杏MAP导航 Francis: The antidote to healthcare inequality is fraternity
By Lydia O'Kane
The World Day of the Sick is marked annually on 11 February. On the eve of this observance, the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development has organized a webinar entitled: 鈥淲orld Day of the Sick: Meaning, Goals and Challenges.鈥�
Thursday鈥檚 event retraces the history of the Day, showing its fruits and highlighting the relevance of its message. There is also space dedicated to the experience, challenges and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic
In a video message to participants, 杏MAP导航 Francis took the opportunity to stress the importance of physical and spiritual healing of the body, and the need for effective treatments for everyone.
Sharing in Christ鈥檚 sufferings
The 杏MAP导航 noted, 鈥渢he experience of sickness makes us feel fragile, and it makes us feel in need of others.鈥� Sickness, he said, 鈥渞aises the question of life鈥檚 meaning, which we bring before God in faith.鈥�
杏MAP导航 Francis explained that through his own sufferings, his predecessor Saint John Paul II, who instituted the World Day of the Sick thirty years ago, became 鈥渁 sharer in the sufferings of Christ.鈥�
The 杏MAP导航 also underlined that 鈥淥ne must never 鈥榝orget the uniqueness of each patient, his or her dignity and frailties鈥�. It is the person in his or her entirety who is in need of care: body, mind, affections, freedom and will, spiritual life... Care cannot be divided; because the human being cannot be divided,鈥� he said.
He continued, 鈥淭he saints who cared for the sick always followed the Master鈥檚 teaching: heal the wounds of body and soul; pray and act for physical and spiritual healing together.鈥�
Inequalities in healthcare
Turning his attention to the COVID-19 pandemic, he observed that this contagion 鈥渋s teaching us to view illness as a global and not a merely individual phenomenon.鈥�
Other 鈥減athologies鈥� that threaten humanity and the world, he underlined, included individualism and indifference 鈥渢hat unfortunately end up being amplified in the society of consumerist wellbeing and economic liberalism,鈥� he said.
He also highlighted that even in the field of healthcare, there are 鈥渋nequalities鈥� where some enjoy so-called 鈥渆xcellence鈥� and many others struggle to access basic treatments.
In order to cure this 鈥渟ocial鈥� virus, he said, 鈥渢he antidote is the culture of fraternity, based on the awareness that we are all equal as human persons, all equal as children of one God.鈥�
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