A Chilean immigrant who has lived in the United States for more than 50 years, Mario Paredes, general director of SOMOS Community Care, proclaims, in tune with Pope Francis: “No to deportations! Yes to immigration with humanity!” And he is also hurt that “the pope is criticized as if he were an enemy of this imperfect democracy of ours, which has been losing the sources of the Hebrew Bible and the Gospel of the Lord of history.”

Visiting Madrid to launch the campaign, “Thank you Doctor,” to rediscover and empower the figure of the family doctor, it is a Catholic project blessed by Pope Francis and which has its roots in what Jesus did: Teaching and healing. A project to which “more than one million two hundred thousand people” have already signed up.

According to Paredes, it is about “humanizing the healthcare system,” placing the person at the center (not the buildings). Therefore, rediscovering the family doctor is “a gain for the State, for the health professional, and for the patient.” That is why he is convinced that his organization will reach an agreement with Robert F. Kennedy, the new US Secretary of Health.

Regarding [United States President Donald] Trump, Paredes thinks he is a “merchant who sells his own brand.” For this reason, he may be tempted to pull the string in his relationship with the pope, the other great global personality, with whom he will clash above all in the defense of civil and social human rights. But the doctor also knows that “the pope is a wise man,” to confront Trump’s “walls of ignominy” without breaking the deck of dialogue.

Is the SOMOS campaign that you have launched a success?

“Thank you Doctor” is the name of the campaign that we have designed to rediscover the family doctor, which in the past has also been called the general practitioner or primary physician. It is certainly successful, but these are just the beginnings. We have been campaigning for a year and a half, two years at most. There are more than one million two hundred thousand people registered, supporting the campaign, promoting it. Then we have more than 30 healthcare organizations that are dedicated to providing healthcare, that promote and support this initiative.

And what is the core of the campaign?

The main element of our campaign is to advocate for a new way of raising awareness to serve people who have health problems or physical difficulties. And this new way of defending, developing, expanding, is in the process of the campaign, marked by what the general practitioner was in the past life of a specific family.

Who started this project?

The founder of this project is Doctor Ramón Talláj, a prominent Dominican doctor who immigrated to New York at the request of the cardinal archbishop, who invited him to work with immigrants in the healthcare field in the 90s. He accepted the cardinal’s invitation and joined the professional medical world in the Archdiocese of New York, where we had about 20 hospitals, which after the AIDS pandemic, many of them disappeared, were sold, and then the services were greatly reduced.

Are you talking about church hospitals?

Yes, yes. The Church, we know, has been the great promoter of what we have known as a hospital, following the teacher of our faith, the Lord Jesus. He did two essential things: teach and heal. And from there we have centuries of religious men and women and laypeople committed to those worlds, health and education.

José María Castillo, a theologian friend of Religion Digital, who died recently wrote various books about this. Regarding this specific point, he went so far as to say that Jesus healed more than he taught…

Of course. And surely the vision of this God revealed in the person of Jesus was precisely to show us the humanity of the human being. And by showing us humanity, he demonstrated the affection, care, mercy, and love for that human body that is a creature of the Creator. And from there emerges a different vision of the treatment that the Christian faith offers to those who undergo health trials or physical or emotional trials.

So, the campaign, thank God, is successful and we are in some way bringing together the medical sectors in different countries and helping to advocate so that governments, those who manage the health issue in any society, realize that the role of the primary physician today must be reviewed.

That is true for the United States, for Spain or for Europe, which have very different health systems…

That is true, because the key is to put the person at the center of the issue, and today it is not like that. The center of the health issue is the building, in the construction of a large structure, with a lot of decoration, many flowers, with long walks, nice music, but where the results of the patients are questionable, and the disease is perpetuated through different methods. We all want results and that means overcoming the health crisis that is being experienced.

In the United States we spend billions of dollars a year, and the results we obtain are very poor, because the emphasis has been placed on the sickness and not on health, and that is a serious mistake.

Putting the emphasis on health, on the person who is affected and who suffers, that is humanizing the healthcare system, and at the same time, we return, both to the patient and the doctor, the joy of serving in life.

The patient feels listened to, they feel they are being looked at in the eyes, that they are recognized as a person. And the doctor has the joy and happiness of helping a person to recover his life so that he can integrate into the family, the community and society.

That is to say, in this vision of rediscovering the family doctor, the patient wins and the doctor wins, and the State also wins because costs are reduced…

Instead of subjecting the patient to analyses that are often unnecessary and extremely expensive due to technology, today this implies enormous savings and the State also wins. Rediscovering the family doctor is a gain for the State, a gain for the health professional, and a gain for the patient.

