14 December 1984

To the members of the Italian Dental Association (AMDI)

On Friday, 14 December, the Holy Father received in audience members of the Italian Dental Association (AMDI) and delivered the following address:

1. It is cause for sincere joy for me to meet with you, presidents of the Provincial Sections and Members of the General Secretariat of the Italian Dentist’s Association.  You are welcome, along with your families, for your appreciated gesture of filial devotion and for the opportunity that it offers me to speak with you about your profession.

You represent here an association which proposed to carry out intense cultural exchanges with the major international stomatological associations for the study and updating of the dental profession.  Your association has approximately seven thousand member dentists, and its specific and noble aim is the defence of the oral health of the citizen through initiatives aimed at the sensitizing public opinion to the importance of preventive oral hygiene and dental care and the certification of products intended for this.

Considering how much on other occasions my predecessors have said during more than one meeting with professional doctors with your specialization, I would like to reaffirm the esteem which, in the name of Christ, the Church has for your work.  It is a question of a science, but at the same time of an art, at the service of man for the relief of sufferings often very serious and notably connected with health problems which reflect on the whole person, on both a physical and a psychic level.  We must consider it a worthy conquest of science that today dental and stomatological care is no longer seen as something quite separate from the care of the person, but as something of highest importance for the entire human organism.

2. With a spirit of attentive observation my predecessor Pius XII described in an admirable discourse (cf. Discorsi e Radiomessaggi, XIV, 1952, p. 372) the demands for discernment and skill required by your profession, realizing in addition the rapid technological progress of your activity.  This involves a constant and rapid demand for updating for the good of the patient;  but even in the most developed and evolved technology your work remains highly personalized and continuously engages, along with science, your inventive capacity.  Each patient is a case in himself, gifted with his own psychology or with his own state of mind.  Your profession therefore involves special relations of a human character.  It is up to you to advise and convince those who need care, to comfort and support during moments of tension, distress and fear.  At times it is a question of rather simple circumstances;  but very often you must face cases which are the result of profound and grave injuries, of situations which, unresolved, would gravely exclude persons from common social relation.  The wonderful steps taken by dento-maxillofacial orthopedics, especially with regard to damage to the faces of persons injured by various unfortunate causes, are to be hailed as a providential conquest of your work.  In addition, we must consider as a gift from God the effectiveness of your corrective interventions with regard to dental malformations in children.  In this way you help nature to develop normally, correcting defects and dysfunctions while there is still time.  And it is the result of your work if this type of intervention today is no longer considered a rare event, but a right well recognized by the people and therefore a type of therapy which can be applied normally and which is at the disposal of anyone who needs it.

3. I have noted among your initiatives the establishment of the “Dental Prevention Month”  and the creation of mobile units for the dental care of the handicapped by offering your professional assistance during certain periods at no cost.  I cannot but be pleased by this witness.

In the light of the recognized importance of your therapeutic specialty for the overall health of persons, and especially with regard to the recognized need to more greatly sensitize people to preventive therapy, it is important – you know the problem – that every form of social assistance meant to guarantee everyone dental care, necessary at all ages, be continuously updated.

4. You understand, however, how in the face of even the most perfect organizations a task remains for you which is never reducible to only social norms or structures.  The very personal relationship of dialogue and trust which is established between you and the patient demands in you a charge of humanity which is resolved, for the believer, in the richness of Christian charity.  It is this divine virtue which enriches your every action and gives to your acts, even the most simple ones, the power of an act performed by you in interior communion with Christ, in whom you believe:  “As often as you did it for one of my least brothers, you did it for me” (Mt 25:40).  It is still this power of charity which must urge you, in the name of Christ, to seek – and it will be a precious gift from God in your profession, a witness very rich in significance among your colleagues – the poor person who does not have the means, the strength, the courage, to seek your care.  It will be charity which will give you the joy of being able to give your help and your skill to those who are suffering.  As much as our society strives to guarantee rights for man, nothing is able to replace the brotherly love which Christ asks us to have and which is resolved especially in the search for the needs of the suffering and humiliated person.

May my Apostolic Blessing accompany your work, comfort you in your witness, and include your families, your collaborators and the persons who are especially dear to you.

John Paul II