MEDICINE AT THE SERVICE OF PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL SUFFERING

VATICAN CITY, FEB 17, 2007 (VIS) - Made public today was a Letter from Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone S.D.B. to Giuseppe Mazzella, president of the "Medicine, Dialogue, Communion" association, for the occasion on an international congress on the theme: "Communication and relations in medicine. New perspectives for medical activity." The congress has been promoted by the association in collaboration with the Sacred Heart Catholic University.

  Cardinal Bertone writes that the theme of the congress, held in Rome on February 16 and 17, "is particularly important for modern medicine, which is ever more subject to manipulation and to attempts to distort its specific nature, which is that of being a source of knowledge at the service of the sick and of their physical and spiritual suffering."

  A vital element of this mission, the cardinal continues, is the "relationship between doctor and patient." This "also includes the entire medical staff, the healthcare structure and the domestic context, not forgetting the relatives of the sick."

  "It would be wrong," the secretary of State says, "to identify human beings entirely in their capacity to relate and communicate, thus denying those who do not have this possibility the intrinsic and objective value they possess simply for being human. This - as the venerated John Paul II wrote in his Encyclical 'Evangelium vitae' - is 'the mentality which tends to equate personal dignity with the capacity for verbal and explicit, or at least perceptible, communication. It is clear that on the basis of these presuppositions there is no place in the world for anyone who, like the unborn or the dying, is a weak element in the social structure, or for anyone who appears completely at the mercy of others and radically dependent on them, and can only communicate through the silent language of a profound sharing of affection'."

  Cardinal Bertone concludes his Letter by expressing the hope that the "new perspectives" of the congress may be considered from a point of view "that places the human being above those false values that are ever more relentlessly imposed by modern society: efficiency, productivity and autonomy."
SS/COMMUNICATION:MEDICINE/BERTONE            VIS 20070219 (360)