July 14, 2026

By Charles Peters, MD, OFS

The Catholic Church views the provision of healthcare not only as a profession but also as a sacred vocation. It is a vocation intimately associated with the healing ministry of the Divine Physician. In treating the whole person, healthcare professionals attend to the body, mind and soul of the patient while upholding the inherent dignity and sanctity of every person from the moment of conception to natural death. They are called to imitate the compassion of Christ through care for the marginalized, the suffering and the vulnerable and to attest to the redemptive nature of suffering in their patients. During the performance of their duties, they may and often do encounter clinical situations in which their consciences are challenged. Fortunately, they may and should turn to Holy Mother Church to better inform their consciences, to guide their healing ministry and to live faithful lives. Papal encyclicals can support their formation in critical and essential ways.

Papal encyclicals are pastoral letters addressed primarily to the bishops yet they are also intended for the Catholic Church faithful. They address pressing social issues, offer guidance on faith and morals and/or clarify Church doctrine. The first such recognized letter, Ubi Primum (“When First”), focused on episcopal duties. Pope Benedict XIV issued it on the Memorial of Saint Francis Xavier in 1740. A pontiff’s first encyclical typically sets the tone and direction for his papacy.

Pope Leo XIII’s papacy from 1878 to 1903 was noteworthy for many important and powerful teaching documents including Rerum Novarum (“Of New Things,” Memorial of Saint Isidore the Farmer, 1891), generally regarded as the beginning of modern Catholic social teaching. In his first encyclical, Inscrutabili Dei Consilio (“On the Evils of Society,” Easter Sunday, 1878), Pope Leo XIII identifies several threats to humanity including the rejection of objective truth (i.e., modernism), authority and the law as well as attachment to material goods rather than eternal ones. He believed that solutions to the problems of the modern world including the decline of the family and sanctity of marriage could and should come from the Catholic Church.

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