VATICAN CITY — Vatican officials yesterday decried what they called a “religion of health” in affluent societies and held out Pope John Paul II’s stoic suffering as an antidote to the mentality that modern medicine must cure all.

“While millions of people in the world struggle to survive hunger and disease, lacking even minimal health care, in rich countries the concept of health as well-being figures in creating unrealistic expectations about the possibility of medicine to respond to all needs and desires,” said the Reverend Maurizio Faggioni, a theologian and morality expert on the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life.

“The medicine of desires, egged on by the health-care market, increases the request for pharmaceutical and medical-surgical services, soaks up public resources beyond all reasonableness,” Reverend Faggioni said at a news conference.

The theologian spoke in advance of a debate in the academy next week on politically hot issues such as the right to life and medical care.

Manfred Lutz, a psychiatrist and Vatican academic, said John Paul, who for years has struggled with Parkinson’s disease, was “the living alternative to the prevailing health-fiend madness.”

The pope’s emergency hospitalization earlier this month for breathing problems — his seventh hospitalization since becoming pontiff in 1978 — fueled open discussion, including among leading cardinals, over whether he should step down because of frail health.

But officials at the news conference took pains to put a positive spin on the limitations health problems bring. John Paul II, who also has knee and hip problems, no longer walks in public, and Parkinson’s has left his speech often unintelligible.

“Precisely in the handicap, in the disease, in the pain, in old age, in dying and death one can, instead, perceive the truth of life in a clearer way,” Mr. Lutz said.

“The pope’s message is ‘suffering is part of life and has meaning,’ ” the doctor said.