Cantalamessa to future doctors: “Technology does not replace human contact”

Salvatore Cernuzio – Vatican City

Father Raniero Cantalamessa returns as cardinal to the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Rome, where, in the 1960s and 1970s, he was first a student and then professor at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy and at the head of the Department. of Religious Sciences. The preacher of the Pontifical House – created cardinal by Pope Francis during the Consistory of November 2020 – yesterday celebrated a mass for the centenary of the University at the Gemelli polyclinic. And he had words of encouragement for all the students, future doctors, to whom he recommended “to cultivate together with the mind, also the heart”, to put “ideas and science at the service of people” and “never the reverse ”.

Doctors: “Behind the medical files, there are people”

“Never forget that behind the medical history and test results there is a human person and that often a touch from you, a smile and a word of hope can do more good than any medicine. . We do not allow technology and instrumentation to replace human contact ”, declared the cardinal during the mass, concelebrated with Monsignor Claudio Giuliodori, ecclesiastical assistant at the Catholic University.

From chair to pulpit

And with regard to vocation, in the same homily, the Capuchin religious recalled his call to preaching, which flourished precisely in the classrooms of the Roman University. “In 1979 … I felt the call to leave the pulpit for the pulpit, that is, to devote my entire life to proclaiming the Kingdom of God.”

At first he did not know where to go, then came the call of John Paul II, who appointed him preacher of the Pontifical House: “It was in the Vatican that I had to start preaching the Kingdom of God!” remembers Father Cantalamessa, who however advises young people and seminarians not to follow his example: “Do not quit your studies if you are not sure that you have received another call. Take advantage of the possibilities offered by university studies. They are “a privilege for which one is responsible to oneself and to society”.

The cardinal during his speech.

The humility of three popes

For 41 years, the Capuchin was – as it is called – “a witness to the incredible humility of the last three Popes” who, every Friday, of Advent and Lent, put everything aside “to go and listen a simple sermon of a priest of the Catholic Church “. At least until last year, when Pope Francis wanted him among the over 80-year-old members of the College of Cardinals.

Knowledge does not bring happiness

During her reflection, Cantalamessa focused on the meaning of the “Sacred Heart” which gives its name to the University, chosen then “for the role that the cult of the Sacred Heart played at its foundation”. A cult that does not remember “a past event”, but “a current reality”, which is “the living and beating heart of the Risen One”. It is from this heart that “our civilization, dominated by technology, needs, if we want to prevent, by overheating physically, that our planet does not regress, spiritually, towards an ice age”, declared the cardinal.

“For some time now, we have been working on a type of computer which” thinks “… but until now nobody had foreseen the possibility of a computer which” loves “, which moves, which goes to meet man on an emotional level, facilitating love, as it facilitates the calculation of distances between stars, the movement of atoms and the storage of data, ”he added.

“Strengthening human intelligence and cognitive possibilities unfortunately does not go hand in hand with strengthening his capacity to love,” Cantalamessa observes. On the contrary, it seems that the latter counts for nothing, “when we know that happiness or unhappiness does not depend so much on knowing or not knowing, as on loving or not loving, on to be loved or not to be loved “.

eager to love

The Cardinal’s recommendation to the students of the Catholic University is therefore not to be “concerned” with increasing knowledge, but the capacity to love, for “knowledge is automatically translated into power, love instead. of that in the service ”.

“Only love redeems and saves, while science and the thirst for knowledge can only lead to condemnation,” said the cardinal, recalling, as an example, the scene from the famous film by Ermanno Olmi “One Hundred Nails”, in the precious volumes of a bookcase nailed to the ground, shouting: “All the books in the world are not worth a caress!”. At the end of the celebration, Rector Franco Anelli, on behalf of the university community, presented gifts to the Cardinal and the Director of the Vatican Museums, Barbara Jatta.