An Associated Press (AP) report saying it isn't is a hoax based on an incorrect, old report, says the hospital president, Mariella Enoc.

Enoc has been the hospital president since 2015.

The AP report's focus is on the time before Enoc took over as president. It says under its previous 2008-2015 administration, the mission of the "pope's hospital" as Bambino Gesu is known, had shifted to focus on profits over childcare.

In a statement on Monday the hospital threatened legal action against AP for what it said was a report containing "false, dated and gravely defamatory" accusations.

It said the report's accusations had been long been disproven by a Vatican investigation, which was led by a team of Americans who spent three days at the hospital in 2015.

The investigators' subsequent report "disproved" all the first report's allegations — except one involving space constraints — and declared the hospital in many ways "best in class."

It also said the Vatican should be proud of its hospital for the quality of care it provided, the staff's devotion to children and their families and employees' sense of pride at working there.

Enoc says since she took over as president,"the climate [at the hospital] today is more serene, and I urge everyone when there is a problem ... that we talk and talk and not keep it inside and then have it explode," she says.

"We can't always say 'yes,' unfortunately, but we can communicate."

Source

• TIME
• Catholic Herald
• Image: Alessia & Calliope