‘Open arms and outstretched hand’ – Vatican clinic aims to uphold dignity

From the outside, the Madre di Misericordia clinic may not seem like much. In fact, it’s easy to miss the clinic entirely.

Located just steps from the security lines where tourists and pilgrims wait to enter St. Peter’s Basilica, the entrance to the clinic is modest enough that a passerby could easily mistake it for a small office, or not notice it at all.

But since its inauguration at the behest of Pope Francis in 2016, the clinic has progressively expanded its services and today it serves around 2,000 patients per month – mostly people living in the streets of Rome – free of charge, with a group of almost 120 medical professionals working in the clinic as volunteers.

“We have about 60 to 70 patients per day, some days when we have many specialties available we reach 100 or 110, but the monthly average is around 2,000 patients, although there are months in which we have 3,000 patients,” Dr. Massimo Ralli, director of the clinic since 2021, told The Pillar.

The clinic was inaugurated in 2016, during the extraordinary Jubilee