ROME — Pope Francis’ new personal physician is a geriatric specialist who has downplayed the peculiarity of the coronavirus, calling it an “ordinary disease.”
Vatican News announced Wednesday the pope has appointed Professor Roberto Bernabei as his new attending physician, following the death of his previous doctor, Professor Fabrizio Soccorsi, who died on January 9 from cancer and “complications related to the COVID-19.”
For his part, Dr. Bernabei has underscored the virus’ predilection for the elderly, which makes it an “ordinary disease,” the National Catholic Register has pointed out.
“If this disease targets old people it is a very serious thing, of course,” Bernabei said on Italian television last November. “But it is, so to speak, an ordinary disease. Unfortunately, infectious diseases attack the most fragile.”
Bernabei also emphasized the importance of comorbidities, noting that the vast majority of Italians who died from the disease had two or three other chronic illnesses.
“Only 0.2 percent of deaths have occurred to people under the age of 40,” he said.
“Practically only and exclusively old people die,” he said, noting that “the average age” of those who had died “exceeds 80 years and they have at least three pathologies.”
Originally from Tuscany, the 70-year-old Bernabei is a professor of Internal Medicine and Geriatrics at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome as well as Director of the Department of Aging, Neurological, Orthopedic and Head and Neck Sciences of the Gemelli Polyclinic hospital in Rome.
Among his new responsibilities as papal physician, Bernabei will be asked to accompany the pope on papal trips and will likely be joining Francis on his upcoming journey to Iraq.
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