Abortion is “homicide and it is not lawful to become an accomplice,” Pope Francis said today in an address to the participants in a Congress organized by the Italian Society of Hospital Pharmacy.

The Holy Father reminded the pharmacists that their duty is closeness, “especially to women, so that there is no thought of abortion as a solution because, in reality, it isn’t the solution.”

At the beginning of his argument, the Holy Father said that the Congress is an opportunity to “reaffirm the importance of the National Public Health System, an essential element to guarantee the common good and a country’s social growth. And all this lies in the context of the pandemic, which has changed and will change the way of planning, organizing and managing health and health care.”

Routine, Hidden Service, and Professionalism

The Pontiff structured his address in three “ways” in which pharmacists must continue their efforts. The first, taken from the parable of the Good Samaritan, is based on their daily routine work and hidden service — aspects “that require patience, constancy and precision, and they do not have the gratification of appearances — they have little visibility,” but, accompanied by prayer and love, generate “the holiness of daily life.”

The second way is professionalism. Together with the clinician, it is the hospital pharmacist who researches, experiments, suggests new ways, always in immediate contact with the patient. It is about the capacity to understand the illness and the patient, of personalizing the medications and doses and of facing, at times, the most complex clinical situations.”

Professional Ethics

The third way is founded on professional and social ethics. In the personal ethical aspect, the pharmacist is at the service of human life, including when it involves conscientious objection, “which isn’t disloyalty,” but fidelity to the profession “if it is validly motivated,” explained the Pope. This is “the ethical intimacy of every health professional and this must never be negotiated; it is in fact the ultimate responsibility of health professionals,” he continued.

Speaking of social justice, Pope Francis said that in “the Italian National Health Service, a great space is taken up by the universality of access to care, but the pharmacist, including in the hierarchies of management and administration, it not a mere executor. Therefore, the management and financial criteria are not the only elements to keep in mind. The throwaway culture must not affect” the profession of health workers, he stressed.

The management of resources and care not to waste what is entrusted in the hands of every pharmacist acquires not only an economic but also an ethical meaning, more than that, I would say human, very human meaning.

Let us think of attention to detail, the purchase, and storage of products, their correct use, and their destination to those that have need and urgency,” he concluded.