News Briefs

Vatican City, May 6, 2018 / 05:33 am (CNA/EWTN News).- God’s love requires that we give our best to each and every one of our brothers and sisters, even those who are in the final stage of their life, Pope Francis said during his Regina Coeli add… […]

Vatican City, May 5, 2018 / 03:45 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Chronic pain reduction. Improvement in paralysis. Restoration of sight amid macular degeneration. These are just some of the results being seen in experimental treatments using virtual reality technology.

And this technology could help answer Pope Francis’ call for doctors and scientists to collaborate in pursuing bold and creative approaches to medicine.

Stressing the importance of ethics and defense of human life, the pope at an April 28 conference called for an “open interdisciplinary approach that engages multiple experts and institutions,” which can lead “to a reciprocal exchange of knowledge.” He also encouraged “concrete actions on behalf of those who suffer.”

For at least one representative who was present at the conference, the future of medical care could rely significantly on the tech industry, using tools such as augmented and virtual reality as a treatment for certain conditions.

In an interview with CNA, Dr. David Rhew said virtual reality is already used in training scenarios for doctors and nurses, but is starting to be used to treat medical conditions as well.

Rhew is the chief medical officer, vice president and general manager of B2B Healthcare for Samsung Electronics America. He spoke at the Vatican’s April 26-28 “Unite to Cure” about the use of VR technology in medicine.

Virtual reality, he told CNA, is already used as a treatment in cases of pain relief, macular degeneration and spinal cord injury, and further research is being done in VR treatments for concussions, brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder and strokes.

In aiding with pain management, Rhew said the aim of using virtual reality is to lessen dependence on narcotics and help patients deal with their discomfort in a more soothing, natural way.

Rhew said that patients underwent experimental treatment watched a calming video for 10-15 minutes through a VR headset, and afterward it took several hours or even days for the pain to come back, if it did at all.

In one randomized control trial conducted by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, 120 patients were randomly selected. Half were given VR pain treatment, while the rest were shown content on a regular television set.

Doctors saw a 52 percent pain reduction in the patients who used VR versus those who watched regular television, which is a “dramatic, remarkable” outcome, Rhew said.

Results have even been seen in children who suffer chronic pain due to sickle cell anemia. In at least one case, he said, a person came in with pain and left with no medication after using the VR headset.

“We’ve actually now been starting to think how can we go beyond even acute hospitalization, and even start thinking about how this could be used in the ambulatory setting and potentially be used to address the opioid epidemic,” he said.

The hope is that virtual reality could be used as an alternative to opioid treatments, so patients never have to start on narcotics, or can stop if they are currently using them.

Macular degeneration – in which the central part of the eye is damaged, usually resulting significant vision loss – has also been successfully treated with virtual reality.

“Researchers have long known that despite the fact that you have injuries to [the macula], other parts of the retina are still in tact,” Rhew said, noting that opthamologists have used virtual reality to target an area of the eye called the “preferred retinal locus (PRL),” which is small and hard to locate, but which can lead to better vision if found and utilized.

“Using the VR headset with an eye-tracking software helps locate the PRL,” and the magnification ability on the camera helps zoom in on the area they are looking for.

In one study carried out by Johns Hopkins University, some patients walked in legally blind and left with 20/30 vision, rhew said. This allows people “to do things they were never able to do – they can now read a book, they can watch TV, they can even do gardening.”

VR technology is currently being used as a treatment by some 80 opthamologist centers across the United States, including UCLA, but not many people know about it, he said.

Spinal cord injuries have also been treated with virtual reality.

“What we’ve seen is that in patients who have injured the spinal cord, like we talked about with the eye, they may have lost some of the major components of the neuro-pathways, but some of the minor ones are still intact, and we in general have not figured out how to utilize those minor ones,” Rhew said.

The virtual reality “tricks” the brain by targeting and activating pathways in the brain and spine that might still be intact and could lead to eventual mobility.

In a case study of eight patients who suffered from chronic paraplegia from anywhere between 3-18 years, after undergoing a year of an intensive VR treatment with physical therapy, “all of them were upgraded from paraplegia to partial paralysis.”

“This can help us in managing patients and restoring function for those with disabilities,” but success depends on individual effort, Rhew said, explaining that “we have it within ourselves but we sometimes need that ability to go over that little hump, and technology can sometimes help us.”

