In a Aug. 17 press statement, papal almoner Cardinal Konrad Krajewski said that 18 Dräger intensive care ventilators and six Fuji portable ultrasound scanners would be shipped to Brazil on the pope's behalf.

Brazil has reported 3.3 million cases of COVID-19 and 107,852 deaths as of Aug. 17, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The country has the second-highest officially recorded death toll in the world after that of the United States. Continue reading

But he prefers them when they are working properly. Otherwise, they are kind of scary. Particularly for his patients.

So he was shocked when, in the early 2000s, he was doing voluntary work in small hospitals in the Pacific Islands and Southeast Asia, and he found himself trying to work with patched-up anaesthetic machines originally sent over from New Zealand and other developed countries. Read more

The donations were among the first items announced by the congregation as it launched an emergency fund in response to the pandemic.

The congregation said in its announcement that the ten ventilators sent to Syria would be shared by three hospitals run by Catholic orders of women religious: the Salesians in Damascus, the Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition in Aleppo and the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul in Damascus. Read more