Giuseppe Ambrosoli (25 July 1923 – 27 March 1987) was an Italian Catholic priest and professed member from the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus.
[3] He joined the Comboni missionaries and was sent to Uganda where he became known as the "saint doctor" for his loving and compassionate treatment of all ill people whom he dedicated himself to.
In September 1943 he risked his own life pledging to save a large number of Jewish people in order to get them safe passage across the border to Switzerland to prevent them from ending up in concentration camps.
Ambrosoli was stationed at the Heuberg-Stetten training camp near Stuttgart and returned home in December 1944 for additional service.
He resumed his studies in November 1946 after the war's end and graduated from the college in Milan as a Doctor of Medicine on 28 July 1949.
He then proceeded to obtain a tropical medicine diploma from a college in London before returning to his homeland where he commenced his studies for the priesthood in Venegono.
[2][4] He served as both a priest and doctor before he arrived in Uganda as a professed member of the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus.
[2] On 1 February 1956 he was posted to Kalongo (in Northern Uganda) to serve as the parish priest and also to run a clinic that at that time was seeing a lot of leper cases.
In 1959 he established the "Saint Mary's School of Midwivery with a view of handing over the care of the patients to local Ugandan staff at some stage in the future.
[3] On 13 February 1987, as an insurrection raged in the Acholi sub-region and in the neighbouring subregions of Lango and Teso, the Uganda People's Defense Force evacuated the staff and patients of Kalongo Hospital through force and set fire to the medicine and hospital supplies left behind to prevent them from falling into the hands of the LRA.
Sister Romilde gave him medicine in drip doses while the priest asked for Father Marchetti to hear his confession before he died.
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi praised Ambrosoli for his "faith in Christ and of Christian love to which he had consecrated his entire existence".
The cause commenced under Pope John Paul II on 17 July 1999 after the Congregation for the Causes of Saints issued the edict declaring "nihil obstat" (no objections to the cause) and titled Ambrosoli as a Servant of God.