In May 1994 an unexpected gift arrives: a plot of land donated to the foundation in the Phillipine city of Calbayog, on Samar Island. It was, however, a gift that came along with a request: the donators pleaded for the construction of a small hospital. After the first impact, the enthusiasm enthralled by the Camillians and their trust in Providence (and in the Association, Its intstrument) gives them the necessary impulse to start the undertaking.

Cabayog’s population is around 200,000 inhabitants, and in 1994 only relied on only one governmental ill-equipped hospital with merely 70 beds.

The hospital counts on a tests laboratory, an X-rays room,  a first aids room,  a delivery room,  an operating theater, a dental surgery, and a pharmacy.

On September 7th, 1996, the hospital was inaugurated and blessed with the presence of three bishops, Italy’s Ambassador and several well-known personalities from the world of politics and religion. The hospital started then to be known by peasants and fishermen from the island as “the World’s most beautiful hospital”.

In 1997, the missionary Father Amelio Troietto, medical surgeon, responsible of Calbayog’s Hospital, wrote: “The news of the new hospital has arrived in the neighboring islands through what we call ‘spreading the word’, since there is no telephone service and the patients arrive from everywhere. The conditions are, in general, those of the pre-antibiotics era: serious infections, TB, dehydration, malnutrition, traumas…”

Afterwards, the funds collected by the Association allowed the building of a social center, attached to the hospital, for housing the children that cannot be received in the hospital’s main building.

Father Luigi writes: “We can simply thank you for how much you care for us, but entrust the Lord the responsibility of rewarding you worthily and profusely”.

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