The Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers announced Nov. 13 that
its upcoming international conference will discuss how health
facilities can maintain a Catholic identity in secular societies.
The conference will be “devoted to the study of all aspects of
hospitals as privileged spaces, to fulfill both individually and
collectively the baptismal mandate” to minister to the sick in imitation
of the Good Samaritan, the council’s president Archbishop Zygmunt
Zimowski said.
The council’s 27th international conference will take place Nov. 15 to
17 and will address the theme, “The hospital, a place of evangelization,
human and spiritual mission.”
The gathering will bring together churchmen as well as health care
professionals. Up for discussion will be several key issues: respect for
life from conception to its natural end, compassionate care with full
respect for the sick person’s identity, and palliative care, which
focuses on relieving and preventing the suffering of patients.
Representatives from the European Congress of Catholic Doctors as well
as Italian Minister of Health Renato Balduzzi will participate. They
will address such concerns as maintaining hospitals’ Catholic identity
in the secularized Western world, and promoting more effective health
care in developing countries, where easily preventable diseases such as
malaria continue to claim untold lives.
“Health care workers who are inspired by the faith and Christian
morality must be the promoters and pioneers of ethical training to
accompany their professional preparation,” noted the council’s
secretary, Archbishop Jean-Marie Mupendawatu.
Archbishop Mupendawatu emphasized that the focus of health care should
be on the patient as a person, who “reveals the face of God” in his
suffering. He ended his remarks by quoting St. Therese of Lisieux, who
found joy in suffering by offering up her pain to God.
“I have come to the point of suffering no more, because all suffering endured for God has become sweetness,” she wrote.
The meeting will begin with a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica presided
over by the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.
The conference will conclude with a Nov. 17 Mass in St. Peter’s and an address by Pope Benedict XVI.
The council was established by Blessed Pope John Paul II to provide a
forum to discuss Catholic-related health care issues.
Some 120,000
Catholic health care facilities operate worldwide, putting into practice
Christ’s command in St. Matthew’s gospel to “Go, preach, and heal the
sick.”