World Day of the Sick - 'Defend life', Pope urges health workers

Sydney
16 February 2003

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World Day of the Sick - 'Defend life', Pope urges health workers

Catholic health care workers "have the urgent task of doing all they can to defend life" when it is most seriously threatened, says Pope John Paul II, and to do all they can to make Catholic hospitals centres of life and hope.

"Through the celebration of this World Day of the Sick, may the Gospel of life and love resound loudly," he said in his message to mark the 11th World Day of the Sick (Tuesday, February 11).

The Pope also imparted his blessing on those who suffer in body or spirit.

"Especially in the presence of tragic human experiences, the Christian is called to bear witness to the consoling truth of the Risen Lord, who takes upon himself the wounds and ills of humanity, including death itself, and transforms them into occasions of grace and life," he said.

A model of society appears to be emerging in the Western world, he said, in which the powerful predominate, setting aside and even eliminating the powerless.

"I am thinking here of unborn children, helpless victims of abortion; the elderly and incurably ill, subjected at times to euthanasia; and the many other people relegated to the margins of society by consumerism and materialism," the Pope said. "Nor can I fail to mention the unnecessary recourse to the death penalty.

"This model of society bears the stamp of the culture of death, and is therefore in opposition to the Gospel message.

"Catholics working in the field of health care have the urgent task of doing all they can to defend life when it is most seriously threatened and to act with a conscience correctly formed according to the teaching of the Church.

"Catholic hospitals should be centres of life and hope which promote - together with chaplaincies - ethics committees, training programs for lay health workers, personal and compassionate care of the sick, attention to the needs of their families and a particular sensitivity to the poor and the marginalised."

Pope John Paul prayed for a flourishing of religious vocations and lay volunteers to continue to provide the high standard of professional and pastoral work carried out in Catholic health facilities.

He reaffirmed his support for scientific progress and medical advances which sought to assist and improve the quality of human life, respecting the inviolable dignity of the sick, and said it was never licit to kill one human being in order to save another.

With the sick now spending less time in hospital, proper attention and support must be given to the sick who remained at home.

Bishop Peter Connors, of the Australian Bishops' Committee for Health Care, said that since the ninth World Day of the Sick in Sydney in 2001, more and more heath and aged care facilities in Australia had been responding to this annual invitation from the Pope for a prayerful response to the challenge to make the Gospel of life and love resound loudly throughout the land.

Bishop Connors is Bishop of Ballarat.