Pope Francis and Catholic Healthcare Ethics

Abstract

This article examines the influence of Pope Francis on Catholic healthcare ethics. The first section offers an analytical summary of his ethics. The second section reviews a “Franciscan” approach to Catholic healthcare ethics, which situates that field within the broader context of Catholic social teaching. The third section analyzes the implications of three of Francis’s most powerful metaphors: his injunction to “go to the peripheries”; his contrast between a throwaway culture and a culture of encounter; and his comparison of the church to a field hospital.