On Saturday, 7 May, in the Vatican’s Paul VI audience hall in Rome, Doctors with Africa CUAMM will meet with Pope Francis in a special papal audience. Joining us will be thousands of other people from all over Italy and elsewhere – individuals and groups, volunteer workers, supporters and friends, aid-workers, doctors and other medical staff, the young and the old, families, children –people who share CUAMM’s vision and resolve to meet tough challenges day in and day out in order to carry out its mission.
«We are deeply honored by the opportunity to be received by the Holy Fatherin this special papal audience. It makes us even more determined to continue down the path we first set out on over 65 years ago», says Don Dante Carraro, Doctors with Africa CUAMM’s director. «For us, the idea of “we” is fundamental. We don’t want to do the work we do for others, but with them. That means tackling challenges every day with churches and local governments, working together in the spirit of reciprocal responsibility to manage health care services and train staff».
Doctors with Africa CUAMM has been working since 1950 to protect and improve the health of vulnerable communities in Africa, coming to their aid in the most isolated parts of the continent, in places where few others care to go. We work for long-term, lasting development, partnering with local communities to help tackle the challenges that each day brings.
That’s what we did in Sierra Leone during the recent Ebola outbreak that killed thousands in the region, and that’s what our doctors continue to do every day: working to protect the health of the most vulnerable – women and children – ensuring safe deliveries for pregnant women in Uganda, Ethiopia, Angola and Mozambique, battling malnutrition and HIV/AIDS in Tanzania, and providing vaccinations and pre-natal visits in the most inaccessible parts of South Sudan.
What people say about us
«After having met some of you in Rome, and now, as I leaf through this publication, I think I’m beginning to really understand who you at Doctors with Africa CUAMM are and what you do. What an abundance of generosity, devotion and spirit of sacrifice you’ve built up in your six decades of existence! Fortunately CUAMM, too, is Italy, and that is something we must never forget when we fret over the state of our country today and in the future». Giorgio Napolitano, Padua, 11 November 2010
«Most Reverend Don Dante Carraro: I am deeply saddened by the passing of Don Luigi Mazzucato, the tireless, fervent driving force behind Doctors with Africa CUAMM for almost sixty years. Don Mazzucato was a great Italian – a man who dedicated his whole life to the values of solidarity, peace and social justice. His death has left a terrible void not just in CUAMM but also in the broader voluntary sector. The work he carried out is a precious heritage not only for those who wish to follow in his footsteps, but for every Italian». Sergio Mattarella, November 2015
«The most important part of the work that Doctors with Africa CUAMM does is the care they provide to people, restoring them to health, giving them new life. But it’s also the way CUAMM ensures continuity: children who come into the world to grow up, mothers who give birth to raise their children. It’s that sense of the continuity of life». Romano Prodi, Milan, November 2012
«CUAMM is the story of modern-day “prophets”, the apogee of an Italian volunteerism that’s rarely ever talked about, a core of altruism that co-exists side by side with egotism and nationalist hostility. It’s the story of a squad of Italian doctors working with one of the very best, yet least well-known and even less talked-about, Italian non-governmental organizations, Doctors with Africa CUAMM […]. I could never have imagined that for half a century, the epic story of one of the most effective organizations of its kind would unroll in the dark of night, beneath the stars of the Paduan sky, its main actor not some ambitious young manager but rather the quiet, skinny priest who led CUAMM for fifty years, until 2008». Paolo Rumiz, in the book “Il bene ostinato”.
«I went to Uganda with CUAMM in 2009, and the feeling of trust I had in the organization was immediate. They were solid, humble, honest people who told me about Angola and the Chiulo Hospital, the dire conditions of its pediatric ward and the marvelous tree that its community gathers beneath». Niccolò Fabi, from “Medici con l’Africa”, a documentary film on Doctors with Africa by Carlo Mazzacurati
«Even though it was in Padua, my own city, I had never heard about this organization before. CUAMM was invisible: its people did their work in a quiet, reserved way. But when I met them in person I immediately felt something ancient and familiar – that simple yet lively, rustic Catholic spirit I grew up with. […] My film tells the story of a group of individuals working to bring health care to Africans in their own unique way. It’s a kind of collective portrait, I think, where each person’s individuality is essential, yet where there’s also a very strong, shared spirit that combines tenacity and the spirit of self-sacrifice with a kind of tenderness and even irony». Carlo Mazzacurati, director of the documentary film “Medici con l’Africa”
