Graziano Pretto, an otolaryngologist, who for 37 years worked in the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza, by the will of the Saint of Pietrelcina, to whom he was particularly close in the last years of his life, passed away on August 5 at the age of 86. Born in 1936 in Roveredo di Guà, municipality of Pressana, the youngest of eight siblings, in a united family full of affection and with a mother, a woman of great faith, he followed in the footsteps of his father Leonardo, who was doctor in Roveredo di Guà who had a dental practice in Cologna Veneta.
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In Memoriam of

Graziano Pretto
       “At the behest of Padre Pio, every afternoon he went to the Convent in
     his cell to practice the insufflations, obtaining his blessing and a special
               thanks:“God make you a hundred, a thousand double for one”.

Graziano Pretto, an otolaryngologist, who for 37 years worked in the Casa
Sollievo della Sofferenza, by the will of the Saint of Pietrelcina, to whom he
was particularly close in the last years of his life, passed away on August 5 at
the age of 86. Born in 1936 in Roveredo di Guà, municipality of Pressana, the
youngest of eight siblings, in a united family full of affection and with a moth-
er, a woman of great faith, he followed in the footsteps of his father Leonardo,
who was doctor in Roveredo di Guà who had a dental practice in Cologna Ven-
eta. Trained in Padua, at the school of Prof. Michele Arslan, son of Yerwant
pioneer of Otolaryngology, who arrived in Italy in 1880 at the age of 15 to
escape the Turkish genocide of the Armenians. In July 1966 he left the hospital
in Padua and went to San Giovanni Rotondo to lead the new Otolaryngology
Department, which was inaugurated in the Casa Sollievo della Soflievo on 1
August of that same year. In fact, in the summer of 1965, Professor Michele
Arslan met Padre Pio to whom he promised that one of his students would take
over the direction of the Institute of Otolaryngology. Arslan, with his promise
to Padre Pio, caused panic among the assistants at the clinic; he sent on an
exploratory mission to Pretto, still celibate and in his first career steps, Gas-
tone Pesavento and Italo Serafini, saying to the two older ones: “Now you go
in three, but when you return you must be two”. He married in 1967, later
cheered by the arrival of six children, Alessandra, Francesco, Ilaria, Beatrice,
Margherita and Giulia. From the earliest years in Casa Sollievo, he set him-
self the goal of making the department entrusted to him exactly as Padre Pio
wanted: “A temple of science and prayer”. At the beginning he was alone, and
in the end he had a team of 12 ENT physicians, covering all the superspe-
cialist, medical and surgical branches of the ENT, cervical and maxillofacial
areas. His surgery was hectic, often even on Sundays, and performed at least
40,000 surgeries. In the 1980s, the Casa Sollievo Otolaryngology Department
was ranked sixteenth among the departments of excellence throughout Italy
and in 1997 was among the first to perform a cochlear implant. A man of great
professionalism and kindness, an example for many colleagues and students
who, under his guidance, trained at Casa Sollievo and at the School of Spe-
cialisation in Otolaryngology at the Catholic University of Rome, where he
was a lecturer. He held many positions during his career, as SIO adviser in the
1990s, first president of the newly formed AOICO, on the threshold of 2000,
was part of the Apulian GAO board, and organiser of many scientific, research       © Società Italiana di Otorinolaringoiatria
and congress activities. In 2004 he left the hospital for his well-deserved re-     e Chirurgia Cervico-Facciale
tirement, but continued to be close to his patients and to the work of Padre Pio,
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whom he loved with a sincere heart to the end. He leaves a great void for us,
loyal disciples, and for all the colleagues and friends who knew and esteemed       This is an open access article distributed in accordance with
                                                                                    the CC-BY-NC-ND (Creative Commons Attribution-Non-
him for his spontaneous way of being a humble and God-fearing man.                  Commercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International) license. The
                                                                                    article can be used by giving appropriate credit and mentio-
                                                                                    ning the license, but only for non-commercial purposes and
                                            Lucio Vigliaroli Aurelio d’Ecclesia     only in the original version. For further information: https://
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