Vatican: Rethink How Care for Elders

Recently released: The Vatican wants the world to rethink how it cares for the elderly after Covid-19 ‘massacre’.

The Vatican is calling for a new paradigm of care for older people after what it calls the "massacre" wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, which has disproportionately killed people living in nursing homes.

The Vatican's Pontifical Council of Life issued a position paper Tuesday that made the case for a global rethink of how to care for people in their final years, including resisting any rush to institutional care in favor of adapting home environments to the needs of people as they age.

Calling for visionary thinking to develop a new way of providing care for elders,  "[t]he document praised new models of assisted living that provide companionship and care where needed but, in preserving autonomy and independence, fall short of an institutional facility. And it called for greater assistance to families who are able to care for their loved ones at home for as long as possible."