The Jubilee of the Directorate of Health and Hygiene and the Vatican Pharmacy

The conditions and needs of the sick, in the eyes of a throwaway culture, may not respond to rigid and callous canons of profit and productivity. As a consequence the ill can be easily marginalized, especially in modern society. On April 5 and 6 physicians, health care professionals together with patients and volunteers celebrated the Jubilee of the Sick and Health Care Workers for this Holy Year.

This varied and authentic reality, in which Charity is combined with Solidarity, directly shared their Jubilee observance with Pope Francis, who was still convalescing at Casa Santa Marta in the Vatican.

Where would the sick be without those who care for them? Doctors, nurses, and all those who are committed every day to treating them, to researching cures, to engineering health care technology, form a single body to alleviate illness and its consequences.

On Saturday morning, April 5, more than fifty employees of the Governorate’s Directorate of Health and Hygiene and the Vatican Pharmacy, prayerfully walked in pilgrimage from Piazza Pia to cross the Holy Door in St. Peter's Basilica.

Leading the pilgrimage were Prof. Andrea Arcangeli, M.D. and Luigi Carbone, M.D, respectively Director and Deputy Director of the Directorate of Health and Hygiene, and Br. Binish Thomas Mulackal, O.H., Director of the Vatican Pharmacy. They were joined with others who come into daily contact with the sick: doctors, pharmacists, nurses - the professionals of the Governorate, who through their service take care of those who are suffering illness.

Their participation in the Jubilee of the Sick and Health Care Workers concluded on Sunday morning, April 6, in St. Peter’s Basilica, with Holy Mass presided by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, Pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization in the Section for Fundamental questions of Evangelization in the World.

Pope Francis joined this significant Jubilee with a brief appearance in St. Peter's Square, for the first time in public since his release from the Agostino Gemelli hospital. For this, the public erupted in spontaneous cheers of solidarity and joyful greeting.