Looking ahead a month, Pope Francis recently turned his attention to World Day of the Sick.

“It is not only what functions well or those who are productive that matter,” the pope said in a tweet. “Sick people are at the center of God’s people, and the Church advances together with them as a sign of a humanity in which everyone is precious and no one should be discarded or left behind.”

World Day of the Sick is Feb. 11, and this year will be the 31st celebration of the day. It was established by Pope John Paul II in 1992 as a way to encourage believers to pray for those suffering from illnesses, as well as their caretakers. Pope John Paul II instituted World Day of the Sick around the time he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, according to National Today.

According to the Catholic Health Association of BC, World Day of the Sick was purposefully established on this specific day to coincide with the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. That feast day is related to the story that on Feb. 11, 1858, a young girl named Bernadette Soubirous allegedly started seeing apparitions of the Virgin Mary around Lourdes, France. It is reported that many pilgrims and visitors have experienced healing at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes since then. The Catholic Church declared Bernadette a saint a few years later.

"When we go on a journey with others, it is not unusual for someone to feel sick, to have to stop because of fatigue or of some mishap along the way,” Pope Francis said in his message. “It is precisely in such moments that we see how we are walking together: whether we are truly companions on the journey, or merely individuals on the same path, looking after our own interests and leaving others to ‘make do.’”

With that in mind, and as the Church continues its journey on the synodal path, “I invite all of us to reflect on the fact that it is especially through the experience of vulnerability and illness that we can learn to walk together according to the style of God, which is closeness, compassion, and tenderness,” the pope continued.

With its ties to the Lourdes event, he called on people to turn their thoughts to the Shrine of Lourdes ahead of the day of dual celebrations.