I will go! Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8)
We are celebrating the 70 Anniversary of the Guild of St. Luke, St. Cosmas and St. Damian Hong Kong this year. Our organisation was founded in 1953 for local Catholic doctors and dentists to have a group they could belong to. It is amazing that we are 70 years old now. We would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to all our senior members who have always been supporting us and giving us valuable advice. We also want to thank our Council members who have always been willing to work together despite their busy lives.
In the last dozen of years, we have been registered under the Companies Ordinance and been recognised as a charitable organisation. In the early years, the activities organised by the Guild were mainly spiritual or social. Spiritual growth is a lifelong journey, especially for Catholic doctors who are constantly exposed to suffering and death, so the Guild held regular Mass and retreats to foster and promote our spiritual growth and development.
With the guidance and support from our spiritual advisors, Rev. Fergus Cronin, Rev. John Russell & Rev. Robert Ng, S.J., we have strengthened our relationship with God. As time went by, the Guild began to expand its activities. We started to provide more community activities and voluntary work, such as health talks, health checks and vaccination for priests and nuns. One important area that the Guild has constantly been putting in considerable effort is the promotion of bioethics. Not only is it a complex and challenging field, but also a very essential area for us, as medical practitioners, in order to maintain good ethical standards in a world with rapid advancements in medical science and technology.
After the setting up of the Bioethics Resource Centre at the Holy Spirit Seminary College of Theology and Philosophy in November 2011, we have been working closely with the Centre to prepare reference materials, and organise seminars and conferences on a range of bioethical issues. We also work with the Hong Kong Catholic Marriage Advisory Council to promote Natural Family Planning.
We are grateful to God that the COVID-19 pandemic has just ended on the 70 Anniversary of the Guild. Our plan is to ‘CONNECT’. Through connecting with people, we connect with God. First of all, we hope to reconnect our members by updating our members’ contact details, using some new social media platforms to facilitate our communication as the pandemic may have physically, emotionally and socially isolated us.
We also hope to connect with more young Catholic doctors and doctors-to-be so that they can have more mental and spiritual support throughout their studies and career. Last but not least, we hope to promote more collaboration between the Catholic hospitals in the public and private sectors with a view to bringing the Church teachings and Catholic values into our healthcare institutions.
*Newsletter June 2023* The Guild of St Luke, St Cosmas & St Damian, Hong Kong Page 2 Words from Master Dear Lord, please continue to guide us on our journey and mission. “
