Merciful care should affirm the dignity of the sick, pope tells Catholic hospital in Thailand

At the hospital, the pope thanked the Sisters of Saint Paul of Chartres and other religious sisters for their joyful dedication to Catholic healthcare.

“You enable us to contemplate the maternal face of God who bends down to anoint and raise up his children,” he said.

Francis stated that Catholic hospital workers “carry out one of the greatest works of mercy, for your commitment to health care goes far beyond the simple and praiseworthy practice of medicine.”

“This is not only a matter of procedures and programs; rather, it has to do with our readiness to embrace whatever each new day sets before us,” he said.

After the encounter with medical personnel, the pope met privately with around 40 sick and disabled in the hall of the hospital, “as a way of accompanying them, however briefly, in their pain,” he explained.

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Pope Francis: The heart of our faith is love

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Illness, he said, can lead people to ask serious questions about life, death, and suffering, but “by uniting ourselves to Jesus in his passion, we discover the power of his closeness to our frailty and our wounds.”

St. Louis Hospital, founded 120 years ago, has 412 beds. Its motto is “where love is, there God is.”

Francis said he was glad to hear the hospital’s philosophy is based on charity, because “it is precisely in the exercise of charity that we Christians are called not only to demonstrate that we are missionary disciples, but also to take stock of our own fidelity, and that of our institutions, to the demands of that discipleship.”

The director of the hospital, Dr. Tanin Intragumtornchai, told Pope Francis Nov. 21 that the Catholic hospitals of Thailand “are not the hospitals for business.”

“We have never entered into the commercial competition but [are] trying our best wholeheartedly to spread the Good News of Christ, especially through love and compassion,” he said.

“As your holiness once said … love is the best medicine and healing not only for the body but also for the spirit; and we realize well that this is our mission.”

Catholics make up around .5% of the population in Thailand, which is mostly Buddhist. Catholic missionaries from Portugal first brought Catholicism to the area nearly 500 years ago.

After Thailand, Pope Francis will head to Japan Nov. 23-26, where he will visit Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the sites of the 1946 atomic bombings.

Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency's senior Rome correspondent. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has a degree in English from Truman State University in Missouri.