VATICAN - MEDICAL ASSISTANCE, FUNDAMENTAL FOR MISSION TO OBEY THE COMMAND OF JESUS: MEDICINE AND MISSION THEME OF 2004-2005 CORRESPONDENCE COURSE OFFERED BY PONTIFICAL MISSIONARY UNION

Thursday, 31 July 2003

Vatican City (Fides Service) – The 2004-2005 Correspondence Course offered by the Pontifical Missionary Union will focus on Medicine and Mission. The Course, available in four languages, English, French, Italian and Spanish, consists of 16 lessons, will follow on from the previous one “The Catholic School on Mission” which has almost concluded. Education and medical assistance are in fact two fundamental commitments for mission if we are to obey the command Jesus gave to his disciples: “Go, preach, baptise and…care for the sick> (cfr Mt 28,19-20: Lk 10,9)
The purpose of the new correspondence Course Medicine and Mission in 16 lessons is to provide the biblical-theological proof, historical facts and the work different according to the times, which have made the Church the world’s most important charity institution in all times and all places, starting from the urgency of charity for man who is sick and wounded in many ways (cf Parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10,25-27). Village chapels, dispensaries in towns, clinics and hospitals in cities, including university medical training, have offered to civil institutions structures created by the medical assistance of the Church. Governments and other public organisations have followed the example of the Church, but their structures, unfortunately, have not always adopted the same Christian spirit and motivations, with serious consequences for the modalities and efficacy of medical care, when the person was not longer the main focus of attention.
Here are the subjects of the lessons for 2004: : Christian love as Com-passion for the Sick; Spirit and Body in Christian Anthropology; Health in the Cultures and Religions of the world; Religion and Medicine; The Church’s structures of assistance in her history; Medicine on Mission; The Church and International Medical Structures; God and Suffering. 2005: Christian education to suffering; Health Pastoral for Children and Youth; Health Pastoral for Women; Health pastoral for the elderly; Christian Psychotherapy; The Church and Plagues; Bio-ethics; Death today and the Resurrection of the body.
To subscribe to the correspondence course “Medicine and Mission”, or request earlier courses on subjects connected with mission apply to: P.U.M. – OMNIS TERRA - Via di Propaganda 1/c 00187 ROMA. E-mail pum@org.va (S.L.) (Fides Service 31/7/2003; lines 26 – words 365)


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