Cremona makes Samaritan’s Purse honorary citizens

Italy was the first epicentre of the Covid-19 epidemic in Europe, and specifically the north of the country.

Cremona, a city of 77,000 inhabitants in the Lombardy region, has thanked the ‘Samaritani’ (as they have been known in the city) for their help in the midst of the chaos that broke out in the region in February 2020.

Samaritan’s Purse, a US-based evangelical humanitarian relief organisation, operated a field hospital in Cremona in March and April of last year, to support the overwhelmed regional health system. Around one hundred medical specialists worked in facilities that consisted of over sixty beds.

In 60 days of work, the NGO treated 281 patients, and their stay was “much appreciated by citizens, local authorities and the city’s hospital structure”, Italian evangelicals said.

One year later, the ‘Consiglio Comunale’ (City Council) of Cremona has given Samaritan Purse the “honorary citizenship”, a decision that was approved unanimously with the vote of all political parties.

Local news website Cremona Oggi reported about the city’s decision by stating that “in the first dramatic moments of the pandemic, the Samaritan’s Purse field hospital helped the Cremonese hospital to withstand an unimaginable impact”.

The city recently opened a forest of remembrance of the Covid-19 victims.