The president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care, Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, called for respect of human life in all its stages, especially for those who are terminally ill.

"To be close to the last stages of life means bearing witness to love, respecting life by underscoring its meaning as a non-negotiable value, from its beginnings to its natural conclusion, accepting and loving vulnerability by showing closeness, empathy and mercy," he said.

The archbishop made his remarks to participants of a recent congress on end-of-life treatment on March 8 at the Sacro Cuore Catholic University in Milan.

"Human fragility 'properly understood' is an invitation to man to open himself to broader horizons, to overcome himself," as Blessed John Paul II explained in his apostolic letter Salvifici Doloris (On Human Suffering), Archbishop Zimowski said.

Fragility "does not diminish but exalts the singular beauty of human life, and at the same time, it makes the demand of caring for it an all circumstances and contexts even more stronger and urgent, particularly in the face of grave and incurable illnesses," he said.

For this reason, those charged with caring for the health of others should have a clear grasp of these concepts as they serve and should remember the words of Pope Benedict XVI in the encyclical Spe Salvi on hope: "The true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer."

"May they be for you and for your dear sick ones a sign of comfort and hope in the difficult moments of the last stages of life as well," Archbishop Zimowski said.