A LONG DAY OF LONELY JOURNEYS
10 HOURS IN AN AMBULANCE
FR Vincent Xavier remembers the first time he administered the last sacraments to a patient with Covid-19.
He was called to the emergency department of the hospital where the patient, a wife and mother, was in an isolation room.
He recalled the strangeness of the new protocols. “The staff helped me to put on these gowns and masks, which for me was really phenomenal,” he said.
He administered anointing oil with a double-gloved finger, dabbed once on the forehead rather than on forehead and hands, the glove discarded immediately afterwards into a contamination bin in the room.
Since then, barely a week has passed without another Covid-19 death and Fr Vincent, part of a team of hospital chaplains at the Mater in Dublin, has been there for many.
He is a priest with the Order of St Camillus, the Italian-born patron saint of the sick who renounced a dissolute life to tend to victims of the plague in 16th-Century Italy. Priests with the order take a fourth vow, in addition to poverty, chastity and obedience, to care for the afflicted even if their own lives are at risk. Their commitment takes on a special resonance in a 21st-Century pandemic.
The team of priests, which also includes chaplain Margaret Sleator, Fr Suneesh Mathew, Fr Stephen Foster and Fr Prince Mathew, work 12-hour shifts in shirt sleeves because jackets have been banned for infection control reasons. They are no longer free to walk the wards as they as used to, but wait to be summoned to patients to give comfort and, when needed, last rites.
Last week, the wife of a man dying in an isolation room chose to don full protective gear to be at her husband’s side rather than pray from a distance. “She said I am not afraid, Father, I want to be with my husband,” said Fr Vincent.
“At that moment, I don’t feel that it is about me. I feel it is about the family. They have lost a loved one, I do not think about myself, I think about the right thing for the family.”
He stood with her in the isolation room, shielded in white plastic, as she said goodbye to her husband.
Margaret Sleator, a lay chaplain who has worked with the order for 17 years, said the chaplain’s work changed utterly the day the hospital took in its first Covid-19 patients.
“I remember the morning, Sunday morning, at the beginning of March. The security man was standing outside, a security guard I have known for so long. They asked me for my ID and I knew then that something had entered the hospital,” said Margaret.
“Seeing the white masks for the first time really hit home that something had entered.
I knew by evening that the role [as chaplain] would have to change. I couldn’t just go about my daily routine.”
While priests attend to patients on Covid-19 wards,
Margaret is the link with their families at home.
“There has to be an outlet for families. Because they cannot reach, they cannot see, they cannot witness, I feed back to them what happened,” she said. “I try to breach that moment, reassure them that their loved one was anointed, that time was spent with their loved one.”
Sometimes families give her notes, which she slips to nurses to read at the bedsides of their loved ones, or mementoes to be left with them when a patient dies. She reassures those families who could not be present, their loved one was not alone but, most of all, she gives them time.
“Just to talk and talk and talk. I do that over the phone. Just allow the whole day to go by, to listen and listen and listen,” she said. “There are so many families overwhelmed by the fact they cannot get in and that’s where I pick up to support them.”
Margaret chose the role of chaplain because “that’s where my personal journey took me”, she said. She always had religion in her life, but a road accident changed her life. She broke her legs and was incapacitated but she was alive and felt she had been given a second chance.
“I suppose it was an enlightenment, I don’t really know how to describe it, but it was certainly a soul-searching moment,” she said.
Chaplains are attuned to the risks. More than 100 priests have died in Italy, almost as many deaths as doctors. Three were priests with the Order of St Camillus.
Fr Vincent tells a story about a colleague who told him about a sad funeral, at which all the mourners sympathised with each other. “But none asked the priest, how was he?” It is tough, he says, especially for priests who live alone. “I know it is a very isolating situation that priests go through.”
But as the regional superior of the Order of Saint Camillus, Fr Stephen Foster, points out, comforting the afflicted is their mission.
“We’re quite concerned about the suffering and distress families are experiencing,” he said. “So we’re trying to shore up our compassion and kindness to help people as much as possible in order to see a way through this, which is very difficult for some who have lost family members.”
‘Just allow the whole day to go by, to listen and listen and listen’