Promise and Prayer

As a Physician, I solemnly promise:

1. To continually improve my professional abilities, in order to the best possible care to my patients.
2. To respect my patients as human persons, putting their interests ahead of political and economic considerations, and to treat them without prejudice that may from religion, racial, ethnic, socio-economic or sexual differences.
3. To defend and protect human life from conception to its natural end, believing that human life, transmitted by parents, is created by God and has an eternal destiny that belongs to Him.
4. To refuse to become an instrument of violent or oppressive applications of medicine.
5. To serve the public health, promoting healthful policies respectful of life and the dignity and nature of the human person.
6. To cooperate with the applications of just law, except on the grounds of conscientious objection when the civil law does not respect human rights, especially the right to life.
7. To work with openness toward every person, independent of their religious beliefs.
8. To donate part of my time for free and charitable care of the poor.
   

In order to achieve these goals, as a Catholic Doctor I also promise:

1. To recognize the Word of God as the inspiration of all my actions, to be faithful to the teachings of the Church and to form my professional conscience in accord with them.
   
2. To cultivate a filial relationship with God, nourished by prayer, and to be a faithful witness of Christ.
   
3. To practice Catholic moral principles, in particular those related to bio-medical ethics.
   
4. To express the benevolence of Christ in my life, and in my relationships with patients, colleagues and society.
   
5. To participate in the evangelization of the suffering world, in cooperation with the pastoral ministry of the Church.
   
   Approved by the Executive Committee of the Fédération Internationale des Associations Médicales Catholiques -- (FIAMC - the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations) and by the Pontifical Council of the Pastoral for Health Care Workers.
   

Prayer of the Catholic Physician

LORD JESUS, Divine Physician who in your earthly life showed special concern for those who suffer and entrusted to your disciples the ministry of healing, make us ever ready to alleviate the trials of our brethren. Make each one of us, to whom the great mission is entrusted, strive always to be, in the performance of daily service, an instrument of Your merciful love. Enlighten our minds, guide our hands, make our hearts diligent and compassionate. Ensure that in every patient we know how to discern the features of Your Divine Face.

YOU WHO ARE THE WAY, provide us with the gift of knowing how to imitate you every day as medical doctors, not only of the body but of the whole person, helping those who are sick to walk with trust their own earthly path until the moment of their encounter with You.

YOU WHO ARE THE TRUTH, provide us with the gifts of wisdom and knowledge in order to penetrate the mystery of the human person and the individual's transcendent destiny, as we draw near to patients in order to discover the causes of their maladies and find suitable remedies.

YOU WHO ARE THE LIFE, provide us with the gift of perseverance as we bear witness to the 'Gospel of Life' in our profession, committing ourselves to defending life always, from conception to its natural end, and to respect the dignity of every human being, especially the dignity of the weakest and the most vulnerable

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Make us O Lord, Good Samaritans, ready to welcome, treat, and console those we encounter in our work. Following the example of the holy medical doctors who have preceded us, help us to offer our generous contribution to the constant renewal of health care structures.

Bless our studies and our profession, enlighten our research and our teaching. Lastly, grant to us, having constantly loved and served You in our suffering brethren, that at the end of our earthly pilgrimage we may contemplate your glorious countenance and experience the joy of the encounter with You in your Kingdom of joy and everlasting peace.

Amen.

Pope St. John Paul II

The Vatican, 29 June 2000

Jesus, My Patient

Dearest Lord, may I see you today and every day in the person of your sick, and, whilst nursing them, minister unto you.

Though you hide yourself behind the unattractive disguise of the irritable, the exacting, the unreasonable, may I still recognize you, and say: “Jesus, my patient, how sweet it is to serve you.”

Lord, give me this seeing faith, then my work will never be monotonous. I will ever find joy in humoring the fancies and gratifying the wishes of all poor sufferers.

O beloved sick, how doubly dear you are to me, when you personify Christ; and what a privilege is mine to be allowed to tend you.

Sweetest Lord, make me appreciative of the dignity of my high vocation, and its many responsibilities. Never permit me to disgrace it by giving way to coldness, unkindness, or impatience.

And O God, while you are Jesus, my patient, deign also to be to me a patient Jesus, bearing with my faults, looking only to my intention, which is to love and serve you in the person of each of your sick.

Lord, increase my faith, bless my efforts and work, now and forevermore. Amen.

Saint Teresa of Calcutta