Marianne Cope and other Sisters of St Francis with the daughters of leper patients, at the Kakaako Branch Hospital, Hawaii. The<unk><unk>  established many of the world's modern hospitals. The Roman<unk><unk>  is the largest non-government provider of health<unk>  services in the world. It has around 18,000 clinics, 16,000 homes for the elderly and those with special needs, and 5,500 hospitals, with 65 percent of them located in developing countries. In 2010, the<unk> 's Pontifical Council for the Pastoral<unk>  of Health<unk>  Workers said that the<unk>  manages 26% of the world's health<unk>  facilities. The<unk> 's involvement in health<unk>  has ancient origins. Jesus Christ, whom the<unk>  holds as its founder, instructed his followers to heal the sick. The early Christians were noted for tending the sick and infirm, and Christian emphasis on practical charity gave rise to the development of systematic nursing and hospitals. The influential Benedictine rule holds that "the<unk>  of the sick is to be placed above and before every other duty, as if indeed Christ were being directly served by waiting on them". During the Middle Ages, monasteries and convents were the key medical centres of Europe and the<unk>  developed an early version of a welfare state. Cathedral schools evolved into a well integrated network of medieval universities and<unk>  scientists (many of them clergymen) made a number of important discoveries which aided the development of modern science and medicine. Saint Albert the Great (1206–1280) was a pioneer of biological field research; Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) helped revive knowledge of ancient Greek medicine, Renaissance popes were often patrons of the study of anatomy, and<unk>  artists such as Michelangelo advanced knowledge of the field through sketching cadavers. The Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1602 – 1680) first proposed that living beings enter and exist in the blood (a precursor of germ theory). The Augustinian Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) developed theories on genetics for the first time. As<unk> ism became a global religion, the<unk>  orders and religious and lay people established health<unk>  centres around the world. Women's religious institutes such as the Sisters of Charity, Sisters of Mercy and Sisters of St Francis opened and operated some of the first modern general hospitals. While the prioritization of charity and healing by early Christians created the hospital, their spiritual emphasis tended to imply "the subordination of medicine to religion and doctor to priest". "Physic and faith", wrote historian of medicine Roy Porter "while generally complementary... sometimes tangled in border disputes." Similarly in modern times, the moral stance of the<unk>  against contraception and abortion has been a source of controversy. The<unk> , while being a major provider of health<unk>  to HIV AIDS sufferers, and of orphanages for unwanted children, has been criticised for opposing condom use. Due to<unk> s' belief in the sanctity of life from conception, IVF, which leads to the destruction of many embryos, surrogacy, which relies on IVF, and embryonic stem-cell research, which necessitates the destruction of embryos, are among other areas of controversy for the<unk>  in the provision of health<unk> .
Catholic Church and health care
MindFreedom International
NHS Barnet
Migrant Architects of the NHS
NHS Charities Together
Prison healthcare
Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Rhetoric of health and medicine