Rhew said he believes the unanticipated rise in VR and digital treatments is due in part to the fact that devices have become more powerful, battery life has grown longer and storage has increased.

Increasing use of mobile phones is also a factor, since the technology can be accessed from anywhere. Additionally, VR can in many cases be significantly cheaper than typical medical equipment.

“We’re going to continue to learn more over the coming years, the technology is going to get better, we’re probably going to able to make further advancements, we’re going to improve the user experience” and will likely participate in more clinical trials, Rhew said.

Doctors will also likely become increasingly aware that they can “truly use this as an adjunct or alternative to things today that are major issues. So I see it improving the lives of people pretty dramatically, especially those with disabilities.”

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Vatican City, May 5, 2018 / 12:55 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As 33 new Swiss Guards prepare to take an oath Sunday, the entire army is preparing to expand its ranks by two dozen members to respond to increasing administrative demands while ensuring guards ar… […]

Rome, Italy, May 5, 2018 / 05:28 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholics have a mission to evangelize, teaching people that God never tires of loving them, Pope Francis said to members of the Neocatechumenal Way Saturday at a gathering for the 50th anniversary … […]

Vatican City, May 4, 2018 / 04:46 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Prayer, poverty, and patience are essential to living religious life, Pope Francis said Friday to a gathering of consecrated men and women.

The pope set aside his prepared remarks and spoke extemporaneously May 4 at the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall to some 700 participants in a conference organized by the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

He was reflecting on discernment and how to avoid losing oneself among worldliness and provocations.

The pope jokingly said the Holy Spirit “is a calamity, because he never tires of being creative.”

“Now, with the new forms of consecrated life, he is so creative, with the charisms … He is the author of diversity, but at the same time is Creator of unity. This is the Holy Spirit. And with the diversity of charisms and many things, he makes a unity of the Body of Christ, and also the unity of consecrated life. And this too is a challenge.”

Francis posited that the Holy Spirit wants prayer, poverty, and patience to stay strong in consecrated life.

For the consecrated person, prayer is “turning always to the first call … to that Person who has called me,” he said.

Consecrated life is a call to renounce all things for the sake of the gospel, and for the consecrated person “every prayer has to turn back to this … prayer is that which makes me work for the Lord, not for my interests or for the institution in which I work, no, for the Lord.”

Pope Francis reiterated that for the consecrated person prayer is a return to the meeting with the Lord in which they were called by him.

“And prayer, in the consecrated life, is the air which makes us breathe that call, renew that call. Without this air we could not be good consecrated persons. We would be perhaps good persons, Christians, Catholics who do many works in the Church, but consecration you must continually renew, in prayer, in an encounter with the Lord,” he said.

CNA contacted the Holy See Press Office about these unclear remarks concerning prayer and those living in the world, but did not receive a response by deadline.

The Pope went on to say that there are no excuses for not devoting time to prayer, including busyness, pointing to St. Teresa of Calcutta as an example. Someone might say: “But I’m busy, I’m busy, I have so many things to do,” he pointed out, stating “[prayer] is more important: Go pray.”

St. Teresa of Calcutta had concerns, he acknowledged, yet “the two hours of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, nobody took them away from her… Do as she did, do the same.”

Another reason prayer is so important for men and women in consecrated life, he said, is that it helps to direct action to the correct purpose, keeping the focus on God, instead of just serving an institution or one’s own interests.

“Search for your Lord, the one who called you… Not just in the morning,” he said. “Everyone must look for how to do it, where to do it, when to do it. But always do it, pray. One cannot live the consecrated life, one cannot discern what is happening without speaking with the Lord.”

Pope Francis then turned to poverty, which he noted St. Ignatius of Loyola called the mother of consecrated life.

“Without poverty there is no fecundity in consecrated life,” he said. The spirit of poverty is necessary for discernment, and is a defense against all that would destroy consecrated life.

Even in religious life there can be a worldliness, the Pope said, which comes from a lack of poverty; vanity; and pride.

Francis finally spoke about the quality of patience in consecrated life, which, he said, is not just about bearing patiently with those with whom we live and work – it is also about bearing patiently with the suffering of the world, “carrying [it] on the shoulders.”

“Enter into patience,” he said, because without patience “you cannot be magnanimous, you cannot follow the Lord.”