How nice. But if the State wins, the patient wins, and the doctor wins, shouldn’t it be easy to implement this system everywhere?

It should be easy, but it is not, and it is not because the vested interests of the monopolies, both in the management of the health sector and in the pharmaceutical field, among others, are such large monopolies where profit prevails, but not service and not the vision that leads to rediscovering the person, because humanity is the first thing we must attend to in the field of health.

So, in the end the large world laboratories, specifically those in the United States, have another model?

Yes, of course.

The profit and gain model?

Yes, of course.

And that is completely out of the question with this model from SOMOS?

That is why we are campaigning to advocate, to create movements in different countries, so that each country makes its adjustments, to rethink the issue and be much more effective. Our contribution is to light a flame that illuminates new possibilities, to teach the world to discover that through the primary physician, the government, the country, and society are saving enormous resources. But of course, that doctor must be paid, that doctor must be given incentives, that doctor must be trained with a new professional conscience, and that is what allows us to favor them. Otherwise, the doctor, instead of attending to 10 patients a day, has to attend to 50 or 60 patients a day. Then, with the numbers, you will realize that you cannot maintain a care that allows the patient-doctor relationship as it should be.

The response to this campaign and this new approach in Spain is positive. From what we saw at the presentation of the book campaign, ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ for example…

Yes, I believe that the response is increasingly more accepted because institutions, doctors, colleges, universities and schools are meeting and reevaluating what has been done and are looking for new ways to highlight the doctor-patient relationship.

I was surprised that at the presentation of the campaign in Madrid there were a few people from the Spanish religious sector. San Juan de Dios, for example, or the Hospitaller Sisters. There are a whole series of religious congregations in Spain that are specifically focused on healthcare…

True, we informed the Church authorities in Madrid about this event. We invited Cardinal [José Cobo Cano] and he told me that he was very supportive of the initiative, but when it arrived, their calendar and agenda were impossible to commit to, and surely they did not manage to notify the religious institutions that are dedicated to the healthcare field with enough time. But without a doubt the Church is one of the great agents of health in this country and in many countries.

Especially with the endorsement that you already have and the explicit and direct support of the pope…

Yes, absolutely. It is fascinating to remember when we proposed this initiative to the Holy Father. He gathered 300 doctors from different continents and spoke to us at length about the subject and told us how he remembered his family doctor who treated him and all of his siblings and all the members of the family knew him and had a very warm relationship with him. And the doctor was concerned, as the pope said in his own words, for the wellbeing of the family.

I was surprised yesterday by your president, Ramón Tallaj, saying that “the health system of the United States is a giant with feet of clay.” What did he mean?

In the United States, we have a budget of 800 billion dollars a year to meet the needs of the poorest in the healthcare field. A system that is known there as Medicaid helps the most vulnerable with results that this annual investment produces, which are very poor or are deficient. Indeed, the wealth that is put at the service of healthcare does not give results as expected, so it is proof that it has feet of clay. It has a solid body, which are hospitals, institutions, laboratories, large pharmaceutical companies, etc., but at the same time, the results they give leave much to be desired. When medical analyses are measured and studied and it is seen that they continue and progress ever deeper into the disease instead of assessing and reducing the effects of a specific disease, it is because it is not giving results. Furthermore, anyone who studies the American healthcare system realizes that there is … a lot of corruption, a lot of defects, and the patient’s issue has really been neglected in order to profit from the capital that the State has for this area.

Will Robert F. Kennedy, the new US Secretary of Health, change that?

We think so. The shame with Kennedy is that we have read him as an anti-vaccine guru, but the man is a very sensitive person. He has followed delicate issues of modern culture that make him a man who can turn things around, correct all kinds of defects that our healthcare system has at the moment.

Do you know your model, the new Secretary of Health?

Personally no, we are working to have a broad conversation with him.

Because you are currently working in New York with a Democratic mayor…

Yes, but we have also always wanted to maintain neutrality and not turn the work we do in emphasizing these aspects of healthcare into ideological partisanship. Otherwise, it remains a struggle of ideas and theory and we do not really advance in the solution of what would be the best method to establish this important doctor-patient relationship, which helps us prevent health issues with serious consequences.

So, if I understand you correctly, the poor in New York or the United States right now do not have to be afraid of what is coming to them in terms of healthcare?

That is our feeling, it is our vision, which up to now we have done very well, because the State has listened to us and has known how to provide the resources that have been needed. In the new administration there are conflicting speeches which do not yet clarify what direction they are going to take. In the meantime, we are streamlining contacts with the new administration so that it is known how well we have been able to do with the resources that have been given to us and the progress, both fore the doctors who are in our network, and for the million patients who are treated in our network.

