Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers

The Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Health Care Workers was set up on 11 February 1985 by Pope John Paul II who reformed the Pontifical Commission for the Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers into its new form in 1988. It was part of the Roman Curia.

Effective 1 January 2017, the work of the Council was assumed by the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

The Apostolic Constitution Pastor Bonus describes the work of the council as:

Its tasks also include coordinating the activities of different dicasteries of the Roman Curia as they relate to health care. The Pontifical Council explains and defends the teachings of the Church on health issues. The Council also follows and studies programs and initiatives of health care policy at both international and national levels, with the goal of extracting its relevance and implications for the pastoral care of the Church.

The office of President was left vacant following the death of Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski in July 2016. Monsignor Jean-Marie Musivi Mupendawatu was the last Secretary of the council. The council was suppressed effective 1 January 2017 with the creation of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development with Cardinal Turkson as the inaugural prefect.

In November of 1989 at the annual conference of the Pontifical Council at the Vatican, recognition was given to an American priest from Massachusetts, Rev James Martin Graham, who was the director of the Archdiocese of Hartford's Office of AIDS Ministry, who pleaded for better communication efforts between the Church and governmental health agencies to share information to better combat AIDS. As a result of his proposal, Graham was appointed by then Archbishop Fiorenzo Angelini as the director of the new International Christian AIDS Network (ICAN). As a follow up to this appointment, Archbishop Angelini traveled to the United States in June 1990 and visited Graham's Sts. Martin & James Respite, a hospice and living facility for HIV-positive and AIDS patients in Waterbury, Connecticut, where a 24-hour care residence was named for him. Archbishop Angelini met with several of the patients and gave Father Graham a silver stalk of wheat that would serve as the handle on the door of the Respite's Chapel tabernacle. In an interview with American television, the Archbishop remarked that Graham's Respite was recognized by the Pontifical Council as a model facility that should be followed to make treatment and spiritual care of HIV-positive and AIDS patients available for all. The work of ICAN was short-lived, however, for Father Graham died in 1997.

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