Visit to a hospice:
The Pope's 'cardinal work of mercy'
on Gaudete Sunday
Translated from
At 10 a.m. today, the third Sunday of Advent, the Holy Father visited the Hospice Fondazione Roma in the Roman neighborhood of Monteverde on Gianicolo (Janiculum) hill.
The health establishment, born 11 years ago as the Hospice Santo Cuore, at the initiative of the Circolo San Pietro and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Roma, provides free palliative care to terminally ill cancer patients, as well as to those afflicted with Alzheimer's and ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), both degenerative incurable diseases.
More than 30 patients are housed in the Hospice at present, and more than 200 are assisted in their own homes.
The Pope visited the patients and later met with doctors, nurses, the center staff and volunteers.
After a greeting from the president of Circolo San Pietro, Duke Leopoldo Torlonia, and the president of Fondazione Roma, Prof. Emmanuele Emanuele, the Pope delivered the remarks translated here:
Dear brothers and sisters!
I gladly accepted the invitation to visit this Hospice and I am very happy to be among you today. I address a heartfelt greeting to the Cardinal Vicar of Rome, Agostino Vallini, to the various auxiliary bishops, and all the priests present.
I sincerely thank Prof. Emmanuele Emanuele, President of Fondazione Roma, and Duke Leopold of Torlonia, President of Circolo San Pietro, for the words that they have courteously addressed to me.
With them, I also greet the administration of the Hospice Fondazione Roma; its president Alessandro Falez, the medical, nursing and administrative staff, the sisters and all who give a hand in any way to this worthy institution.
I address my particular appreciation to the volunteers of Circolo San Pietro, with whose zeal and generosity in bringing aid and comfort to the patients and their families I am familiar with.
This hospice was born in 1998 as the Hospice Sacro Cuore, at the initiative of the then General President of the Circolo San Pietro, the Marquis Marcello Sacchetti, whom I greet with grateful deference.
The task of this institution is to care for terminal patients, to alleviate their suffering as much as possible, and to accompany them with love as their condition worsens.
Those admitted to the Hospice have increased from 3 to thirty patients, who are followed daily by doctors, nurses and volunteers, to which we must add more than a hundred who are followed in their own homes.
All this has made of the Hospice - which has now been enriched by an Alzheimer's Unit and by an experimental project to extend the same assistance to ALS patients - a significant presence in the overall Roman healthcare system.
Dear friends, we know how some serious pathologies inevitably bring patients moments of crisis, disorientation and serious confrontation with their own personal situation.
Progress in the medical sciences offer instruments necessary to deal with this challenge, at least with the physical aspects. Nonetheless, it is not always possible to find a cure for every illness, and consequently, in hospitals and healthcare facilities around the world, we are faced with the suffering of so many incurable brothers and sisters, especially in their terminal stages.
Today, the prevailing mentality which is efficiency-driven tends to marginalize them, and considers them a weight and a problem for society.
But anyone with a sense of human dignity knows that they must be respected and sustained as they face the difficulties and sufferings associated with their condition. For this reason, palliative care is often resorted to these days, to alleviate the pain that comes with illness and to help the sick persons live through their pain with dignity.
But alongside this indispensable clinical attention, the sick must also be given concrete gestures of love, closeness and Christian solidarity, to help them confront their need for understanding, comfort and constant encouragement.
And that is what is happily taking place here, at the Hospice Fondazione Roma, whose central commitment is care and attentive hospitality for patients and their families, according to the teaching of the Church which, through the centuries, has always shown herself to be a loving mother to those who suffer in body and spirit.
In my appreciation for the praiseworthy work done here, I wish to encourage all those who, making themselves into concrete icons of the Good Samaritan, who is " oved with compassion" and cares for his neighbor (cfr Lk 10,33-34), offer daily to the patients and their families adequate assistance that is attentive to the needs of each person.
Dear patients and families, whom I have just been able to meet individually, I have seen in your eyes the faith and strength that sustain you in difficulties. I came to offer to each one a concrete testimony of my closeness and affection.
I assure you of my prayers, and I invite you to find in Jesus support and comfort, so that you may never lose trust and hope. Your ailment is a truly painful and singular trial, but in the face of the mystery of God, who assumed our mortal flesh, it acquires sense and becomes a gift and occasion for sanctification.
When the suffering and discomfort become worse, just think that Christ is associating you with his Cross because he wants to say through you a word of love to those who have lost their way in life and, closed up in their empty selfishness, live in sin, remote from God.
Indeed, your health conditions bear witness that true life is not in this world, but with God, where everyone of us will find joy if one humbly walks behind the truest of men: Jesus of Nazareth, Lord and Master.
The season of Advent, in which we are immersed, speaks to us of God's visit and invites us to prepare the way for him. In th elight of faith, we can read in sickness and suffering a particular experience of Advent as a visit by God who mysteriously comes to us to free us from loneliness and the absence of sense, to transform pain into a time for encounter with him, for hope and for salvation.
The Lord is coming - he is here, among us! This Christian certainty helps us to understand even 'tribulation' as one way in which He can come to us and become for each person the "God with us' who liberates and saves.
Christmas, for which we are preparing, offers us the possibility to contemplate the Holy Infant, true light who comes to the world to manifest "the grace of God...saving all" (Tit 2,11).
With the sentiments of Mary, let us all entrust ourselves, our lives, adn our hopes to him. Dear brothers and sisters, with these thoughts I invoke on each of you the maternal protection of the Mother of Jesus, whom the Christian people involve in tribulation as Salus infirmorum (Health of the sick), and I impart on you from the heart a special Apostolic Blessing, as a token of intimate spiritual joy and authentic peace in the Lord.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/12/2009 00:46]