VATICAN CITY, NOV 12, 2004 (VIS) - The Holy
Father today welcomed 600 participants in the international conference on
palliative cures, sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry
and currently underway in the Vatican, and thanked them for their
"scientific and human commitment in favor of those who are in a state of
suffering."
"Medicine," said the Pope, "always places itself at the
service of life. Even when it knows it cannot defeat a serious pathology, it
dedicates its own capabilities to alleviating suffering. To work with passion to
help the patient in every situation means to be aware of the inalienable dignity
of every human being, even those in the extreme conditions of a terminal
state."
He pointed out how faith can help a person in pain to help others who are
also suffering. "In fact, there is a directly proportional relationship
between the capacity to suffer and the capacity to help those who are
suffering." Persons sensitive to the pain of others and to helping them
"are also more disposed, with the help of God, to accepting their own
suffering,"
The Holy Father addressed the topic of euthanasia, calling it one of those
"dramas caused by an ethic which seeks to establish who can live and who
must die. ... Even when motivated by sentiments of a poorly understood
compassion, ... euthanasia, instead of redeeming the person from suffering,
suppresses them." He stated that compassion, when wrongly understood,
"leads to snuffing out life in order to alleviate pain, thus overturning
the ethical statute of medical science. ... true compassion, on the contrary,
promotes every reasonable effort to favor the patient's healing."
On the question of intense therapy, the Pope affirmed that "the eventual
decision to not undertake or to interrupt therapy will be considered ethically
correct when (such therapy) is inefficacious or clearly disproportionate to the
ends of supporting life or recovering health. Refusal of intense therapy, thus,
is an expression of the respect that is owed to the patient in every
instance."
He underscored the importance of being by a patient's side right up to the
end, lovingly and with every care taken to alleviate their suffering, and with
special attention to preparing the patient's "soul to meet the heavenly
Father."
He noted that palliative cures aim to alleviate symptoms of physical and
mental pain in the final stages of an illness and therefore require specialized
personnel. Administering pain killers, said the Pope, "must be proportional
to the intensity and cure of pain, avoiding every form of euthanasia" by
giving a quantity of medicine that would cause death.
In closing remarks, John Paul II said that "science and technology, in
any case, can never give a satisfactory answer to the basic questions of the
human heart. Only faith can answer these questions. The Church intends to offer
her specific contribution by the human and spiritual accompaniment of the
ill."