of the
Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers
THE CROSS
SANCTIFIES HUMAN SUFFERING
I congratulate you and join you in
giving thanks to the Lord for all that it has been possible to achieve during
these years of your Council’s activity. Through it the Church fulfils in a
specific way an important part of her mission in the service of the human
person. The implications of the health-care apostolate are many and complex: as
such, they require constant attention, expert dedication and a noteworthy
availability for generous self-giving to others.
2.Before mentioning some of the most
important initiatives that you have accomplished, I think it is opportune to
emphasize the diligent, fruitful work, commonly called “ordinary”, which those
in charge of your dicastery, the members, consultors and volunteer helpers ensure on a day-to-day
basis. I am referring to the increased relations with the papal Representatives
and the Bishops’ Conferences; the growing dialogue with the Bishops delegated
with responsibility for the health-care apostolate in the local Churches; the
many pastoral visits to hospitals, the meetings with religious health-care
workers, with associations of doctors, nurses and volunteers; the publication
of your valuable magazine in several languages; the provision of subsidies for
the health-care apostolate; the contribution given to the Ordinary and Special
Assemblies of the Synod of Bishops; the drafting of a code of ethics for
health-care workers; the careful measures taken to set up the International
Federation of Catholic Hospitals.
3.I also want to express my
appreciation for the international conferences which your dicastery
has sponsored each year since its foundation, using an interdisciplinary
approach – that of science, philosophy, theology – to confront today’s
important problems: pharmaceutical products at the service of human life;
making medicine more humane, longevity and the quality of life, AIDS; the human
mind, drugs and alcoholism. I know that you are already working to prepare the
next conference, planned for autumn 1992, on the topic of the disabled and
handicapped.
The interventions of prestigious
speakers, the ever greater and more expert participation of health-care workers
and the good reception given to the acts which are published in good time are
all confirmation of the value and usefulness of these international
conferences. I encourage you, therefore, to continue on this path which has proved
to be beneficial, contributing to the growth at every level of the awareness of
the seriousness and urgency of problems related
to the world of health and health care.
You also deserve to be commended for
the dedication with which the Pontifical Council has intervened on more than
one occasion, discreetly and in a spirit of charity, to alleviate suffering and
situations of extreme hardship, cooperating with Episcopal Conferences, Bishops
of the local Churches, religious institutions and all the entities committed to
the defence and promotion of life wherever it is more
seriously threatened.
4.We do not want, however, merely to
recall the past. Our thoughts turn first and foremost to the future to
distinguish the emerging challenges and give new impetus to your activity. With
the topics on its agenda, the current plenary is meant to respond to precisely
that demand. The Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Health-Care
Workers is particularly close to my heart because I believe the contribution it
is called to make in the fulfilment of the Church’s
mission in our day is a fundamental one. As I wrote in the Apostolic
Exhortation Christifideles laici, “the
Church today lives a fundamental aspect of her mission in lovingly and
generously accepting every human being, especially those who are weak and sick.
This is made all the more necessary as a “culture of death” threatens to take
control” (n. 38).
5.Our thoughts turn to the words
reported by the Evangelist John: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would
not have died” (Jn 11 21). They are not merely the
complaint, almost a veiled but loving rebuke of Jesus by the two sisters,
Martha and Mary, who are deeply saddened by the death of their brother,
Lazarus. They are also the complaint which is renewed throughout the troubled
history of the human race: the lament of suffering, illness, death. Faith in
the risen Christ sheds great light on the condition of human suffering.
Sustained by faith, we know that Christ is with
us, that he is the resurrection and
the life, and that, therefore, whoever believes in him, even if he dies,
shall live, and whoever lives and believes in him shall have eternal life (cf.
Jn 11:25-26).
Christ began his ministry by
“evangelizing” suffering, sickness and death “to fulfil
what had been said by Isaiah the prophet: ‘He took away our infirmities and
bore our diseases’ (Mt 8:17, cf. Is 53:4). As mankind’s Good Samaritan, he made
himself the “neighbour” of the suffering whom he met
on the road, bending low over their infirmities, soothing their pain with the
balm of his words, and often curing their illness. As Peter said, he “went
about doing good and healing all" (Acts 10:38).
Jesus continues his ministry on
behalf of people, his brothers and sisters, through
other people. He calls each person to be his collaborator in this concern
for others, with the eyes of love, then, to see the greatness of man, the only
creature on earth which God desired for its own sake (Gaudium et spes, n. 22), a grandeur which is
often hidden behind the veil of physical weakness.
6.In this context we find the
proposals which you have pointed out to be urgent for the health-care
apostolate in the immediate future. In fact, the topics you have been
discussing during these days of your work are at the centre of mankind’s
attention: the defence and promotion of the
incomparable value of every human life from conception to natural death, the
integration of the disabled and
handicapped in society, assistance towards the reconstruction of the countries
of Eastern Europe where health-care problems are urgent and where cooperation
in the field of the health-care apostolate with the Eastern Churches can
contribute to the promotion of ecumenical dialogue and, last of all,
evangelization. The health-care apostolate thus proves to be an integral
component of the Church’s mission. Called to bring the Gospel of salvation to
the whole world, the Church cannot do without the witness of a love which bends
down to the suffering person to share his or her pain and does everything
possible to alleviate it.
7.Dear brothers and sisters, with
growing zeal spread the Gospel of
suffering, with the certainty that the generous help given to the person who
suffers is a factor contributing to unity in charity and the premise of a new
solidarity among people. May you be sustained in your useful activity by trust
in the God Man who wants to draw all things to himself on the cross sanctifying suffering and transforming it into a
redeeming force. From the paschal mystery a special light shines upon the
specific task which the health-care apostolate is called to fulfil
in the great commitment to evangelization. Attention to the sick person, often
lost in the anonymity of crowds, is a true priority in the ministry of
health-care workers, of nurses, doctors, volunteers, religious, and especially
of the priest, the minister of divine mercy and love. Through these people
Jesus is effectively present at the side of the sick person, consoling and
comforting him or her, forgiving sins and not infrequently restoring the gift
of health.
8.Precious, too, is the mission of those who suffer. In
serving the suffering, the Church can receive from them most effective support
for her missionary activity (cf. Encyclical Letter Redemptoris missio, n. 78) because, standing with
Mary at the foot of the cross (Jn 19:25), they have a
first-hand participation in Christ’s redemptive sacrifice.
Be conscious of this and spread this
supernatural message from which flow light and hope, dispelling the darkness
which threatens the varied world of human suffering. The better your apostolate
is inserted into the whole of the Church’s pastoral activity, the more
effective it will be.
The liturgical memorial of Our Lady
of Lourdes, the feast on which I established your dicastery
through the Motu Proprio Dolentium hominum,
sheds new light on this plenary of yours, too. I know that you are working on a
proposal to institute a World Day of the Sick, with the double goal of helping
sick people to realize the importance of their gift of suffering and aiding all
the People of God to feel their duty to be the “neighbour”
of every sick person. May the Blessed Virgin, who is lauded and invoked at
Lourdes as Health of the Sick, be the model in this fundamental apostolate. May
she, the Mother of love and suffering, bless your work.
With this wish I too bless you with
all my heart.