Pope Francis took the opportunity of the approaching World Day of the Sick to discuss the importance of caring for those in need.

“It is not only what functions well or those who are productive that matter,” he said in the message he tweeted out. “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 observed one Feb. 11. This year will be the 31st celebration of the day. Pope John Paul II created the celebration in 1992 as a way to encourage believers to pray for those suffering from illnesses, as well as their caretakers. Around that time, Pope John Paul II had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, National Today reports.

World Day of the Sick, according to the Catholic Health Association of BC, was purposefully set up to be celebrated the same day as the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. That feast day traces its origins to Feb. 11, 1858, when a young girl named Bernadette Soubirous reported seeing apparitions of the Virgin Mary around Lourdes, France. Many pilgrims and visitors have experienced healing at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in the ensuing years 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 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, according to Vatican reports.

With its ties to the Lourdes event, he called on people to turn their thoughts to the Shrine of Lourdes over the next few weeks as Feb. 11 approaches.