Parma, devout Catholic, a Marian devotee, a poor emigrant with a NATO scholarship, a humble Italian doctor in the open competition of the minds and the millions in America. It is difficult to explain to the young doctors of today how he made these discoveries alone and, above all, in the last 5 terrible years of the illness that he had contracted through work and research. He diagnosed himself, suffered in silence, day after day, reducing to a minimum his hours of sleep, stealing time from life without keeping it for himself. He wore with dignity the death that was eating into him, taming it with his usual optimistic smile, the smile of the young man who is always able to see further and higher, even in everyday life. When he was a student, if he was asked : “What would you do if you knew that you were going to die?” he replied with the words of S. Philip Neri “I would continue to play ball.” -From a biographical sketch on the life of Giancarlo Rostelli, MD
Dr. Rastelli lived and worked in Minnesota.
In a comment on a previous post, Ray of Stella Borealis reminded me of Dr. Rastelli, whose cause has recently been intoduced by the Diocesan Bishop of his diocese in Parma, Italy. Awhile back there was an article about the Servant of God, Giancarlo Rastelli, yet his named escaped me until today, when Ray reminded me.
Yes indeed, another Italian layman may be recognized by the Church as a saint. Having lived so close to our time, he is an excellent patron for young people, professionals, and laity, among others.
Giancarlo Rastelli, M.D., a Mayo Clinic physician who developed a cardiac procedure for congenital heart disease among children, is being considered for beatification, the first step toward sainthood.
The late Dr. Rastelli died of cancer in 1970 at age 36. He was educated in Italy and came to Mayo Clinic in the 1960s. He was appointed head of cardiovascular surgical research at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, at age 34. He conducted his research in cardiovascular surgery at Mayo during the 1960s and developed Rastelli 1 and Rastelli 2, procedures credited with saving numerous lives of children with heart disease. He was awarded two gold medals by the American Medical Association and did a great deal of his research while suffering from Hodgkin’s disease. - Ray at Stella Borealis
Who was Giancarlo?
…He had been brought up by the Jesuits in Parma ( Padre Molin Mosè Pradel) within the culture of “the man to be saved” and of service to others, always aware that doctors, hospitals, and research centres only exist because there are ill people. These people and structures have been created around the figure of the patient, and not to guarantee jobs to employees. The patient as a person as the most important, absolute priority objective.
Everybody remembers how the days and Gian’s house were always free to give hospitality to Italian children with heart diseases while they were waiting for their operations, and how he was always the first to contribute, when necessary, to help to pay for their operations in America. The table in his American house was attached to the floor and leaned; a boiled egg or apple placed on the table would roll onto the floor. But for his guests, the children and their parents, every day he would hand round the mixed salad of many boiled eggs, the frugal meals of the researcher (and as such poorly paid) who had chosen to grow in science and solidarity rather than in money.
A colleague said of him, “For all of us doctors it was the hope of building a different, more human, society”, to change society, not to be subject to it. “His discoveries-D’Aloia continues-for the correction of the truncus arteriosus and for the transposition of the great vessels were very difficult, but I can never forget how he presented them to us, with simplicity, on a piece of crumpled paper, as if we would understand his language and yet he was always open to criticism from us. And if the others did not understand, he would think that he himself was the fool “because” he said “the truly cultured person must make himself accessible to all, otherwise he is a charlatan who speaks only for himself .”
He also explained their illnesses, and the treatments, to his patients, without hiding behind convenient professional secrets. “Even if you only have a few minutes to visit a patient” he wrote, “enter, sit next to him, smile, take him by the hand, meet him as a brother with a common destiny”, not as a number, a hospital inmate. He was always pained by that patient awaiting treatments and hope from him.
From the Mayo Clinic, where he was yet to be called to research, he wrote: ” Here the earthenware jars break immediately. The values in play are real and are examined every day. There is no place for nepotism, politics, academicism and influence.”
The most important message of Giancarlo’s life for young people was: interrogate yourself every day and every hour and see how you match up against your degree, profession, essence, humanity, Christianity. Never live off past profits. - abcparma.it
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