Call me Giuseppe is the new book inspired by the life and work of the missionary surgeon who founded the hospital and specialist midwifery school in Kalongo, Uganda.
A doctor, a missionary, a courageous and gentle man, sustained by an unshakeable faith. Father Giuseppe Ambrosoli had decided as a boy that he would live as a Comboni missionary in the service of the poor, and that to do so he would leave his homeland, his loved ones and the family business. Destination: Uganda. He departed in 1956 aboard the ship Africa, and after an adventurous journey by jeep through the savannah, he arrived in Kalongo, at the foot of what is known as the Mountain of the Wind, to find a maternity dispensary — a small hut with a thatched roof.
Within a few years, thanks to his tenacity, his great gifts as a doctor and a priest, and the managerial spirit inherited from his family, that small centre became a large hospital. True to the Comboni ideal that it is possible to "save Africa with Africans", Father Giuseppe founded the St. Mary Midwifery School alongside the hospital, to ensure medical continuity for the local population and a professional future and a better life for Ugandan women.
But civil war burst into the life of the hospital, turning everything upside down. The evacuation order was peremptory, and Father Giuseppe, forced in just 24 hours to organise a convoy of patients, doctors and nurses, left Kalongo never to return. He, a doctor in the service of the poorest, died in Lira, cut off by the war, with no possibility of receiving treatment.
Was that the end? No. The hospital in Kalongo, protected by its inhabitants, was reborn after three years and continued its work of caring for the most vulnerable.
That story of dedication to others and human tenacity continues to this day through the Foundation established by the Ambrosoli family and the Comboni missionaries, who gathered Father Giuseppe's legacy to give support and continuity to a miracle of love. Como, Milan, Kalongo. Thousands of kilometres apart, different sounds and smells, wealth and poverty. Yet Father Giuseppe and his work have bridged the distances, uniting the hospital and the Foundation, Ugandan doctors and Italian volunteers, the need to receive and the desire to give.
The Dr. Ambrosoli Memorial Hospital is today the only healthcare facility in an extremely poor area of Uganda inhabited by around 500,000 people. With 270 beds and 5 wards — general surgery, maternity and gynaecology, paediatrics, general medicine, and tuberculosis isolation — it provides qualified healthcare to over 50,000 people every year, 70 per cent of whom are women and children under the age of five.
And the St. Mary Midwifery School, which since its founding has qualified 1,302 midwives, represents a concrete and sustainable response to the problem of maternity and childbirth, which still today causes 360 maternal deaths per 100,000 births. A Ugandan centre of excellence in specialist medical training, it is recognised by the Ugandan Ministry of Health as the best midwifery school in the country.
With a foreword by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi and a preface by the editor of the daily newspaper La Repubblica, Mario Calabresi, the book Chiamatemi Giuseppe (Edizioni San Paolo), written by Elisabetta Soglio with Giovanna Ambrosoli, is published as a tribute to him on the thirtieth anniversary of his death and the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the hospital in Kalongo.
Chiamatemi Giuseppe is a beautiful journey, rediscovering the simple and extraordinary virtues of this man. The narrative retraces his life and draws in depth, through the many testimonies of those who met him and never forgot him, the qualities that set him apart and for which he is still remembered today: love and dedication towards the least.
It is precisely for these extraordinary qualities that Pope Francis, on 17 December 2015, exactly 60 years after Father Giuseppe's ordination, approved the promulgation of the decree on the "heroic virtues of the servant of God, Giuseppe Ambrosoli", declaring Father Giuseppe "venerable".
The official presentation of the book takes place on Thursday 20 April at 6:00 pm at the conference centre of Fondazione Cariplo, at Via Romagnosi 8, in Milan, and on 3 May in Como at 6:00 pm, at the Teatro Sociale.
The proceeds from sales of the volume will help to support the hospital and the midwifery school and to continue Father Giuseppe's work in Uganda.