I would be interested to hear more about why parish priests in Ireland don't do hospital calls (if that is the case). Is the US unusual in these responsibilities falling to the nearby parish clergy?
I just made a similar comment myself! I am a diocesan priest currently serving as a hospital chaplain, but in areas of our Diocese where we don't have chaplains, the local priests just arrange a schedule. And the hospital doesn't pay for my salary at all - it's paid for by our Diocese.
In my experience, there are plenty who simply don't answer the phone... my first year of priesthood, I did easily 75% of the overnight calls. And I was only "on call" on one day a week. Let's say that most of those calls didn't come in on that day...
Father I’m so sorry your brothers weren’t being just in sharing coverage but thank you so so much for your fatherly compassion and care for the sick 💚 may God bless you!!
Thank you for answering the phone. I once had a family in unbelievable spiritual distress at around 7pm begging for a priest. I called every priest in the entire hospital rolodex starting with the on call and going from there and got only no-pickups and refusals, including one rude hangup.
I was myself having a spiritual crisis — “how can I believe in this faith when even her priests seem not to believe??” — when after several hours I finally got through to a priest like you who showed up, talked to the family, and then sat with *me* for half an hour in the stairwell because I was so distressed.
I’ve never forgotten him. I bet others have similar stories about you. Thank you.
The rectory never answered when my father was unexpectedly dying. Before midnight. I called and called. No emergency number was listed and the hospital, across the street en the cathedral, was clueless. Thanks be to God a different parish answered for my aunt, and my own priest responded when a child nearly died in front of my house. Thank you for what you do.
Why don't the local priests simply arrange coverage from 9pm to 9am? In our Diocese, we arrange for that with our local hospitals. I understand the desire to have support from the hospital, but don't understand the Diocese's response.
This was my first thought. The diocese seems to have a rather ho hum response to this serious problem (can't say I'm too surprised though). Can't a priest just go there after hours if necessary, assuming there is one nearby within a reasonable distance? Do they have no choice but to operate under the hospital's program and are otherwise denied access? If not, then I'm not seeing a good reason for there not to be any priests there at all. Otherwise, they should be making a big stink about this until the problem is fixed. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't get the impression that they're giving it all of their effort, to say the least.
I'm curious about the process of registering patients. What I used to see was patients registered as "Catholic-Parish Name," or "Catholic-No Parish Listed." Visiting clergy would get their "roster" of parishioners to visit and would often visit the no-parish patients as well. The parish phone number was the 24/7 contact number for last rites, and many/most patients would have been anointed and given communion on the clergy's usual daytime visits as well.
So the priests are not allowed to be at the hospital unless they are "on duty" and getting paid by the healthcare system?! What a mess this sounds like.
At my hospital, Anointing is only available once or twice a week. One very exhausted, overworked, and underpaid priest (definitely not paid by the hospital; possibly paid by the diocese, or maybe not) circulates among all of the Catholic patients, or as many as possible, offering anointing to all and sundry. But he has a six-month cutoff because repeats are too labor intensive; if you’ve been anointed within the last six months, you will not be anointed again.
If a critically ill Catholic desires anointing at a time outside of the 1-2x weekly rounds, they have to call their own pastor to come in.
It's a shameful situation for the diocese to be in, but like everyone else who has commented so far, I'm wondering:
1) Don't/can't/shouldn't the proper pastor(s) of the patients themselves and/or the proper pastor of the territory in which the hospital is located just come in and do this for free? I mean at least on an individual emergency basis?
2) It's obviously of great spiritual importance to have a Catholic priest available for emergency trauma cases (car accidents, gun shots, heart attacks, etc.) but - without meaning to be glib - this staffing shortage should be a wake-up call to Catholics and their families who are not in urgent/unexpected emergency circumstances not to wait until the last minute to call for a priest, but to do so while the sick person still (seemingly) has the use of their faculties (so that they can repent, affirm their faith in God, etc.) and has weeks or days left in their life expectancy, not hours or minutes.
3) If there are enough priests nearby (but that's a big "if" - I don't know how many priests there are in Galway), certainly they could each take an "on call" shift, even *some* of the nights, until the diocese and the hospital sort this out? I don't mean to presume on the self-sacrificial generosity of our beloved priests and pastors, but I have to imagine (hope) that the local clergy can (and already are) doing more than the diocese's response of, essentially, shrugging off the "salus animarum."
I will offer a Divine Mercy chaplet tonight for all the clergy of the diocese in question, and for a swift resolution to this issue. 🙏🏻
I would be interested to hear more about why parish priests in Ireland don't do hospital calls (if that is the case). Is the US unusual in these responsibilities falling to the nearby parish clergy?
