The publication is a collection including the program and acts of the Congress promoted by the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Assistance to Health-Care Workers (that since August 2016 merged into the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development) on the theme “The Consecrated Woman in the World of Health on the Threshold of the Third Millennium”, from 1 to 3 October 1998 in the Synod Hall in the Vatican.
The collection opens with the address given by St. John Paul II to the religious nurses participating, who were received in an audience in the Clementine Hall, in the Vatican, on October 1.
“The first task of your consecrated life in the joyous and engaging experience of Christ is to remind the People of God and the world of the Lord's merciful face. Before the power of your charism can shine in your work and service goals, it must be resplendent in a newness of life that reproduces Jesus' distinctive features”.
He continued, “Your entire life as consecrated women must therefore be imbued with God’s friendship, so that you can be the heart and hands of Christ for the sick, thus revealing that faith which enables you to recognize the Lord himself in the sick and becomes the well-spring of your spirituality”.
Here is the full text.