Catholic chaplains continue to comfort from afar

While Catholic hospital chaplains’ role as spiritual and emotional caregivers for patients and families hasn’t changed during the COVID-19 crisis, how they are ministering in hospitals has – due to restrictions imposed to stop the spread of the virus. 
    

Chaplains continue to comfort people even if the new, precautionary guidelines require them to stand at a nurses’ station and minister to patients through windows, from a distance or by phone if a patient has a phone in the room and is able to talk.
  

 “They are exhausting every method they can possibly use to try to communicate,” said Deacon Tully, noting some chaplains are wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) if anointings are being allowed. “They are comforting people without physically being there to hug them.”
Multifaceted ministry of presence
    

Deacon Tully said priests who are hospital chaplains have been called to hospitals in emergencies to offer anointing of the sick; to pray with nurses and doctors and staff; to celebrate Masses at hospital chapels, where possible; and to celebrate “individual Masses for staff and patients as their intentions.”
    

Catholic chaplains are currently allowed in more than half of the hospitals they regularly serve; the other hospitals feel the risks associated with COVID-19 are too dangerous for chaplains to enter. 
    

“If there is imminent danger of death, the priests can go in,” Deacon Tully said. “They are getting more and more identified (coronavirus) cases in the hospital, so hospitals are trying to protect the priests. If a priest goes in there and goes somewhere else, he can be a carrier. So, they have to protect that, too.”
    

Deacon Tully said he is relying heavily on priest chaplains during the crisis. Some chaplains, like himself, are also deacons. 
 

Chaplains feel loss
    

Deacon Tully said Catholic chaplains are grappling with how God is now using them as instruments. In their pre-coronavirus environment of one-on-one encounters with patients in hospitals, Deacon Tully said chaplains could offer hugs, sit next to patients and talk, put their hand on the patient’s shoulder and peer into their eyes as a window to someone’s soul.
    

“Now we don’t have that visual effect, so it is extremely challenging,” Deacon Tully said. “We rely on the goodness of God to help us to connect with prayers. God does what he needs to do with our prayers. … We have to rely on knowing that Jesus is standing there with the patients and hears our prayers, and he takes care of it. He is there to comfort. There might not be a physical body (offering consolation to) that patient. But, we truly believe, God is there. … God brings them home. That’s how you survive every day; you know the awesomeness of God.”
    

He said Catholic chaplains are experiencing loss in their hearts.
    

“They really want to do something (in close proximity with patients),” he said. That’s what they do.” 
    

Deacon Tully mentioned that the anointing of the sick is not just for the dying. It can be requested by and for anyone who is sick or even in preparation for a surgery. Routinely, parish priests anoint Catholics with this sacrament outside of a hospital setting. And, it’s a sacrament that doesn’t “expire,” he said. 
 

No one is ever alone
    

Deacon Tully wants to emphasize that even though friends, family and even chaplains cannot be with family members inside a hospital during this pandemic, the hospitalized are never truly alone.
    

“Jesus is taking the place of all of the family,” Deacon Tully said. “God is with them. It’s hard; the clergy want to be there with the sick, the vulnerable and the dying and are unable to be there in many instances. It’s not that the hospitals are being rude; they are being protective.
    

“Some of the priests are able to have telephone conversations with patients … but the sad part is we can’t communicate with the family because the family is not present and the federal HIPAA laws won’t allow (family contact) information to be given out. … We understand the federal law and we’re going to be compliant, but everybody’s heart is breaking because we just want to be with the family, hug and console the family, and the chaplains just can’t be there now. … But God is always there.”
    

Christine Bordelon can be reached at [email protected].