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Skriven 2007-02-20 19:35:00 av Marc Lewis (1:396/45)
Ärende: Vatican Information Service (Press Release)
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                               VIS-Press releases

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/BERTONEVIS 070219 (360)

SUMMARY

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