Wounded by pain, touched by grace. The pastoral care of health that generates good was the theme of the XXI national conference on pastoral care in health which took place in Caserta from 13 to 16 May. The diocesan pastoral care managers, representatives of socio-health associations and entities, as well as experts, scholars, doctors and specialists from all over Italy took part. Compared to other areas of pastoral care, the "healthcare" one is very transversal and capable of gathering a broad commonality of views: pain affects everyone, it was said at the conference, and it poses important questions of meaning to everyone.
The main objective of the conference was to focus on the issue of the senses as tools of knowledge, diagnosis and treatment, closeness and accompaniment. Touched by grace, the second part of the title, is not only to be understood in a spiritual sense, but also in a concrete, fully human sense: knowing how to "touch" the sick person, being close to him, offering him company and assistance that makes him feel followed and also respected and loved, despite his sometimes extreme fragility, as in the case of the dying.
In fact, explains the director of the National Office for the Pastoral Care of Health, Don Massimo Angelelli, after having addressed the theme of "sight" in 2018, through the dimension of the gaze, this year it is the turn of touch, of "touching" . The perspective of the works was multidisciplinary; in fact, after having addressed the topic with biblical-theological, anthropological and pastoral analysis entrusted to specialists, the "wounds" that can derive on the one hand from the "invasive touch", i.e. from the abuse of clinical and therapeutic practices, were analysed. not respectful of the dignity of the person; and, on the other hand, also by the absence of human closeness, that is, of that "pietas" that makes the patient feel like a subject worthy of care and attention. In the final sections of the conference, the practical and application issues on how to define the most appropriate methods that produce treatment effects were then addressed.
The various forms
of pain today
Thus, for example, frontier issues such as euthanasia were touched upon, which certain social and political fringes would like to introduce at a healthcare level, making it a free and voluntary practice, without limits or bulwarks of any kind. There was talk of being close to Alzheimer's patients for whom "touch" is a form of closeness that sometimes manages to reassure and make people feel at home, better than other procedures, including pharmaceutical ones, with poor results.
In a spiritual key but also practical collaboration between structures was discussed about empathy with the patient, especially in cases of disability. The director of the national office, Don Angelelli, focused on the proposal of welcomed.it, a form of collaboration between organizations that deal with disabled people to encourage mutual knowledge and the improvement of assistance models.
Faced with the risks of transforming medicine and assistance into cold techniques assisted by computers and robots, the Forum of social and healthcare associations has highlighted how it is necessary to promote in every way the relationship between patient and doctor, which remains the basic axis of any therapeutic approach.
The nurses shared the theme of the code of ethics, within which the theme of assistance to the seriously ill and dying plays an important role and the risk of euthanasia, which is becoming increasingly strong as recent cases in the news have highlighted.
On the introduction of medical robotics, there were testimonies from experts and healthcare workers who spoke of it as an additional opportunity, but on the condition that the man-person never crushed by artificial intelligence is always taken into account.
Similarly, on mental health and the sometimes extreme difficulties of assisting and treating serious patients, the fundamental role of parenting, of the presence in the school of experts capable of detecting the first symptoms of distress, who - if not appropriately addressed early - can degenerate into real pathologies that are then difficult to eradicate.
The same argument was made for neurodegenerative diseases, for autism and for terminally ill patients to whom palliative care can be offered in special hospices capable of supporting them in their final journey and also of being able to accompany them on a spiritual level because the prospect of the end of life be open to hope.
it is a question - in all these cases - of that human "touch" that can reach the heart of the sick and "wounded" person and that manages, in some way, to soothe the pain and lead to greater hope.
Lent, i.e. "quadragesima", is the forty-day period preceding Easter in the Catholic liturgical year. It begins with Ash Wednesday and ends with the Resurrection, that is, with the lighting of the lumen Christi, the new fire in churches stripped of furnishings, on Easter night.
Today we talk a lot, perhaps too much, about carnival. Partly because our "happy" time has a ferocious need to escape (in the nostalgia of the past, in the dream of the future, in the elsewhere of political utopia, in the bliss of celebration), partly because anthropology and folklore go hand in hand fashion, and carnival is one of the privileged moments for this type of study.