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Archbishop Barragán in Sydney for the World Day of the Sick
conference. Photo: Dan McAloon
By Dan McAloon
The Pope has taken the lead in urging the scientific community to find a cure for
HIV/AIDS, whic has infected over 24 million people in Africa and continues to devastate every age and class of person, according to Archbishop Javier Barragán, President of the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral
Care.
Tragically, many of those suffering from the disease are young people and children.
Archbishop Barragán was in Sydney last week to deliver the keynote address at the World Day of the Sick
conference, which was held on Saturday. He was responding to a journalist’s question concerning what were the medical and bioethical issues facing the Church in the world today.
AIDS treatment is an area
where the political agenda and the theological agenda become one, and where medicines must be developed that are available to people to treat this disease, said the archbishop. At present most AIDS medicines are
beyond the financial reach of the poor.
“The Pope encourages the scientific community to find the medical solution for this epidemic and also encourages the work of all relief agencies and Christians in
caring and treating the sick, indeed caring for the poorest of the poor,” said Archbishop Barragán.
He added that the Church was an advocate in the push for the development of affordable medicines to treat
recent epidemics like AIDS, as well reemerging diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria, which had once seemed on the verge of extinction but are again taking a high toll on human life in the developing world.
“This is a big issue for the Church because in many areas of the world the only people working in and maintaining anything like a health system is the Church. This is true in Latin America and especially so in
Africa,” said Archbishop Barragán.
“The aim of our meeting in Sydney is to declare a new evangelisation of the sick. Already in this new millennium we face many challenges; bioethics, for instance, is a very
wide field in which the Church has much to say. There must be a moral voice to care for and defend the sick and dying,” said the archbishop, speaking before the conference.
Next week’s edition of
The Catholic Weekly will carry a full report on the conference.
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