Pope Francis warns against "medicine of desires"

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Thursday met with participants attending a Conference for International Healthcare Workers taking place in Rome.

Greeting the conference members gathered, Pope Francis in his prepared remarks, began by reminding them that this International Healthcare Workers event also coincided with the thirtieth anniversary of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers and the twentieth anniversary of the publication Pope Saint John Paul II’s Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae.

He told the participants that the issues that they have been debating this week such as respect for the value of life, and, even more, the love of it, was fundamental in taking care of those who suffer in body and spirit.

The Pope added that these attitudes would be further highlighted during the Jubilee of Mercy.

Returning to the encyclical Evangelium Vitae, Pope Francis said it contained the vital elements of hospitality, compassion, understanding and forgiveness.

During his address the Holy Father also noted and warned against, what he called the "medicine of desires": a mentality, he said, increasingly common in affluent countries, characterized by the pursuit of physical perfection at any cost, the illusion of eternal youth; a mentality that leads precisely to discarding or marginalizing those who are not seen as "efficient".

Turning his attention to the gift of creation, the Pope said the anxiety that the Church has, in fact, is the fate of the human family and of all creation which needs to be nurtured in order to be passed on to future generations.

Finally, in keeping with this theme, Pope Francis encouraged the participants present to keep in mind, in their work, the reality of those populations that suffer most from the damage caused by environmental degradation, which can has severe and often permanent consequences on their health.