Caring for the sick, the way to holiness

 (Palestine). On 4 November  2021, at the University of Bethlehem in Palestine, the Seminar entitled “Deir Beit Gamal: Heritage, Community Engagement, and Research” was held with the aim of introducing the history of the Salesian House of Don Bosco St. Joseph of Betgamāl, in Israel, from the Middle Eastern Province of Jesus the Adolescent (MOR), where the Venerable lived and gave his nursing service Simone (Sim‘ān) Srugi, SDB Brother.

Born in Nazareth on 15 April 1877, from 1900 as soon as he was newly professed, he was in Betgamāl with various positions, including the medical-nursing clinic attached to the Salesian house. From 1930 to 1942 he carefully recorded the names of patients, the pathologies, and treatments, the villages of origin.

8 Registers have been preserved, the last is exhibited at the Don Bosco House Museum in Turin-Valdocco,  which document the health service provided every day to dozens of sick people (40-45 on average, for a total of over 30,000), coming from more than 70 villages, up to 60 km distant.

The guest speaker, Prof. Giovanni Caputa, SDB of the Betgamāl Community, introduced various aspects of the history of the Salesian House and of the work of Venerable Srugi. In particular, he presented the documents he wrote,  the medicine registers (1932-1942), the manuals and recipes used, the pocket notebooks of the medicine components he prepared, the accounts of the community treasurer, and the correspondence with doctors and benefactors of the clinic, which are now being studied by researchers.

During the Seminar, the University of Bethlehem launched the project of an interdisciplinary study, from a sociological, medical-nursing, cultural point of view, of this still unexplored archival heritage. The academic and religious authorities who attended the presentation encouraged the project, the results of which will make that historical period in Palestine better known, and the role that the Salesian community of Betgamāl played in that poor region suffering from endemic malaria.

Among the participants, there were some descendants of his patients, among whom the memory of Sim’ān Srugi, “el doctòr”, is still alive. A man of profound religiosity, Srugi had a particular delicacy in taking care of the physical health and eternal salvation of others.

In his work with the sick, Simone Srugi did not act alone, he was assisted by Sr. Tersilla Ferrero (1893-1973), Daughter of Mary Help of Christians, a graduate nurse at the Italian hospital in Damascus, and by Mr. Dikran Ciakmakgiàn, a Salesian cooperator.

In the biographical notes we read:

“In 1930 Sr. Tersilla was assigned to the community of Betgamāl, where in 1937 she began to fulfill the directive task. In that house, which belonged to the Salesian confreres, Sr. Tersilla found herself working alongside the Salesian nurse coadjutor Simone Srugi. About the nurse Srugi one will find this annotation by Sr. Tersilla, «I learned from him what religious life is. Whoever was with him was impelled to live his intense spirituality, otherwise he would have found himself like a fish out of water». For fifteen years Sr. Tersilla worked in that house where there was constant activity and extreme poverty. She joyfully lived her generous donation by exercising great understanding towards the Arab farmers who came in droves to the pharmaceutical dispensary laden with ailments, misery, and parasites. They knew there was a ‘saint’ there who could heal and also a ‘mother’ who provided for their needs. Those poor people preferred to walk for hours and hours to reach that house where “Mr. Srugi and the sister used good manners and looked after them well (Let us remember, biographical notes of the FMA who died in 1973, p. 158-159)”.

The Dean of the Department of Humanities at the University of Bethlehem, a Muslim, observes, “We are all religious, because we believe in God, we pray …, but true religion is shown with facts. Mu‘allem (the teacher) Srugi is a model!”.