VATICAN CORNER
Since July, 2016, a white and blue-striped RV style van marked with a Vatican City license plate and coat of arms has been running around Rome bringing free medical care to the poor. The RV was converted into a mobile medical unit and donated by the office of the Papal Almoner to a group of volunteer health professional who bring their medical care and supplies directly to the homeless in shanty towns around Rome’s outskirts and to areas of abandoned buildings and near a city train station. The medical volunteers have been active since 2004 and they work together with other nonprofit groups and the Church to staff makeshift clinics in places of great need. The Vatican says the van makes it easier to bring “the closeness of the Pope and the Church” to the migrants “who live in truly inhumane conditions.” Many of the migrants have made the perilous journeys to Italy by sea and have suffered the trauma and loss of loved ones. Most that are receiving the free health care are children, women, expectant mothers and some who have been tortured in their home country. The van provides a more private setting for patients that better respects their dignity and it is outfitted with the needed medical equipment and carries supplies such as clothing for distribution. The medical volunteers have reported that they have treated over 2,000 people since they started using the van. The first Christians took ministering to the sick, hungry and poor very seriously and their emphasis on charity led to the first organized efforts to provide food and nursing services to the ill, as well as the first hospitals. In the spirit of healing both body and soul, many of the first priests who emerged in the mid-first century, such as St. Luke the Evangelist, were also physicians. Although medical knowledge for the first 1,000 years was very poor, an early welfare system in the Middle Ages including hospitals, orphanages, centers for lepers, and hostels where pilgrims could find meals and beds developed. Monasteries and convents were not just centers for religious study; they were also the primary centers for the study and practice of medicine, and served as the main providers until about 1300. The study of medicine blossomed again in the 14th century. Pope Nicholas V sponsored the acquisition and translation of ancient medical and scientific texts from Greek into Latin, including works of Galen which formed the foundation of Western medicine, and although it would not stand up to today’s scientific standards, it played a central role in medical understanding for the next 15 centuries. In the 15th and 16th Centuries, Religious orders set up hundreds of hospitals across the Mediterranean and Europe and the Vatican library grew. The Popes patronized anatomists who learned about the human body by dissecting cadavers. In the following centuries, Catholic clergy-scientists would continue to advance medical and scientific understanding, the most famous being Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, who was an Augustinian friar. Today the Catholic Church maintains roughly 18,000 clinics, 16,000 homes for the elderly and those with special needs, and 5,500 hospitals around the world, making it the largest non-governmental provider of healthcare.
Sources: christiantimes.com, catholicherald.co, catholicnews.com, columbiasurgery.org