With a chirograph, signed on September 29, 2021, and published today, October 6, Pope Francis established a “Foundation for Catholic Healthcare,” an entity whose purpose is to “offer financial support to the Church’s healthcare facilities, so that they keep the Charisms of the Founders, are included in the network of similar facilities and charitable structures of the Church, geared to an exclusively charitable end according to the dictates of the Social Doctrine of the Church.”

The Holy Father took this decision “accepting willingly the petition” received “from many parts of a direct intervention of the Holy See to support and uphold the canonical organisms that work with the sole objective to improve the health of the sick and to alleviate their suffering, also with the collaboration of benefactors that have at heart the Church’s concern for the most fragile and needy.”

“To this end, I erect the Foundation for Catholic Healthcare as a canonical legal public person and as a civil legal person, as an entity linked to the Holy See, so that it functions under its sovereign authority and as an instrumental entity of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, which will provide for its government and for all that is necessary for its functioning,” explains the Pope.

The writing shared by the Vatican also points out that the Foundation “will be governed by canonical laws and, in particular, by the special rules that regulate Holy See Institutions, as well as by the attached Statutes, which I approve at the same time,” and “included will be the list of Institutions annexed to the Statute of the Council of Economy  and will be subject to the controls and authorizations of the Secretariat of the Economy.”

The Pontiff appointed Monsignor Nunzio Galantino, President of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, as President of the Foundation for Catholic Healthcare, and Fabio Gasperini, Secretary of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, as Secretary-General. Mariella Enoc, president of the Bambino Gesu Children’s Hospital; Sergio Alfieri, Professor of General Surgery of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart; Chiara Gibertoni, Director General of the Sant’Orsola-Malpighi General Hospital, are the members of the Administration Council and Maximino Caballero Ledo, Secretary-General of the Secretariat of the Economy was appointed Account Reviewer of the new Foundation.

Translation by Virginia M. Forrester