I just made a similar comment myself! I am a diocesan priest currently serving as a hospital chaplain, but in areas of our Diocese where we don't have chaplains, the local priests just arrange a schedule. And the hospital doesn't pay for my salary at all - it's paid for by our Diocese.
In my experience, there are plenty who simply don't answer the phone... my first year of priesthood, I did easily 75% of the overnight calls. And I was only "on call" on one day a week. Let's say that most of those calls didn't come in on that day...
Father I’m so sorry your brothers weren’t being just in sharing coverage but thank you so so much for your fatherly compassion and care for the sick 💚 may God bless you!!
Thank you for answering the phone. I once had a family in unbelievable spiritual distress at around 7pm begging for a priest. I called every priest in the entire hospital rolodex starting with the on call and going from there and got only no-pickups and refusals, including one rude hangup.
I was myself having a spiritual crisis — “how can I believe in this faith when even her priests seem not to believe??” — when after several hours I finally got through to a priest like you who showed up, talked to the family, and then sat with *me* for half an hour in the stairwell because I was so distressed.
I’ve never forgotten him. I bet others have similar stories about you. Thank you.
The rectory never answered when my father was unexpectedly dying. Before midnight. I called and called. No emergency number was listed and the hospital, across the street en the cathedral, was clueless. Thanks be to God a different parish answered for my aunt, and my own priest responded when a child nearly died in front of my house. Thank you for what you do.
Why don't the local priests simply arrange coverage from 9pm to 9am? In our Diocese, we arrange for that with our local hospitals. I understand the desire to have support from the hospital, but don't understand the Diocese's response.
This was my first thought. The diocese seems to have a rather ho hum response to this serious problem (can't say I'm too surprised though). Can't a priest just go there after hours if necessary, assuming there is one nearby within a reasonable distance? Do they have no choice but to operate under the hospital's program and are otherwise denied access? If not, then I'm not seeing a good reason for there not to be any priests there at all. Otherwise, they should be making a big stink about this until the problem is fixed. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't get the impression that they're giving it all of their effort, to say the least.
> Priests are assigned chaplaincy roles in Ireland’s public hospitals by their dioceses, but are employed and paid by the HSE
I guess that is the problem right there.
Sure looks like that.
Yikes! This makes having a parish priest on speed-dial that much more important.
I'm curious about the process of registering patients. What I used to see was patients registered as "Catholic-Parish Name," or "Catholic-No Parish Listed." Visiting clergy would get their "roster" of parishioners to visit and would often visit the no-parish patients as well. The parish phone number was the 24/7 contact number for last rites, and many/most patients would have been anointed and given communion on the clergy's usual daytime visits as well.
So the priests are not allowed to be at the hospital unless they are "on duty" and getting paid by the healthcare system?! What a mess this sounds like.
At my hospital, Anointing is only available once or twice a week. One very exhausted, overworked, and underpaid priest (definitely not paid by the hospital; possibly paid by the diocese, or maybe not) circulates among all of the Catholic patients, or as many as possible, offering anointing to all and sundry. But he has a six-month cutoff because repeats are too labor intensive; if you’ve been anointed within the last six months, you will not be anointed again.
If a critically ill Catholic desires anointing at a time outside of the 1-2x weekly rounds, they have to call their own pastor to come in.
It's a shameful situation for the diocese to be in, but like everyone else who has commented so far, I'm wondering:
1) Don't/can't/shouldn't the proper pastor(s) of the patients themselves and/or the proper pastor of the territory in which the hospital is located just come in and do this for free? I mean at least on an individual emergency basis?
2) It's obviously of great spiritual importance to have a Catholic priest available for emergency trauma cases (car accidents, gun shots, heart attacks, etc.) but - without meaning to be glib - this staffing shortage should be a wake-up call to Catholics and their families who are not in urgent/unexpected emergency circumstances not to wait until the last minute to call for a priest, but to do so while the sick person still (seemingly) has the use of their faculties (so that they can repent, affirm their faith in God, etc.) and has weeks or days left in their life expectancy, not hours or minutes.
3) If there are enough priests nearby (but that's a big "if" - I don't know how many priests there are in Galway), certainly they could each take an "on call" shift, even *some* of the nights, until the diocese and the hospital sort this out? I don't mean to presume on the self-sacrificial generosity of our beloved priests and pastors, but I have to imagine (hope) that the local clergy can (and already are) doing more than the diocese's response of, essentially, shrugging off the "salus animarum."
I will offer a Divine Mercy chaplet tonight for all the clergy of the diocese in question, and for a swift resolution to this issue. 🙏🏻