Pope Francis, in his weakness, is teaching the world about human frailty, the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life said yesterday at a press conference for a Vatican summit on longevity. Source: CNA.
The Pope has shown “that old age is also marked by frailty, and frailty should not be rejected. It is not to be … expelled like the devil,” Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia said at the Holy See Press Office yesterday, one day after Pope Francis returned to the Vatican after 38 days in the hospital.
While Francis, in his illness, has temporarily lost his ability to speak, he is teaching us with his body “the importance of old people”, Archbishop Paglia added.
“Pope Francis reminds us that it is actually a voice that should be deafening: that of the frail, who remind us that we do not live forever.”
The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life sponsored the first Vatican Longevity Summit on March 24 at the Augustinianum Conference Centre in Rome to reflect with scientific and academic institutions on how to promote “a model of longevity that does not limit itself to extending the years of life but to enriching them in terms of quality, dignity, and sustainability, integrating science, ethics, and spirituality”.
Giulio Maira, a neurosurgeon who previously worked at Rome’s Gemelli hospital, said after the press conference that “frailty is the ultimate expression of aging.”
“Unfortunately, when we get to an age beyond 65-70, we get there with a more fragile organism, with a greater vulnerability to diseases, germs, bacteria, viruses,” he said.
“The Pope is the expression, the living example, of how even a serious illness can be faced with dignity, with courage, and with serenity. And this must be an example for everyone.”
Pope Francis, Dr Maira said, has made it through the worst of a serious illness, and now, like everyone, needs to convalesce.
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Archbishop Paglia: Pope Francis is showing us the frailty of old age (By Hannah Brockhaus, CNA)
