Looking towards the future, Pope Francis announced in early April the creation of a COVID-19 focused commission. This team would focus on confronting the current crisis as well as envision what the world should look like post-pandemic.
With health and wellness being one of the Vatican’s key pillars, it chose the Global Wellness Institute (GWI) to collaborate with and assist in the initiative.GWI will provide eight papers proposing how a holistic concept of wellness could transform human life, including workplaces and other built environments. These papers will be a part of a series entitled, “Resetting the World with Wellness.”
GWI’s senior researchers and directors of the Vatican project, Katherine Johnston and Ophelia Yeung, are honored to be a part of the initiative and are excited to be working on a project that will help reshape the future. “We are deeply honored by the opportunity to contribute to this important Vatican initiative. Wellness is a vital concept to reset the world after COVID-19. Not only does wellness link mind, body, and spirit, it connects our individual self with community and planetary wellbeing and to our personal search for meaning, purpose, and transcendence,” the duo shared via press release.
Currently, five out of the eight papers GWI has produced for the Vatican are available. Each one integrates facts and data to recommend strategies that aim to help create a new world that focuses on prevention and a proactive wellness-based mindset.
Pope Francis originally created this commission as a way to express the church’s love for humanity during the pandemic. The commission is led by the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (DPIHD) and was divided into five working groups. Each group aims to address a different aspect of the pandemic.
GWI is currently working in group two, which targets bringing public and private institutions such as universities, social movements, economists, and entrepreneurs together to bring about new research and outlooks for a future post-COVID.
Cardinal Peter Turkson, the coordinator for this initiative describes group two as the “night watch,” connecting some of the best minds together to collaborate on ideas for the future. “It is necessary to connect the best minds in the areas of ecology, the economy, health and public security,” said Turkson. “We need the concreteness of science…and prophecy and creativity."
The outstanding GWI Vatican papers will be released every Wednesday, with the remaining ones focusing on social wellness and community, food and nourishment, and travel and wonder.
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