Internal struggles in a congregation and careerism at general chapters are attributable to impatience, the Pope said.

There must even be patience in the face of a lack of vocations, he added. Choosing to stop accepting members and to sell off the community’s property is a sign that the congregation “is close to death” and has become attached to money, rather than having the patience to pray for new vocations.

This “art of dying well” – a congregation choosing not to pursue prospective vocations – is a “spiritual euthanasia” which “doesn’t have the courage to follow the Lord … We follow [Jesus] to a certain point and by the first or second trial, goodbye.”

The pope concluded by telling the consecrated men and women that they will surely be fruitful if they are prayerful, poor, and patient.

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Vatican City, May 4, 2018 / 12:51 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Six weeks after resigning as head of the Vatican communications office over a fake news controversy, Msgr. Dario Edoardo Vigano gave a talk on the subject of fake news at a high-profile conference in Rome.

In the April 28 panel, titled “Fake News and the Ethical Responsibilities of Media,” Msgr. Vigano stressed the importance of transparency in the media and said journalists who publish false or inaccurate information risk “poisoning” their readers.

He spoke for a Q&A panel discussion alongside Max Gomez, PhD after a keynote speech was given by Mehmet C. Öz, MD. The session was part of a wider, April 14-20 “Unite to Cure” conference gathering doctors, scientists and celebrities such as Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom to talk about new developments in medicine.

The conference, held inside the Vatican, was co-organized by the Pontifical Council for Culture and the CURA Foundation.

In his comments during the panel, Vigano said the push for transparency on the web, especially when it comes to large organizations, “is absolutely urgent.”

He suggested reading a book on the “job of the reporter,” which outlines the “paradigm” between a doctor and a journalist, arguing that while the doctor impacts the physical well-being of their patients, a journalist impacts the mental well-being of their readers.

“The journalist, like the doctor, has the ability to poison their readers [but] with one difference, which is that the journalist can poison more readers than a doctor can patients,” he said.

Vigano said this fact means that for journalists, a “great ethical responsibility” is required, and that this responsibility grows as the danger of fake news increases.

Pointing to the conversation between Adam, Eve and the serpent in the Garden of Eden, Vigano said the serpent’s comment – “Is it true that God told you that you will die if you eat of the fruit of the tree of life?” – is a classic example of fake news in the form of misinformation.

“Fake news has a mimetic dynamic,” he said, explaining that it does not seem false right away, since there are likely some elements of truth. This, he said, is why “it’s very important right now to remember the great ethical responsibility.”

With the rapid change in media, which is increasingly based on digital platforms rather than traditional outlets such as newspapers, knowledge is no longer communicated through a specific “pedagogical path,” but is shared through far-reaching, unspecific networks.

“With this knowledge, or this presumed knowledge, everyone is drinking through the interface,” and this creates a complex situation, Vigano said, because users browsing the internet likely do not have an “attention to falsification” or an “asceticism of questioning,” meaning they are more vulnerable to fake news.

Many media outlets, such as blogs, quickly become their own small corporations, publishing news they think will resonate with people belonging to a certain determined group, making it easier to produce and share false information for the sake of getting clicks, he said.

And while medical communication is more targeted and personal, digital media and social networks are global, meaning the risk factor is higher, he added.

Vigano’s talk fell just six weeks after his March 21 resignation as prefect of the Vatican Secretariat for Communications following what has come to be known as the “Lettergate” scandal.

It began after the Monday, March 12, launch of the 11-book series “The Theology of Pope Francis,” published by Libreria Editrice Vaticana, the Vatican publishing house overseen by the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communications.

A letter from Benedict XVI praising Francis’ theological and philosophical formation was read aloud at the event, however, the secretariat later admitted to tampering with an image of the letter that was sent to media, blurring out lines in which Benedict said that he had not read the full series, and so was not able to offer an in-depth analysis of the text.

Days later, it was revealed that further paragraphs had been left out in which Benedict questioned the inclusion in the series of a theologian known for his “anti-papal initiatives.”

After receiving pressure from the media, the secretariat published the full letter March 17, which they said was confidential and never intended to be published in its entirety.

Following Vigano’s resignation, Pope Francis named Msgr. Lucio Ruiz, former secretary of the department, as an interim prefect, but asked Vigano to stay on in an advisory role, which he continues to hold.

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