By Sam Lucero of the Catholic Herald staff

WAUWATOSA — As head of an international religious order that ministers to the sick and elderly, Fr. Anthony F. Monks understands the important role the church plays in health care. Thanks to Pope John Paul II, he said, the rest of the church has come to understand that role as well.

“The church has woken up, after centuries, to the fact that more people pass through a hospital in a week than any Sunday through a church,” said Fr. Monks, superior general of the Order of St. Camillian, known also as the Order of the Servants of the Sick. “Everybody is touched by illness and everybody begins to think of life in a different way as a result of illness.”

Fr. Monks was in Wauwatosa in early January to seek donations for his order’s health care institute in Rome known as the Camillianum. During a dinner for potential donors Jan. 6 at the St. Camillus Campus, a retirement community sponsored by the religious order, Fr. Monks discussed the institute’s role in communicating the church’s views on health care.

The Camillianum was established in 1987 at the request of Pope John Paul II, said Fr. Monks.

“We are involved today in the Camillianum because of the present Holy Father,” he said. “He is probably the first pope to really take the sick to heart. No pope in the history of the church has given so much of his time, taken so much of his interest in the sick and in the elderly and how they are cared for. A lot of it has to do with his own experience of attempted assassination, from which resulted his apostolic letter, Salvifici Doloris.”

The apostolic letter, which looked at the Christian meaning of human suffering, was issued in 1984 and “is the blueprint today of the church’s teaching on health care,” added Fr. Monks.

He also credited the pope with creating the Pontifical Commission for Health Care. “Before that, there was no department in the Vatican that looked after health care matters. It’s a sign, I think, of the present pope’s great interest in the sick and in the suffering.”

According to Fr. Monks, John Paul requested that the Order of St. Camillus establish an institute that trains people to enter into dialogue with the medical and scientific communities.

“The purpose of the Camillianum is to prepare people to encounter the sick person at all levels,” he said. “It is also very important to prepare people to be able to communicate with ... those who work in health care, that it concentrate on the teaching of professional ethics in medical and nursing schools.”

About 120 students are presently enrolled at the Camillianum, which offers graduate and post-graduate degrees. Nearly 500 students from 54 nations, including the United States, have attended the institute, said Fr. Monks. Graduates include Catholics and non-Catholics, laity and clergy.

“It’s important to remember that it is a very specialized institute and has a big outreach,” said Fr. Monks. “Its pupils have set up 18 pastoral centers spread throughout the world which are having a huge influence on medical and health care thinking, making sure that a Catholic voice is heard.”

One of the pastoral centers is located in Bogota, Colombia. “It is the mouthpiece for the Colombian episcopal conference on health care matters,” said Fr. Monks. “It is also the mouthpiece for the bishops’ conference of Latin America. All of its research, all of its documents on health care come through the Camillianum center in Bogota.”

According to Fr. Monks, one of the church’s biggest challenges today is humanizing medical and scientific advances.

“We thank God for the technology. We thank God for the scientific advances. But we also have to question whether we lose sight of the person as a human being in the midst of it all,” he said.

With a growing acceptance of euthanasia and assisted suicide, Fr. Monks said two of the best responses are palliative care (pain control management) and hospice care (outreach to the terminally ill).

“The philosophy of hospice care needs to be heard and needs to be adopted by the whole of medicine, where all of the emphasis is on pain control and caring with a passion,” he said. “I think that message is being heard.”

At one time, said Fr. Monks, hospice “was inclined to be seen as a discipline outside of medicine itself. Today it’s totally accepted in all developed countries as an integral part of medicine.”

“Twenty years ago, few patients were transferred from oncology to hospice. Today’s it’s increasing,” he said. “It means that the message is getting through, that death with dignity is OK, that death is not defeat as it was seen so often by medicine. To me this is one of the practical and best responses to euthanasia.”

In a related development, Fr. Monks believes home care for the sick and dying is the next area the church needs to concentrate its ministry.

“Day hospitals are becoming a reality. After major surgery you go home after six, seven days. So what happens to people when they go home? The whole concept of care in the community ... I think it’s something we have to pioneer. The pope uses the expression, the family church, and maybe we need to develop this concept a little more.”

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