Charlie Gard: Pope's hospital offers to take in terminally-ill baby

A Vatican-owned hospital in Rome has offered to take Charlie Gard into its care in efforts to prevent doctors from turning off his life support.

Pope Francis tweeted last week in defense of Charlie Gard, "To defend human life, above all when it is wounded by illness, is a duty of love that God entrusts to all."

And now, the Pediatric Hospital Bambino Gesu, also colloquially dubbed the "Pope's Hospital," has offered to take in the terminally-ill 10-month-old boy.

The president of the hospital, Mariella Enoc, told CNN she had asked doctors at the Great Ormond Street Hospital "to verify whether the health conditions exist to possibly transfer Charlie to our hospital."

See photos of Charlie Gard's parents:

"We know that this is a desperate case and, apparently, there is no effective therapy," Enoc said.

Enoc said Gard's mother, Connie Yates, "who is a very determined and decisive person and doesn't want to be stopped by anything," reached out to her to intervene in the case.

Following that interaction, Enoc said the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London confirmed that for legal reasons they would be unable to transfer Gard.

Enoc's intervention arrives after President Trump and the Pope tweeted their support for the brain-damaged British baby whose parents lost a legal battle to keep the infant on life support.

Gard was born with a rare genetic condition called mitochondrial depletion syndrome, which causes loss of muscle function and brain damage. After being advised by British doctors to end life support for the terminally ill 10-month-old, parents Connie Yates and Chris Gard raised almost $2 million dollars to transfer their son to the United States to receive experimental treatment.

But the parents were denied the right of doing so after three separate British courts intervened in the matter, siding with doctors who claimed further prolonging treatment would inflict even more "significant harm" upon the baby.

SEE ALSO: Donald Trump offers to help Charlie Gard after parents lose legal battle to keep him on life support

Successive legal attempts made by the parents to be allowed to take their son to the U.S. failed after the European Court of Human Rights weighed in on the couples' last appeal in June, and the parents lost. Since that ruling, doctors who had been caring for Charlie at the London hospital were granted permission to turn off Charlie's life support.

"The domestic courts concluded that it would be lawful for the hospital to withdraw life-sustaining treatment because it was likely that Charlie would suffer significant harm if his present suffering was prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement, and the experimental therapy would be of no effective benefit," the court stated in a news release.

According to CNN, life support is expected to be discontinued Friday.