By Kristina Millare
Vatican City, April 23, 2025 / 10:30
Having taken care of the aging Pope Francis as a personal nurse since 2022, the Italian nurse Massimiliano Strappetti was one of the rare people who saw the Holy Father a few moments before his death on Easter Monday.
Before being appointed Pope Francis’s personal nurse in August 2022, Strappetti was the nursing coordinator of the Vatican Health Service. He started working at the Vatican in 2002 after working eight years in the intensive care unit of the Gemelli Hospital in Rome.
The appointment of Strappetti occurred very shortly after having accompanied the Holy Father during a difficult apostolic trip to Canada from July 24 to 30, 2022. Throughout 2022, the Holy Father had knee problems.
From August 2022, Strapetti would be seen to the Pope’s team to almost each of the pontiff’s public appearances, including his general general public general and the addresses of the Angelus Sunday in Rome and to the Vatican as well as during his several apostolic trips abroad.
The last words and greetings of the Pope were addressed to Strapepetti, the man in whom he trusts to take care of him in the multiple diseases and emergencies on the health he has endured in the last years of his life.
“Thank you for bringing me back to the square,” the pope said to the nurse. Stappetti, a husband and a father known for his generosity to the others, brought the Saint-Père in a wheelchair to the central loggia of the Saint-Pierre basilica to pronounce his last Urbi and Easter Sunday address on April 20.
After the blessing, the pope turned to Strapetti for his opinion, asking: “Do you think I can manage it?” Before going down to the place to greet the 50,000 people from his Popemobile, Vatican News reported.
The next day, the Pope’s health started to deteriorate around 5:30 am on Monday morning at Easter. An hour later, the Holy Father made a “farewell gesture with his hand” to Strapetti before falling into a coma, after having undergone a stroke, in his bed in his apartment Casa Santa Marta, reported the Vatican News.
Strappetti closely accompanied the 88 -year -old pope during his convalescence to the Vatican by providing 24 -hour care for the Pope to his house after his hospital release from the hospital after 38 days at the Gemelli Hospital in Rome.
In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere Della will be, Dr. Sergio Alfieri, head of the medical team of the Gemelli hospital who took care of the Pope, said that they had followed the clear order of the Pope, via Strapetti, to “try everything, do not abandon” for two critical moments when they had to decide to continue or stop treatment.
Before working closerly with the Holy Father as a personal health care assistant, Strappetti was one of the medical staff who, in the summer of 2021, advised the Pope to undergo tests concerning problems with his colon. On July 4 of the same year, the Holy Father underwent a three-hour operation which deleted part of its colon.
Later in 2021, after the colon operation and the 11 -day hospitalization in Gemelli, Pope Francis congratulated Strapetti as “a man with a lot of experience” who “saved my life”, in an interview with the Spanish radio station COPE.
“Now, I can eat everything, which was not possible before with the diverticula. I can eat everything. I always have postoperative drugs, because the brain must register that it has 33 centimeters (12 inches) less intestine,” joked the pope in the interview.
Kristina Millare is an independent journalist with vocational training in the humanitarian aid and development sector, information journalism, entertainment, policy and government, business and entrepreneurship.
