Pope Francis affirmed that medicine must protect nascent and suffering life, and must not succumb to market interests or ideologies, when receiving in audience a group from the Department of Dentistry of the University of Naples Federico II, on the occasion of the 800 years of the study center.
“Classical wisdom meets today with rapidly developing technology, which must never do without deontology. Otherwise, if it neglects human dignity, which is the same for everyone, medicine runs the risk of lending itself to the interests of the market and ideology, instead of dedicating itself to the good of nascent life, of life that suffers, of the indigent life,” the Holy Father stressed in his speech, in the Clementine Room of the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican.
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“The doctor exists to cure the bad: always cure! “No life should be discarded,” Pope Francis stressed. Even when it seems that the person will not survive, he said, it is important to accompany them “until the end.”
According to the Press Office of the Vaticanthe Pontiff then proposed a three-step program, which he considered “always current”: do no harm, care and heal.
“Do no harm: this reminder may seem superficial but it obeys a healthy realism: first of all, it is about not causing more harm and suffering to what the patient is already experiencing,” Pope Francis highlighted.
Regarding the second step, “caring,” the Holy Father explained that “it is the evangelical action par excellence, that of the good Samaritan; but it must be done with ‘God’s style’ and. What is God’s style? Closeness, compassion and tenderness. Don’t forget it. God is close, compassionate and tender. God’s style is always this: closeness, compassion and tenderness.”
Pope Francis then recalled that, when he was 20 years old, they removed a part of his lung that was diseased and that he took medicine for it, “but what gave me the most strength was the hand of the nurses who, after giving me the injections, They took me by the hand. This human tenderness does so much good! Take care then.”
Regarding the third aspect, “caring,” the Holy Father remarked that “in this you can be like Jesus, who cured all kinds of illnesses and diseases in people. Rejoice in the good that is done to those who suffer (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1421).”
Walter Sánchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.