Compassion is key to good medicine, Pope tells doctors
June 09, 2016
"The doctor's identity and commitment depends not only on scientific knowledge and technical competence, but principally on the attitude of compassion and mercy towards those who suffer in body and spirit," Pope Francis said in a June 9 meeting with leaders of the Medical Orders of Spain and Latin America.
In today's world some people denigrate the value of compassion, preferring technological solutions to medical problems, the Pope remarked. Others see compassion as "the humiliation of the person who receives it." Still others, he said, "hide behind an alleged compassion to justify and approve the death of a patient."
Real compassion, the Pope said, is an imitation of actions of Jesus, who was known in the early Church by the title Christus Medicus. "The Christian medical tradition," the Pope said, "is about identifying with the love of the Son of God."
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