PAPAL LETTER FOR NINTH WORLD DAY OF THE SICK

VATICAN CITY, FEB 11, 2001 (VIS) - Made public today was Pope John Paul's Letter to Archbishop Javier Lozano Barragan on the occasion of the Ninth World Day of the Sick, whose focal celebration took place this year in Sydney, Australia. The president of the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care read the Letter to the faithful attending the Mass that was presided over by Cardinal Edward Clancy in St. Mary's Cathedral in Sydney.

In the Letter, written in English and dated January 18, the Holy Father stated that "few areas of human concern are as subject to the profound social and cultural changes affecting contemporary life as health care. This is one of the reasons why in 1985 I established the body which has become the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care."

Referring to the theme of the 2001 World Day of the Sick, "The New Evangelization and the Dignity of the Suffering Person," the Pope observed that "at the dawn of the new millennium, it is more urgent than ever that the Gospel of Jesus Christ should permeate every aspect of health care."

He went on to write that "not only is health care facing unprecedented economic pressures and legal complexities, but at times there is also an ethical uncertainty which tends to obscure what have always been its clear moral foundations. This uncertainty can become a fatal confusion, manifested as a failure to understand that the essential purpose of health care is to promote and safeguard the well-being of those who need it, that medical research and practice must always be tied to ethical imperatives, that the weak and those who may seem unproductive to the eyes of a consumer society have an inviolable dignity that must always be respected and that health care should be available as a basic right to all people without exception."

John Paul II, citing his Apostolic Letter "Novo Millennio Ineunte" reaffirmed that "it has become increasingly important 'to explain properly the reasons for the Church's position, stressing that it is not a case of imposing on non-believers a vision based on faith, but of interpreting and defending the values rooted in the very nature of the human person'."

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