Pope visits new clinic for the poor built under St Peter’s colonnade

Pope Leo XIV paid a quiet visit to a new outpatient clinic that has been built beneath the colonnade of St Peter’s Square.

On 14 November, coinciding with the World Day of the Poor, the Pope visited the new San Martino Outpatient Clinic. Established by the Office of the Papal Almoner in collaboration with the Health and Hygiene Directorate of the Governorate of Vatican City State, the new clinic has been equipped to expand the range of medical care available to people living on the margins in Rome.

Two new consultation rooms and a radiology service form the heart of the facility, with the latter featuring a cutting-edge X-ray machine capable of detecting conditions often left untreated among the homeless and the poor, such as pneumonia, bone fractures, tumours, degenerative diseases, kidney stones and intestinal obstructions.

“Early diagnosis of these conditions will make it possible to start appropriate treatments in a timely manner, contributing to improving the quality of life of those who have nothing,” the Dicastery for the Service of Charity said in a press statement.

The new clinic supplements the long-standing outpatient service that has already been operating under Bernini’s sweeping colonnade for the past decade. More than 2,000 free medical services are provided every month by some 120 volunteers of doctors, nurses and technicians who offer their time to support the Vatican’s charitable outreach program.

General and specialist consultations, dental care, blood tests and X-rays are among the services routinely available. Removable dentures, eyeglasses and hearing aids are also supplied to those unable to afford them, and essential medications are dispensed directly and without charge.

Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the Pope’s almoner, has repeatedly stressed that these initiatives are intended to affirm the presence of Christ in the poor.

Dignity is restored in the clinics, he said, because staff and volunteers “see not a homeless person or a poor person, but the face of Jesus”.

Photo: Pope Leo visits the newly opened San Martino Outpatient Clinic (image @VaticanMedia)