Vatican Symposium shines
spotlight on palliative care, wellbeing of elderly
 |
| Symposium on Religion and Medical Ethics |
A Vatican symposium on Religion and Medical Ethics is
focusing its attention on spirituality in two key areas: palliative care, and
the mental health of the elderly.
By Lydia O'Kane
A two-day symposium looking at Religion and Medical Ethics
is currently underway at the Augustinianum Congress Centre in Rome.
The event, which is jointly organized by the World
Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) based in Qatar and the Vatican’s Pontifical
Academy for Life, is focusing on two areas of healthcare: Palliative Care, and
the Mental Health of the Elderly.
The symposium, is examining the role that religion plays in
providing holistic care in the context of medical ethics.
Mental health and wellbeing of older people.
One of the speakers on Thursday, the second and final day of
the gathering, was Bishop Noël Simard, Bishop of Valleyfield, Québec, in
Canada, who spoke on the mental health and wellbeing of older people.
Following his presentation, he spoke to Vatican News about
the importance of improving the quality of life of elderly patients from a
spiritual perspective.
Spiritual accompaniment
“We need to accompany these people”, he said, “and to let
them know that they are still useful; they are still part of the community;
they are not useless; they are not powerless because we can offer them meaning
to their life, meaning to their suffering. He went on to say that, “if we can
bring light and hope to the people living with disability and with mental
disorders we are creating an environment of comfort, of peace, of love, of compassion.”
Asked about some of the practical ways in which priests,
religious and people themselves can accompany older people with health issues,
the Bishop said, “it is very important to create a web of relationships, and an
environment where people, the elderly are not lonely.”
Many older people with mental health issues, he pointed out,
can feel abandoned by society, so one way to help them is to create
relationships and have members of the community come and visit them. Older
people, Bishop Simard said, need to know that “they are not alone; they are
part of a community”.
A symposium with an interfaith perspective
This symposium is looking at palliative care and the mental
health of older people from an interfaith perspective, with Catholic, Muslim
and Jewish experts taking part. Bishop Simard said it was “very interesting
that exactly all religions are facing the same problems, and when we speak of
faith communities it’s not only Catholic communities or Jewish, it’s all religions
and we have to create ways to speak to each other; to collaborate.” He went on
to say that if religions can pool resources it could provide a concrete way of
accompanying older people.
Over the past two days, sessions at the symposium have
included a focus on Christian, Islamic and medical perspectives on ethics and
palliative care, maintaining a bridge of love between people with dementia and
their carers, and suicide and life-threatening behaviour among the elderly.
The symposium on Religion and Medical Ethics concludes on 12th December.
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