Mariella Enoc, president of the Bambino Gesù reveals that the hospital is ready to welcome and assist little Evans, “We cannot give in to the desire for science to continue its path”.

Yesterday, the father of the child from Liverpool in a “semi-vegetative state” at the centre of a (now international) legal case, was received by Francis. Today Mariella Enoc, president of the Pope’s Hospital, confirmed her willingness to welcome the little boy to assist him until the end, stressing that “We cannot give in to the desire for science to continue its path”.

The Pontiff “had the Secretariat of State call me - she told Vatican News - then I spoke with the Secretary of State and with the substitute, with whom I kept in contact also for the two letters I’ve sent. The Holy Father has told me to do everything possible and impossible, so that the child may come to the Bambino Gesù”.

“The Pope had me informed immediately after the conversation with Thomas Evans - she adds - And so, it was what we were doing... Let us say that yesterday I tried to do so in the most active way possible. What I could do was write two letters and then offer our availability”.

The English child, almost 2 years old, has a degenerative and unknown neurological disease and is hospitalized at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool: English doctors would like to take him off the ventilator that keeps him alive because - they say - it is in his “best interest”, while parents are doing everything to move their child elsewhere. Even the English judges have said no so far. Now the final word is up to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile, “it is fair to point out that we have been moving since July last year. In September, our doctors went (to Liverpool) and we have continuously reiterated the availability of the Hospital”, Enoc explains. Yesterday she met “Alfie’s father, Thomas, and I could really see a great determination to make their son live - she continues - So, I spoke with our doctors and wrote two letters. One of the letters was addressed to the father, in which I express our desire for a close collaboration with the doctors of the English Hospital - for whom there is, on the part of all colleagues, great esteem - We ask for an alliance to continue at least a diagnostic path, where of course everything will be shared, while we keep the child alive.

The doctors of the Child Jesus “have made a more in-depth note, compared to the one they had done in September, where they reaffirm the desire to take care of the child, always sharing everything with English colleagues, and where they explain that we transport a lot of children and although a minimum risk is undeniable, it applies to every child... We can also help with air transport. Obviously, everything would be borne by the Bambino Gesù hospital.

The President also indicated the willingness “to go to Liverpool to bring our thoughts directly”. Enoc stresses that “we do not propose any cure. The child is not healable at the moment, the child is curable... and according to our concept this means we can take care of him. Therefore, we will certainly not perform “obstinacy treatments”; our doctors have decided to put a Peg, if necessary, for feeding, and a tracheotomy for breathing, if it is absolutely necessary. And of course, the diagnosis could be further investigated. In these years, “many unknown diseases, have become known very quickly and therefore we cannot give in to the desire for science to continue its path. So we do not have a cure at the moment. While Charlie Gard had an experimental cure, at this moment there is none (for Alfie); also because the disease has not been exactly diagnosed yet”.

About a potential transfer, Enoc says: “I don’t know because, obviously, our position is not that of wanting to be better than others. Yet we know that we never give up and then when we decide that the child cannot make it, we slowly accompany him to his natural death”.