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VATICAN CITY, NOV 12, 2004 (VIS) - The Holy Father today
welcomed 600 participants in the international conference on palliative
cures, sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry and
currently underway in the Vatican, and thanked them for their "scientific and
human commitment in favor of those who are in a state of suffering."
"Medicine," said the Pope, "always places itself at the
service of life. Even when it knows it cannot defeat a serious pathology, it
dedicates its own capabilities to alleviating suffering. To work with
passion to help the patient in every situation means to be aware of the
inalienable dignity of every human being, even those in the extreme conditions of a
terminal state."
He pointed out how faith can help a person in pain to help
others who are also suffering. "In fact, there is a directly proportional
relationship between the capacity to suffer and the capacity to help
those who are suffering." Persons sensitive to the pain of others and to
helping them "are also more disposed, with the help of God, to accepting their
own suffering,"
The Holy Father addressed the topic of euthanasia, calling it one of
those "dramas caused by an ethic which seeks to establish who can
live and who must die. ... Even when motivated by sentiments of a poorly
understood compassion, ... euthanasia, instead of redeeming the person
from suffering, suppresses them." He stated that compassion, when wrongly
understood, "leads to snuffing out life in order to alleviate pain, thus
overturning the ethical statute of medical science. ... true compassion, on
the contrary, promotes every reasonable effort to favor the patient's
healing." |