Pope Pays Homage to Cardinal Angelini on 90th Birthday
Jul 30, 2006
Fifty years in the service of those who are suffering. Today Benedict XVI wanted to pay homage to Cardinal Fiorenzo Angelini's extraordinary commitment in the pastoral health sector.
(AGI) - Vatican City, 26 July - He is celebrating both his 90th birthday and the anniversary of his ordination. The Pope wrote him a long letter. 'Before becoming a bishop,' he recalled, 'Angelini was for more than 10 years a Central Ecclesiastical Assistant at the Union of Men of Catholic Action and only for a few months he was Delegate for the hospitals and care centres of the Diocese of Rome. And Episcopal dignity added further to his zeal for the project with which he had chiefly distinguished himself, the realisation of the church of San Leone Magno al Prenestino and of the Pio XII Centre of a Better World on Via dei Laghi. As well as to his Episcopal ordination, he dedicated himself fully to health care, making organisation possible at a diocese level, with positive reflection in Italy and abroad. John XXIII named him National Ecclesiastical Assistant of the Italian Catholic Doctors, an association that flourishing so that it became promoter of the International Federation of the Associations of Catholic Doctors. He also supported the pastoral care of hospital Chaplains, and thus the commitment to scientific research in the medical field, always having the promotion and protection of the human being as a central aim.' Further, continued Benedict XVI's letter 'also with the beloved Pope John Paul II he found himself in perfect harmony of intentions, committing to a collaboration to which owes the institution of the Worldwide Day of the Sick, the birth of the Papal Council of the Pastoral for Health Workers, of which Angelini at length held the presidency, and later also that of the Papal Academy for Life.
Pope Pays Homage to Cardinal Angelini on 90th Birthday