Protect life even against the tide, Pope urges healthcare workers

“Health is a valuable asset” both for the individual and the community at large and healthcare, in order to be truly just, must always “promote, preserve and protect” the “transcendent dignity and inalienable rights of the human being”. This was Pope Benedict XVI’s message Thursday to participants at the XXV International Conference, hosted by the Pontifical Council for pastoral healthcare workers on the theme “Charity in Truth”, taken from the Holy Father’s encyclical of the same title.

Pope Benedict used the occasion to underline that still today, unfortunately, many people around the world have no access to the resources needed to meet basic needs, particularly regards healthcare. He urged participants, drawn from across the world of Catholic healthcare to “work with greater commitment at all levels so that the right to health is made effective by supporting access to primary health care”.

The Holy Father also noted that on the one hand “in our era we are witnessing a focus on healthcare that risks turning into “a consumption of drugs, medical and surgical treatment”, that risks becoming almost “a cult of the body”, while on the other hand, we also witness “the difficulty of millions of people to access even minimal assistance and drugs essential for treatment”.

“In the field of healthcare, an integral part of one's existence and the common good, it is also important to establish a just distribution, to assure everyone, on the basis of objective needs, appropriate care. As a result, the world of healthcare cannot evade the moral rules that must govern it to avoid it becoming inhuman”.

Pope Benedict said that “justice in healthcare must be among the priority of governments and international institutions” but “unfortunately, alongside positive and encouraging results, there are opinions and ways of thinking that wound”. Here the Pope referred to issues “related to the so-called "reproductive health", with the use of artificial reproductive techniques involving the destruction of embryos, or legalized euthanasia. The love of justice, the protection of life from conception to natural death, respect for the dignity of every human being should be sustained and witnessed, even against the tide” concluded Pope Benedict. “these core ethical values are the common heritage of universal morality and the basis of democratic society”.