Austrian nuncio laments Church opposition to crosses on Bavarian state buildings

Rome, Italy, Jan 5, 2018 / 10:22 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In yet another “Mercy Friday” outing, Pope Francis this afternoon traveled to the outskirts of Rome to visit sick children receiving care at a campus of the Vatican’s Bambino Gesu hospital, offering comfort to patients and their parents.

According to a Jan. 5 Vatican communique, the Pope made the visit around 3 p.m., heading to the Palidoro campus of Bambino Gesu children’s hospital, which sits about 20 miles west of Rome.

Francis made his way through different wings of the hospital, greeting the children who are receiving care and their parents, who are helping their children through “these tiresome and painful trials.”

Bambino Gesù, colloquially known as the “Pope’s hospital,” is among most important pediatric hospitals in the world. Founded in 1869 by the Duchess Arabella Salviati, the hospital was donated to Pius XI in 1924, with the aim of giving it a more stable future.

The Palidoro campus was established in 1978 under Bl. Paul VI, who entrusted Bambino Gesu with the activities of the “Pontificia Opera di Assistenza” clinic in Palidoro, which specialized in care for polio patients and until that year had been separate from the hospital.

The campus is also currently home to a special exhibit titled “Caro Papa, ti regalo un disegno,” meaning, “Dear Pope, I’ll give you a drawing.”

Promoted by both Bambino Gesu and the Jesuit newspaper “La Civilta’ Cattolica,” the exhibit consists of a series of drawings given to the Pope by children throughout the world either through the mail, or in person during audiences or trips abroad.

The drawings were given to La Civilta’ Cattolica, which partnered with Bambino Gesu to launch a campaign using the images as a means of supporting and welcoming the children who come to hospital from all over the world.

Promoted largely through social media outlets such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, the campaign promises each person who makes a donation, no matter how much, a digital copy of the drawings given to Pope Francis by the children, and which has been certified by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

Parolin inaugurated the exhibit featuring the original drawings at the Palidoro campus, which is managing campaign and fundraising efforts.

Pope Francis’ visit to the hospital is a continuation of his “Mercy Friday” custom which he began during the Jubilee of Mercy, in 2016.

Originally planned once per month for the duration of the jubilee, the Pope has continued these visits as a means of practicing the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. He has met with refugees, children, women freed from sex trafficking, and the terminally ill, among others.

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CNA Staff, May 19, 2020 / 01:30 pm (CNA).- Future seminarians should receive an “absolutely solid formation” in hospital ministry, a priest working with coronavirus patients has said.

Fr. Joe McNerney, a full-time hospital chaplain in the Diocese of Portsmouth, England, said that before the COVID-19 crisis, healthcare chaplaincy was a sometimes marginalized ministry.

“I think now we are seeing the absolute importance of hospital chaplaincy and how essential a ministry it is — not just during this time, but even when this thing passes — and that people in their seminary training have an absolutely solid foundation as part of their formation,” the priest told CNA.

McNerney, who has worked in hospitals since 1997, said “the whole way of doing chaplaincy has changed enormously” since the pandemic.

Strict preventative measures amid the pandemic force chaplains to focus on being alongside patients “during this very, very distressing time for them,” he explained.

“You think of these patients, and especially the ones in the COVID wards, where all they’re seeing is eyes,” he said. “Everything else is covered up. You realize how much you communicate through your facial expressions who you are — the smile, the twinkle in your eyes. Anything to let them know you care about them as a person. You’re not a clinician just wanting to go in and do something. It’s the same also for the doctors and the nurses. They’re finding that a struggle because it is so hard to communicate.”

McNerney said he was struck by how important it was for patients on coronavirus wards to be able to hold a rosary or small cross throughout their ordeal. He had asked local Catholics to supply rosaries to hospital wards and they had responded “magnificently.”

“It’s a great comfort to have something in your hands that connects you with your Catholic faith, with your Catholic community. It’s very, very important,” he said.

“Unfortunately because of the situation we’re not able to give Communion. If a patient’s ventilated, you can’t. It’s just out of the question. The sacrament of the sick plays an important role. But that abiding presence of something tangible — a rosary or a holding cross — can offer quite a comfort.”

McNerney, who was born in Seattle, Washington, and moved to the U.K. in the early 1980s, noted that at the start of the pandemic it was sometimes difficult to ensure that Catholic chaplains had access to coronavirus patients in the larger hospitals. But he said he had not heard of any cases in which Catholics died from COVID-19 without the sacraments.

“I’m not saying it hasn’t happened. I don’t know. But sometimes you have to be inventive in the way that you minister. You have to be prepared for what I call ‘liturgy on the hoof.’ The Sacrament of the Sick, last rites, are all very important, but you have to adapt the way you do it. It requires a bit of inventiveness,” he said.

He emphasized that hospital trusts saw chaplains as “absolutely essential” and that most misunderstandings were caused by the pressure of responding to a national health emergency.

He said: “I don’t think it’s anything deliberate. My experience is that they are just so, so, so busy. They’re fighting, trying to do everything.”

“In our induction that we do with staff we say it’s good to do a ‘spiritual care assessment’. Well, that’s not high on their list, through no fault of their own. They’re struggling with the physical stuff.”

McNerney’s comments were echoed by Fr. Mark Elliott Smith, who volunteered to serve as a chaplain at NHS Nightingale, London’s coronavirus field hospital.

Asked if the Church was marginalized during the crisis, he said: “Here, at least, absolutely not. In fact, it seems to me that a hallmark of the Nightingale is that the contribution that a chaplain can make is valued, and that spiritual, pastoral, and above all sacramental care is made available.”

“I would add that the Church will clearly want to continue making a vigorous case for its active presence in times like these, but my feeling is that the Church will be knocking at an open door.”

Elliott Smith said that he agreed “to a certain extent” with McNerney’s call for all seminarians to be trained thoroughly in hospital chaplaincy.

“The recent pandemic tells us that you can never know what lies round the corner, but I would be wary of, say, making great adjustments to seminary formation until we have a longer perspective,” he commented.
 
He said the Church needs to assess the impact of the nationwide lockdown on Mass attendance and then draw conclusions about future priests and their formation.
 
“Priesthood is an intensely practical life in many ways, but what a priest actually does flows from who he is, and has been formed to be,” he said.
 
“Of course, it’s good to know what a hospital chaplain actually does, but if the priest has had a solid priestly formation, and has a modicum of common sense, becoming a chaplain should not hold too many terrors.”
 
Elliott Smith said that while serving coronavirus patients he had drawn comfort from praying the Prayer to St. Michael: “Holy Michael, Archangel, defend us in the day of battle.”

McNerney said he had felt sustained throughout the crisis by a prayer from the Divine Office: “Give us perfect peace, Lord, so that we may delight in serving you all the days of our life, and at the last, with Our Lady’s help, come safely to your presence.”

“It’s a wonderful, wonderful prayer,” he said.

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Anna Fleischer, president of Oxford Students for Life, at Oxford University’s Student Union’s Freshers’ Fair, Oct. 6, 2021. / Courtesy of @OSFLife Twitter account.

Oxford, England, Oct 26, 2021 / 08:10 am (CNA).
There is no better time for Oxfor… […]