The Vatican released Pope Francis’s message for the 31st World Day of the Sick, celebrated every year on 11 February, liturgical memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes. The Holy Father’s message is entitled: “Take care of him” – Compassion as a synodal exercise of healing. In light of the Church’s synodal journey, Pope Francis invites “all of us to reflect on the fact that it is especially through the experience of vulnerability and illness that we can learn to walk together according to the style of God, which is closeness, compassion, and tenderness.”
Pope Francis tells us in his Encyclical Letter Fratelli Tutti that “we cannot be indifferent to suffering” (68), and he proposes that we read anew the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). The condition of loneliness and abandonment of the sick in today’s world only “takes a moment of our attention, of being moved to compassion within us, in order to eliminate it.” In seeking the help of another to care for the sick man, the Samaritan asks the innkeeper to “take care of him.” Only with the help, courage, and innovation of others in a “face-to-face encounter” can we organize care for the sick in a spirit of fraternity and resilience. Many healthcare workers, family members, and community volunteers are daily witnesses of this accompaniment and caring compassion.
The World Day of the Sick is an occasion to pray for individuals who are suffering, and to find concrete ways to draw nearer to them. Mindful of this call, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops recently published an open-source palliative care toolkit for parishes, families, and communities in order that they may deepen their understandings of illness, suffering, dying and death. Drawing on Catholic moral and pastoral theology, medical expertise, and the Compassionate Community model, the palliative care toolkit facilitates conversations and learning, grounded in the mercy and tenderness of the living Christ. Users of the toolkit are invited to organize group-based engagement according to the toolkit’s four-module program so as to sustain and renew pastoral attention on the sick, lonely and abandoned. Learn more about Horizons of Hope, its training videos, facilitator guide, social media images, and take-home resources.
Pope Francis reiterates that we are called to learn “how to be a community that truly walks together, capable of resisting the throwaway culture.”
Ideas on how to promote the World Day for the Sick (11 February 2023):
Bill 11, the Act modifying the Act Respecting End-of-Life Care, along with other legislative provisions presented February 16, 2023, by Quebec Health and Seniors Minister Sonia Bélanger, obliges us as Quebec citizens and Catholic bishops practising our ministries throughout this province to speak out today on this question which is of the utmost importance.
Trois-Rivières – March 10, 2023 | The Bishops of Quebec concluded their Plenary Assembly today, which had begun on March 6. The meeting was greatly inspired by the synodal process and provided an opportunity for many fruitful and stimulating exchanges...
Trois-Rivières, March 8, 2023 – On this, the second day of their two-day gathering to collect and assimilate the diocesan synodal syntheses from across the province, along with the Provincial Synthesis - Quebec and the document taking shape in the continental stage of consultations held during the Synod on Synodality launched in October 2021, a group of almost 150 people from all dioceses of Quebec are marking International Women's Day...
Share Lent is an annual highlight for Development and Peace.
It is when the bishops of Canada encourage the faithful to give to Development and Peace, especially through the collection on Solidarity Sunday, the fifth Sunday of Lent.
This Lent, let us walk in solidarity with our sisters and brothers in the Global South who put people and planet first.
Join us and bring Share Lent to life in your community!
A series of CCCB videos entitled Journeying through Lent will once again be available on the CCCB website. This year's Lenten meditations are given by His Eminence Gérald Cyprien Cardinal Lacroix, Archbishop of Quebec and Primate of Canada, and by Most Rev. Brian Joseph Dunn, Archbishop of Halifax-Yarmouth...
Last week, in Orlando, Florida, as part of the Synodal journey in North America, a joint writing team comprised of individuals who were appointed by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) worked together on the Continental Phase’s Final Document for North America.
The Board of Directors of the Novatio Foundation has just announced that it will fund $71,270 in projects for its first year of operation. Following the call for projects launched last fall, the Foundation received about fifteen projects. Upon the recommendation of the Project analysis and selection committee, the Foundation's Board of Directors is pleased to be associated with the realization of 11 projects in the parishes and community organizations of the Archdiocese of Gatineau.
With the support of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), Aid to Church in Need (ACN), Canadian Jesuits International (CJI), Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA) Canada, and Development and Peace-Caritas Canada (DPCC) are launching an emergency aid campaign in response to the destructive earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria on Monday. They have pledged the total sum of nearly one million Canadian dollars.
On 8 February 2023, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops issued the following four pastoral letters on reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples. Intended as a framework for local engagement with Indigenous Peoples, the letters are the fruit of many months of listening, encounter, and dialogue with them, including through Listening Circles, the Indigenous Delegation to the Vatican in April 2022, and Pope Francis’ Apostolic Voyage to Canada in July of the same year.
The Vatican released Pope Francis’s message for the 31st World Day of the Sick, celebrated every year on 11 February, liturgical memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes. The Holy Father’s message is entitled: “Take care of him” – Compassion as a synodal exercise of healing. In light of the Church’s synodal journey, Pope Francis invites “all of us to reflect on the fact that it is especially through the experience of vulnerability and illness that we can learn to walk together according to the style of God, which is closeness, compassion, and tenderness.”
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