Pope hails Italy virus doctors, nurses as heroes at Vatican

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis welcomed doctors and nurses from the coronavirus-ravaged region of Lombardy to the Vatican on Saturday to thank them for their selfless work and “heroic” sacrifice.

Francis dedicated one of his first post-lockdown audiences to Italy's front-line medical and civil protection personnel, telling them that their example of professional competence and compassion would help Italy forge a new future of hope and solidarity.

During the audience, Francis also took a dig at some conservative priests who chafed at lockdown measures, calling their complaints over church closures “adolescent."

The northern region of Lombardy, Italy’s financial and industrial capital, was the hardest-hit region in the onetime European epicenter of the pandemic. Lombardy has counted more than 92,000 of Italy’s 232,000 official infections and half of the country's 34,500 dead.

Francis noted that some of those dead were the doctors and nurses themselves, and said Italy would remember them with “prayer and gratitude.” More than 40 nurses and 160 doctors died during the outbreak nationwide, and nearly 30,000 health care personnel were infected.

Francis said Lombardy’s medics and nurses became literal “angels” helping the sick recover or accompanying them to their death, given their family members were prevented from visiting them in the hospital.

Speaking off the cuff, Francis praised the “little gestures of creativity of love” they provided: a caress or the use of their cell phone “to bring together the old person who was about to die with his son or daughter to say goodbye, to see them for the last time...”

“This was so good for all of us: testimony of proximity and tenderness,” Francis said.

In the audience were the bishops of some of the...