In Spain, the speech by the Episcopalian bishop, Marian Budde, attracted a lot of attention. How was it experienced there?

First, the Washington Cathedral is a Protestant Cathedral and, of course, the average Catholic does not know that church, much less a female bishop. I think that it did not have a major impact on the average Catholic. But, as for the press, it did echo. The general press, the secular press, echoed it because President Trump was present at the religious service. It was a message that she gave with a strong sense, an evangelical sense, based on the teaching of Jesus, but many wonder if that was the appropriate place to communicate that message to a man who had begun his responsibility as president of the nation 24 hours earlier.

On the other hand, here it had a big impact. It was very striking that, with the Gospel in hand, she was able to ‘prophesize’ to President Trump. There was even a comparison with the presence of Cardinal Dolan the day before at his inauguration, without saying anything of this kind…

That is true. His performance was different, it was a moment to have spoken to Trump and to the country about the need to build an open and supportive society. Now, there was a Catholic priest who spoke at the end, on the day of the inauguration. It was brilliant, yes brilliant.

A common priest who went to the cemetery to see his parents, and next to or near the grave of the priest’s parents, is the grave of Donald Trump’s parents, and that was a mountain of grass. And the priest dedicated himself to taking care of the graves and sent him a photo of the graves already cleaned up. Trump, without hesitation, called him and invited him to his house and, apparently, they got along very well, and then Trump told him: come to my inauguration and you close the ceremony. And the priest did it very well, really admirable with a deep evangelical sense.

Seen from here, there is a certain fear, a certain mistrust toward the Trump administration. You, the other hand, seem to have more hope, or you have more optimism…

I think that we have to make the trouble to try to understand the new president. I did not vote for him or Biden. I voted for an unrecognized party, and I wrote an article in which I did not recommend either of them. But I do realize that, in Trump, there is something with the American identity, American nationalism. He would like to insert good and great things in his own way, but at the same time, because of his style, his arrogance, his way of trampling, he ruins the good intentions that he has. I am absolutely convinced that this President is a ruthless businessman. The only thing that interests him is trade, and he sells his brand, and the brand is him, it is the Trump brand. That is what interests him: trading with the Trump brand. And that is very risky as a policy among nations.

Pope Francis and Trump, two global personalities, who are going to have to clash at some point, right?

I think that Francis is a very wise man and knows how to be patient. He knows how to read people very well, and he knows that what he teaches, that we are in a change of era, is very real. And that is why all these figures appear that do not fit with the historical development that we have seen in the last 200 years. From any angle that one looks at the changes in today’s society, they have nothing to do with what we knew before. It is another way, another style. That is, you go to any reception, people dress however they want, but never formally. Kids get tattoos up to I don’t know where: the face, forehead, body, etc. The human relationships of young people without marriage. They are sleeping together at 15 or 16 years old with parents who tolerate such behavior, and nothing happens. That is to say, in my time, that would be really unacceptable. The change is abysmal. So, indeed, the world has changed. How is it possible that the Soviet Union collapsed? The Berlin Wall fell. It was recognized. We thought we were going to have a spring of peace. With these historical events, we suddenly woke up to another world tragedy, which is the one we have right now.

It is interesting, in this regard, to see the film “Conclave,” which has just come out, and the subtleties that this film has. In it, the pope is a Mexican who is sent to the Middle East. After he is elected, the cardinal Camerlengo finds out that this newly elected pope has a very serious health problem, which he had not told anyone about.

And what is the health problem of the pope in “Conclave”?

The health problem is that the pope is a hermaphrodite. The scriptwriters of the film either included this to ridicule and make fun of the church, or to show the new phenomena that are in vogue.

Returning to the question, how will Donald Trump get along with the pope?

It is a mystery, on one hand, but I have a lot of confidence in the wisdom of Francis as pontiff, which means being a bridge. Not so in Trump’s, because Trump is homo faber, not ‘homo sapiens.’

Is the pope’s recent letter to the American bishops a radical disavowal of President Trump’s policy of deporting migrants?

It is my opinion that the pope advocates for a society that has the best politics, where the common good, solidarity, and respect for human dignity are the pillars of every government or political system, because those values differentiate us from dictatorships and other systems, which do not live the values that Francis defends in the name of the Gospel.

Those of us who are immigrants and have the USA as our adopted country are hurt that the pope is criticized as if he were an enemy of this imperfect democracy of ours, which ahs been losing the sources of the Hebrew Bible and the Gospel of the Lord of history. No to deportations, yes to humane immigration!