A UN GRUPPO DI CHIRURGI DELLA GRAN BRETAGNA Nella Sala del Tronetto, lunedì 12 maggio 1958, conviene un gruppo di Chirurgi toracici, provenienti dalla Gran Bretagna per una visita ad alcune Cliniche italiane. Essi hanno partecipato ad adunanze di studio in Roma. Fra gli illustri sanitari: i Professori: Barclay, di Mearnskirk; Brain, Fawcett e Cleland, di Londra; Pile, di Oxford; Nicholson, di Manchester; Thomas, di Cardiff; Wooler, di Leeds; inoltre i Professori Radigan, di Indianapolis; e Mazzoni, Venturini e Fegiz, di Roma. Sono presentati a Sua Santità dal Prof. Pietro Valdoni.

You are welcome, gentlemen, specialized surgeons come from England. There is always a distinctive character attaching to an audience granted to members of the medical profession. It would seem to draw aside a veil, heavy with the day-by-day demands of a restless world, and open up a vista, worid-embracing, of suffering and heroism, of helplessness and liberality, of human misery and man's self-dedication to the needs of this mortai frame that encloses on this earth an immortal soul; and the heart is stirred by the vision with wholesome sympathy while confidence and pride grow in the sound and devoted goodness of man.

The scene disclosed is one familiar to the Church, never absent from her thoughts. With the solicitude of a mother, and under the guiding inspiration of her divine Founder her love has always gone out in a special way to the sick and infirm seeking to alleviate their sufferings as far as human means permit. Did not power go out from Him and He healed all? (cfr. Lacc. 6, 19)? And you read how the Apostles set out and passed through the villages preaching the gospel and healing the sick wherever they went (cfr. Luc. 9, 6). Are not the medical schools of Padua, Bologna and Paris witnesses to her interest in the progress of medicai science; and was not her anxious, loving care of the sick multiplying hospitals over the centuries throughout Europe? You will think of your own St. Thomas' and St. Bartholomew's with their magnificent service to the ili and to the advancement of science.

On other occasions We have spoken at some length of the dignity of your profession, of the juridical status of the patient in your hands and of the relations that exist between you and him. With their foundations reaching down to the natural law, those relations will be scrupulously respected in the light of the moral precepts of that law. A vital sense of your responsib' to the individuai and the community will stimulate your cons study supplemented by a conscientious clinical experience. feel sure that progress will be advanced by your contacts your colleagues here in Rome, and We hope that they will all you sufficient time to enjoy a Roman Spring. Upon you your dear ones We pray God's choicest blessings. 166

*Discorsi e Radiomessaggi di Sua Santità Pio XII, XX,
Ventesimo anno di Pontificato, 2 marzo - 9 ottobre 1958, pp. 165-166
Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana