The telemedicine device will expand a Vatican-sponsored network of hospitals that connects cutting-edge first-world institutions with children in need.
On Wednesday, March 4, “Patrons of the World’s Children’s Hospital” donated a “sophisticated next-generation technology telemedicine system” to Pope Leo XIV to provide pediatric healthcare to children in need.
The device the Pope received on Wednesday is a Teladoc Lite. According to the manufacturer, this “next-generation technology” unit offers high-quality audio and video and allows the installation of additional software and peripherals for “real-time streaming of valuable medical data.”
Fabrizio Arengi Bentivoglio, the president of the Patrons, explained the device to the pope, and demonstrated its functionality using a live video connection to a doctor in Argentina. “We will ship it wherever you decide and there is a need,” Bentivoglio said.
Who are the Patrons?
Vatican News reports that the Patrons is a US-based not-for-profit corporation that works to make medical care available to marginalized young children, coordinating and managing the Pope’s Global Alliance for the Health and Humanitarian Care of Children. This network of pediatric hospitals around the globe includes the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital, which Newsweek recently ranked 6th in the world and 1st in Europe among children’s hospitals.
In May 2024, Pope Francis entrusted the Patrons with this mission of helping sick children in developing nations and other places where they have inadequate access to pediatric care. In a 2025 interview, Bentivoglio explains that the initiative began as a way to obtain support only for the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital in Rome. However, he says, “we then realized that we could expand beyond one institution and one country.” Now they are creating a “network of hospitals to treat as many children as possible.”
He points out that victims of war and natural disasters often receive media coverage and become the focus of many aid initiatives. Indeed, the Bambino Gesù hospital itself has cared for many children who are refugees of the war in Ukraine, for example. However, there are also “hundreds of thousands of other children who are on nobody’s radar screen.” These, he says, are the children they are trying to reach.
They do this through a “hub and spoke” system, where hubs are well-resourced, cutting-edge hospitals in first-world countries and the spokes are clinics and healthcare centers located in places where there are children in need. The Teladoc devices are part of the technology used to connect this network.
