Viaticum ensures dying don't die alone, Vatican official says

Published: 2005-05-24

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Catholic tradition of giving the Eucharist to the dying ensures that instead of dying alone they die with Christ who promises them eternal life, said Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan. "Death is no longer the darkness feared and avoided, but the loving embrace that identifies us with the Lord Jesus," said the cardinal, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers. The council sponsored a May 21 study day on "viaticum," as Communion is called when given to a dying person. Cardinal Lozano's opening address to the symposium was published May 22 in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper. The cardinal told participants that the Eucharist is always a source of life, a "medicine for immortality." When a person is dying, he said, the Eucharist ensures that physical death is accompanied by the fullness of life won for all believers through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

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