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Accompanying Cardinal Clancy at the Mass for the World Day of the Sick being held this Sunday will be two prominent Sydney Catholics and a representative from Rome.
Mons
Krzysztof Nykiel, a member of the Pontifical Council for Health Care will accompany the cardinal as he processes into St Mary’s Cathedral for the Mass. He will also be accompanied by Justice John Slattery, a Knight
Commander of the Order of St Gregory the Great, and by Dr John Gallagher, also a Knight Commander. Dr Gallagher has just been awarded the Order of Australia for his services to medicine and the community. Cardinal
Clancy has been appointed Papal Envoy for the Ninth Day of the Sick.
This is the first time such an event has been held in Australia. The theme of the weekend-long event is The New Evangelisation and Dignity
of the Suffering Person. The first ‘Sick Day’ was held in 1993 at the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in France. It is held at a different Marian shrine each year and intentionally coincides with the commemoration of
Our Lady of Lourdes “whose sanctuary at the foot of the Pyrenees has become a temple of human suffering” – Message from the First World Day of the Sick.
Australia’s World Day of the Sick aims to stress the
need to evangelise in a new way this part of the human experience, said Pope John Paul II.
Australia has been chosen this year because its cultural and ethnic wealth highlights the close bond of ecclesial
communion which transcends distances and fosters the meeting of different cultures made fruitful by the liberating message of salvation, said the Pope.
Sunday’s Mass will be held at 2.30pm and all are
welcome to attend. Twenty-five sick people will be anointed during the Mass.
Bishops from Australia and elsewhere will attend, as well as the president of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care for
Health Workers, Archbishop Javier Lozano Barragan.
A civic reception was held at Sydney Town Hall on Friday, February 9, at which Cardinal Clancy has honoured in his official capacity as Papal Envoy by
Sydney’s Lord Mayor, Frank Sartor.
On Saturday a conference on the theme of evangelising the sick was held. For a full report of the threeday celebration and pictures see next week’s Catholic Weekly.
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