Pope Francis recently turned his attention to World Day of the Sick, which is coming up next month.

“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,” he tweeted.

World Day of the Sick falls on Feb. 11. This year will be the 31st celebration of the day, which was established by Pope John Paul II in 1992 as an avenue 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 on the Church calendar around the time he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, according to National Today.

The Catholic Health Association of BC says World Day of the Sick was purposefully set as the same day as the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. That feast day is related to an event on Feb. 11, 1858, when a young girl named Bernadette Soubirous was said to have started seeing apparitions of the Virgin Mary around Lourdes, France. It has been reported that many pilgrims and visitors have experienced various types of healing at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes since then, and 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 of the importance of World Day of the Sick, according to the Vatican. “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 progresses along its synodal path, he said, “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.”

With World Day of the Sick’s relation to the Lourdes event, Pope Francis called on people to turn their thoughts to the Shrine of Lourdes as Feb. 11 approaches.

“It is not only what functions well or those who are productive that matter,” he said in his message.