Vatican City, Oct 13, 2009 / 11:31 am
Writing in the context of the Year for Priests, Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, the President of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, has sent a letter to those who are sick and suffering, asking them to pray for priests and the beatification of Pope John Paul II.
The purpose of the Year is to call the whole Christian community to “rediscover the beauty of the priestly vocation and thus to pray for priests,” the archbishop said, noting that this includes the sick.
Archbishop Zimowski reminded sick people in his October 1 letter that priests play an important role in their lives. “A priest at the bedside of a sick person represents Christ himself, the Divine Physician, who is not indifferent to the fate of those who suffer. Indeed, through the sacraments of the Church, administered by a priest, Jesus Christ offers to a sick person healing through reconciliation and the forgiveness of sins, through anointing with holy oil and lastly in the Eucharist, in the viaticum in which Christ himself becomes, as Giovanni Leonardi used to say, ‘the medicine of immortality’ by which ‘we are comforted, nourished, transformed into God, and participants in the divine nature,” he wrote.
The head of the Council for Health Care Workers also pointed out that the conclusion of the Year for Priests coincides with the 25th anniversary of the founding of Pontifical Council. Pope John Paul II, he recalled, founded the Council on the memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes to demonstrate the Church's care for the sick.