05.10.2007, [17:09] // UGCC // RISU.ORG.UA
Kyiv – In advance of the International Day of Hospice and Palliative Care (care for the terminally ill), marked on 6 October 2007, Patriarch Lubomyr (Husar), head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), addressed “the faithful of the UGCC and people on whose heart lies the matter of hospice and palliative care.”
In his address Patriarch Lubomyr stressed: “Today so-called ‘hospice and palliative care’ has become even more important as the propaganda of euthanasia these days becomes more and more widespread, that is, the wish to speed up the end of earthly life, controlling it as if we were its owners. The secular world forgets who is the true master of life and who is its origin and end.”
Sister Nadia Kontur, head of the UGCC’s Intereparchial Commission on Matters of Health Ministry, noted: “The number of the terminally ill is rapidly growing in Ukraine, whereas medical, psychological, and social support for those people remains insufficient. Moreover, those people, their relatives and friends often lack spiritual guidance and pastoral care. Such a state of things evokes concern and requires essential steps to make the situation change.”
Sources:
• http://www.ugcc.org.ua/ukr/documents/appeal2007/6_octovber_2/