The pope greets the doctors of the virus in Italy, nurses like heroes in the Vatican

ROME - Pope Francis welcomed doctors and nurses from the Lombardy region devastated by the coronavirus to the Vatican on June 20 to thank them for their selfless work and "heroic" sacrifice.

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

During the audience, Francis also dug up some conservative priests who defied blocking measures, calling their complaints about church closings "teenagers".

The northern region of Lombardy, Italy's financial and industrial capital, was the most affected region in the European epicenter of the pandemic. Lombardy has counted over 92.000 of the 232.000 official Italian infections and half of the country's 34.500 deaths.

Francis noted that some of those dead were the doctors and the nurses themselves, and said that Italy would remember them with "prayer and gratitude". More than 40 nurses and 160 doctors died during the nationwide epidemic and nearly 30.000 medical staff members were infected.

Francis said that Lombard doctors and nurses became literally "angels" helping the sick to heal or accompanying them to death, as their family members were prevented from visiting them in the hospital.

Speaking arm in arm, Francis praised the "small gestures of love's creativity" they provided: a caress or the use of their cell phone "to bring together the elderly person who was about to die with his son or daughter to say goodbye, to see them for the last time ... "

"This has been so good for all of us: testimony of closeness and tenderness," said Francis.

Among the audience were the bishops of some of the most affected cities in Lombardy, as well as representatives of the Italian civil protection agency, which coordinated the emergency response and built field hospitals across the region. They sat well apart and wore protective masks in the public hall frescoed in the Apostolic Palace.

The pope said he hopes that Italy will emerge morally and spiritually stronger from the emergency and from the lesson of interconnection that he has taught: that individual and collective interests are intertwined.

"It's easy to forget that we need each other, someone to take care of us and give us courage," he said.

At the end of the audience, Francis made sure that the doctors and nurses kept their distance, telling them that he would come to them rather than get them lined up to greet and kiss him, as was the Vatican's pre-pandemic practice.

"We must be obedient to the provisions" of social estrangement, he said.

He also criticized as a "teenager" the complaints of some priests who huddled over blockades, a reference to conservatives who blew up church closings as a violation of their religious freedom.

Francis praised instead those priests who knew how to be "creatively" close to their flocks, even in bulk.

"This priestly creativity has conquered some, some adolescent expressions against the measures of public authorities, which have an obligation to take care of people's health," said Francis. "The majority was obedient and creative."

The meeting was only the second time that Francesco welcomed a group to the Vatican for an audience since the Vatican closed in early March together with the rest of Italy to try to contain the virus. The first was a small meeting on May 20 in his private library with a group of athletes who are raising funds for hospitals in two hard hit Lombard cities, Brescia and Bergamo.

The head of Lombard health, Giulio Gallera, said that Francesco's words and closeness are "a moment of intense and emotional comfort", given the pain and suffering of so many people in recent months.

The governor of Lombardy, Attilio Fontana, head of the delegation, invited Francesco to visit Lombardy in order to also bring words of hope and consolation to those who are still sick and to families who have lost their loved ones.