By Francesca Merlo – Belém, Brazil
On the banks of the Guajará River, people queue up to board the Barco Hospital São João XXIII. This is not a regular boat carrying passengers to nearby islands. Instead, the Saint John XXIII Hospital Boat travels along the Amazon River to the deepest corners of the world’s largest rainforest, places only accessible by water, bringing medical care where it is scarce.
“There are no roads that lead to some of the places we visit,” says Felipe, a 28-year-old ophthalmologist from Minas Gerais, Brazil. “Sometimes the boats travel for two or three days before reaching anybody.”
Felipe is one of the many volunteer doctors aboard the Saint John XXIII, one of three floating hospitals that bring free medical care to remote riverside and Indigenous communities across the Amazon. Docked beside it in Belém, Pará, is another: the Barco Papa Francisco: the Pope Francis Boat. Both, along with their third sister boat, the Saint John Paul II boat, were donated by Pope Francis, who expressed his wish, during World Youth Day in Brazil in 2013, that the people of the Amazon not be neglected by religious communities. He asked Brother Francisco Belotti, “Are you in the Amazon?” and when Br Francisco replied “no”, Pope Francis told him: “You should go”. His was a call to reach the peripheries, and in 2019, it was answered. Together, since then, these boats have formed a small fleet of doctors, nurses, and volunteers that assist those who would otherwise be left unseen. One million people have benefited so far.
“Usually, people go to the hospital,” Felipe tells me. “Here, we go to the people.”
The São João XXIII is currently tending to communities near Belém, docked on the river in the opening days of COP30 next to Papa Francisco as it prepares for its next mission deeper into the forest. These days, it is the people of Belém who are benefiting from the services offered by the boat. In the kitchen, cooks are busy cooking meals for the people waiting. Along with the kitchen, on board, there are consultation rooms, surgical theatres, laboratories and a chemist, all fitted into what looks from the outside like an ordinary riverboat. “We have everything here,” Felipe explains. “We do consultations, surgeries, examinations, everything from cataract operations to minor general procedures.”
The most common conditions, he says, are those that would be easily treatable in urban areas but have been left to worsen due to lack of access: infections, hernias, cataracts. “Some people wait years for their first consultation,” he says. “Others travel hours by canoe just to reach us.”
The place is pristine. Looked after by the volunteers and staff as if it were their home.
Felipe loves the people he serves. “The people here are some of the kindest I’ve ever met,” he says. “They trust us completely, and they give so much even when they have so little. Yesterday, a patient gave me a fruit I’d never seen before. Another brought me a bag of jambu, a leaf that has an anaesthetic effect in your mouth just because he’d heard me mention that I’ve never had it before. It’s this kind of love that makes you want to keep coming back.”
Two people stop him: “Are you a doctor?” they ask him, before asking me to take their photo.
Felipe, who performs up to ten eye surgeries and sees dozens of patients each day, says the experience transforms not just those receiving care but those offering it. “It’s not just about charity,” he says. “It’s about transformation for them and for us.”
Pope Francis’ dream
He gestures towards the neighbouring Pope Francis Boat. “It was his dream,” Felipe says. “A dream of reaching those who are far away, not only geographically but also socially. And I think he’d be really proud of what’s happening here.”
As COP30 is underway in Belém, the boats along the Amazon River remind those attending that there is an enormous connection between care for people and care for our common home. “COP is about change,” Felipe says. “It’s about recognising that we’re all different, but that there’s something that connects us: kindness, care for one another, and for creation. This boat is proof of that connection.”
His ten-day expedition will soon come to an end, but Felipe cannot help but think of when the next one will be. “As soon as I get home,” he says, smiling, “I’ll start looking for the next mission. I don’t want this to end.”
What a wonderful legacy: Pope Francis is still here, in the heart of the Amazon. – Vatican News
