The first hospital in Antigua was founded by Hermano Pedro Betancourt, a Franciscan priest in the early 1600s in a small thatched hut near the present site of the Belen Convent.

In 1984, the Franciscan priest Guillermo Bonilla, felt called to follow in Hermano Pedro's footsteps in ministering to the poor, sick and outcasts of society.

Hermano Pedro's tomb, now a shrine, is in the transept of San Francisco Church three blocks from the present hospital on 2nd Avenida and 7th Calle.

It is a place unlike any other - a multi-service facility providing a home, and care for the elderly and orphaned, the mentally challenged and chronically ill. Over three hundred people ranging in age from a few days to over ninety live at Obras Sociales Hermano Pedro permanently.

The rooms are filled on a weekly basis for all but one month of the year by medical groups that come to perform a variety of surgeries for nominal costs, or often for free.