Media Release

Bangalore, Nov 21: Archbishop of Bangalore Dr Bernard Moras has left for Rome to participate in the 28th International Conference of Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers convened by Pope Francis  from November 21 to November 23.

 The subject chosen for this twenty-eighth international conference is ‘The Church at the Service of Elderly Sick people: Care for People with Neurodegenerative Pathologies’.

This is a subject deeply in harmony with the appeals of His Holiness Pope Francis on behalf of people who are advanced in years and for the commitment of everyone to promoting increasingly just concern and consideration for the elderly, their right to the protection of their health, and their right to a life of dignity by taking part to the full in the communities and the societies to which they belong.

The inaugural Eucharistic Liturgy will be celebrated on Thursday November 21 morning at the altar of the Chair of St Peter, ‘with’ and ‘for’ elderly people.

At the present time it is calculated that in the world there are no less than 36 million people with a form of senile dementia and that their number, because of the so-termed ‘ageing’ of the population at a global level as well, could have tripled by the year 2050.

In addition, all the attempts to treat or anyway to manage the suffering caused by the spread of Alzheimer’s disease and the other neurodegenerative pathologies through hospital institutions alone seem destined to prove inadequate, even where governments have allocated notable financial resources. Better results are obtained through care in the local areas but a great deal remains to be done to improve medical and pastoral assistance and opportunities for diagnosis and treatment.

The topics that will be dwelt mainly are: ‘Neurodegenerative illnesses: Epidemiology and Health-Care Policy – the Silent Epidemic of the Third Millennium’; ‘Research and Treatment: Current and Future Utility’; ‘The Elderly Person with Neurodegenerative illnesses’; ‘Neurodegenerative illnesses and Places of Care: Between the Hospital and the Local Area’; and ‘Preventive Actions and Potential Advantages of Technological Progress.

The Message of our Pontifical Council, drawn up on the occasion of the International Day of Older Persons 2013, celebrated last October 1, emphasized that ‘old age is not the disappearance of life but its completion’. In addition, through solidarity between the young and the old one has a way of understanding how the Church is really a family of all the generations, where each person must truly feel at home, where the logic of profit and possessing does not rule, but the logic of free giving and of love. When during the years of old age life becomes frail, it never loses its value or its dignity: every person is willed, is loved by God; every person is important and necessary…

The twenty-eighth international conference will bring together in the New Hall of the Synod the most important experts and researchers in the field of neurodegenerative diseases from all over the world, who will not only be Catholics. They will be united in a wish to create a productive exchange of knowledge and experience of use to a global advance that will bring benefits to the people who are afflicted by these neurodegenerative diseases. Dr Thomas Mathew Adjunct Professor of the Dept. of Neurology of St. John’s Medical College, Bangalore, India is one of the resource person who will speak on Neurodegenerative illnesses and places of care: between the hospital and the local area.

During the morning of Saturday, November 23, the participants of the conference will come together with sick people and their family relatives and those who accompany them, health-care workers, professionals, priests and men and women religious, in the Paul VI Hall to meet and pray with Pope Francis for the closing of the Year of Faith which will be officially closed the day after the international conference ends, on Sunday 24 November, in St. Peter’s Square.

The Archbishop, who is also the President of Karnataka Region Catholic Bishops’ Council (KRCBC), is the member of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers by virtue of his appointment by Pope Benedict in 2010 for a period of five years.

The Archbishop has been participating in this three-day annual conference over the last twelve  years continuously, based on the experience of working in the health field, especially as Director of Father Muller hospital, Mangalore and St John’s Hospital Bangalore.

He has also served as chairman of Health Commission of Catholic Bishops Conference of India.

The Archbishop is also the chairman of the Governing Council of St John’s Medical College and College of Nursing and a member of Governing Board of St John’s Hospital.

The Archbishop, will be having a separate private meeting with the Pope. He is going to meet new Pope first time, will be seeking the blessings of the Catholic Church’s Pontif for the people of Karnataka and India, especially for the people of the Archdiocese of Bangalore during its Diamond Jubilee Year.