ACI Prensa Staff, Sep 27, 2025 / 09:50 am (CNA).
Pope Leo XIV has chosen as the theme for World Day of the Sick 2026: “The compassion of the Samaritan: loving by bearing the pain of others.”
The theme focuses on the Gospel figure of the Good Samaritan, “who shows love by taking care of the wounded and abandoned man on the road,” according to a press release issued by the Holy See.
The Vatican said the theme is meant to emphasize an essential aspect of love of neighbor, one requiring concrete gestures of closeness while being capable of assuming the fragility and suffering of others, particularly those who experience illness accompanied by poverty, isolation, or loneliness.
The Holy See also recalled that today, Christ, the “Good Samaritan,” continues to draw close to wounded humanity and, through the sacraments of the Church, pours out “the oil of consolation and the wine of hope.”
In this way, he “[inspires] actions and gestures of help and closeness for those who live in conditions of fragility due to illness,” the Holy See said.
The upcoming World Day of the Sick will take place on Feb. 11, 2026.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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We’ve transitioned from an Apostolic Church proclaiming Christ and repentance to a sinful world, men and women responsible for evil – to empathetic samaritans treating the wounded. The field hospital analogy. As if sins are really psychic/emotive wounds that a little salvific friendship can heal.
With that approach we transform Christianity into a social services support consortium. Love as revealed by Christ is realized in togetherness. At this stage there’s little difference seen and heard from Church leadership. For example, very little is said about offering self, or assuming the committed approach to faith in Christ of the martyr Churches in Africa.
When a Roman pontiff proclaims during an ordinary address to the Church that All are welcome, people make their own decisions in life – What are we to understand if not those living in ‘irregular unions’, inclusive of homosexual, don’t require repentance or conversion to Apostolic doctrine?
For a concise reading of Pope Leo’s position on Church inclusion and differences in life choices I submit the following:
Speaking with Crux Senior Correspondent Elise Ann Allen for her new biography Leo XIV: Citizen of the World, Missionary of the 21st Century [Penguin Peru], the pope said his approach mirrors that of Pope Francis: an open door rooted in dignity and respect for all, but without doctrinal revision.
“What I’m trying to say is what Francis said very clearly when he would say, todos, todos, todos,” Pope Leo explained. “Everyone’s invited in, but I don’t invite a person in because they are or are not of any specific identity. I invite a person in because they are a son or daughter of God.” “It’s very important to understand how to accept others who are different than we are, how to accept people who make choices in their life and to respect them” (Kasmir Nema, RVA News September 22, 2025).
Oh dear, the sidestepped difference between a choice/decision and a moral judgment…
“A separation, or even an opposition, is thus established in some cases between the teaching of the precept, which is valid and general, and the norm of the individual conscience, which would in fact make the final decision [a choice and no longer a ‘moral judgment’?] about what is good and what is evil. On this basis, an attempt is made to legitimize so-called ‘pastoral’ solutions contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience [?] is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept [thou shalt not…]” (Veritatis Splendor, papal encyclical of 1993, n. 56).
Accepting and respecting individual people as persons is one thing, but another is endorsing a sociological “identity” committed to the gay lifestyle, as is the lack of charity by withholding conceptual and moral clarity. Also, the broader problem of–anyone–sacrilegiously receiving of the sacrificial Eucharist. Christ wept at Gethsemani.
This non-amnesiac comment is offered in the spirit of Pope Francis’ lay/ecclesial synodal dialogue.
They are wise and compassionate. Society needs Good Samaritans.