Pastoral Care Week Focuses On Spirituality, Peace

Published: November 18, 2004

ATLANTA—Saint Joseph’s Health System was founded in 1880 by the Sisters of Mercy to further the healing mission of Jesus and has maintained that identity into the 21st century. The Saint Joseph’s Pastoral Care Department is integral to the health care team and provides support and counseling to assist patients and families spiritually and emotionally. The staff believes many patients prefer Saint Joseph’s for this reason and that employees have chosen to work there because of the philosophy and values emanating from the charism of love and compassionate care of the Mercy Sisters.

The Catholic healthcare system is comprised of Saint Joseph’s Hospital of Atlanta, Saint Joseph’s Mercy Care Services and Saint Joseph’s Mercy Foundation. It participated in the Pastoral Care Week Oct. 24-30 with the theme “imagining peace,” which celebrates the work of thousands of well-trained and gifted pastoral caregivers of all faiths around the country who work to stir the imagination of all peoples to practice peace among the human family. Pastoral caregivers were honored for their work both to bring spiritual healing resources to their community and to educate the community at large on the meaning of pastoral care and counseling.

Held first in 1984, Pastoral Care Week is sponsored by the COMISS Network: The Network on Ministry in Specialized Settings, a national organization of pastoral care providers, pastoral care professionals and faith group endorsers.

“Our main ministry is to provide spiritual care for patients and their families and the employees,” Sister Valentina Sheridan, RSM, director of the pastoral care department, said. “The spiritual care just permeates throughout the hospital in many ways. Its impact, you just sort of feel it when you come into it. It plays a very important role and is appreciated not only by patients but by the physicians and nurses.”

On Oct. 27 Saint Joseph’s Hospital held an ice cream social for pastoral care workers with input and prayer around the week’s theme. The speaker was Father John J. Madden, SJ, a Jesuit priest with advanced degrees in sociology and theology. He returned to the United States in April after serving 10 years as a retreat director in Ghana, West Africa, and has been a retreat director for more than 30 years and a hospice chaplain for five. He recently joined St. Joseph’s/Candler Health System of Savannah in pastoral care.

Father Madden stated, “We all seek peace, but true peace comes from loving and being loved.” He also emphasized that each person enfleshes God’s presence for others.

The event was also attended by the pastoral care departments of Northside Hospital and Scottish Rite Hospital, as all three hospitals intersect at Peachtree Dunwoody and Johnson Ferry roads, and they together have a clinical pastoral education program housed at Saint Joseph’s to provide an education program for training of chaplains.

The 10-person staff also passed scrolls with words about peace throughout the hospital during the week, and a special Mass was held.

Gretchen Courson, RN, returned to nursing in 1984 after raising her children. At a recent Saint Joseph’s event she was honored with the Franklin Award for representing the Mercy mission and the nurses’ dedication to excellence and compassion. Courson told the gathering that, after narrowing her choices for a hospital, the answer came to her one day “when I … saw the cross on top of Saint Joseph’s, and my choice was made. It was the cross that drew me, and I can tell you 20 years later that it is the cross that keeps me here.”

She knew that she wanted to work “under the cross with the sisters.”

In 2000, at the beginning of the new millennium, the chaplains visited each department throughout the year with a banner reading “Peace to All Who Enter Here.” All who were able to leave their work for a moment prayed and sang together. The banner was left at the door of the department to signal that the pastoral care team would continue to pray for them for the coming week. That banner was moved from department to department, week by week. The following year they continued the practice, this time bringing a candle inscribed with “I Am With You Always.”

This ritual was suspended the next two years as pastoral workers concentrated on the birthdays of individual employees, putting their names on a “Gift of Life” banner in the chapel and praying for them during their birthday week. However, according to Sister Sheridan, “inquiries continued to come to me as to when we would come to the department again for prayer. In response to popular demand, we have again arranged to visit each department in the coming year, and the theme this year is ‘Called Together in Mercy.”

“This is wonderful, very meaningful to employees,” she said.

The symbol used is a candle in the midst of a circle of people with joined hands. As done before, this symbol is left in the department after they have joined together in prayer in that location. In addition, each participant is given a bookmark listing the Mercy values.

“We really want people to be aware of the spirituality within Saint Joseph’s,” Sister Sheridan said. A Catholic priest is always available, as well as staff members representing various other faith traditions. “A chaplain is assigned to every nursing unit in the hospital to be present in a time of death of (any) patient and offer compassionate care to families,” Sister Sheridan said. “We are called to different departments when there is stress, or if an employee’s family member dies, or if an employee dies. They always call some staff to come down and pray with them, and we do that as a group very often.”

The chapel is always open for prayer and reflection, and Mass is celebrated daily, Sunday through Friday, at 11 a.m. Services also include interfaith morning prayer on Mondays and Tuesdays and interfaith evening prayer on Thursdays. All services are televised on hospital channel 15 as well.

“Healing comes more easily to a person of faith, and we provide an environment where that can be nourished,” said Sister Sheridan. Memorial services are held at the hospital three times a year, and staff members go as requested to provide them out in the community at funeral homes and area churches. Among other services, they also provide the Critical Conditions program on end-of-life issues to various organizations in the area.

Traditionally pastoral caregivers cross over institutional, economic, cultural and ecclesiastical boundaries in integrating spirituality into the healing of the whole being. They work in communities, congregations, hospitals, long-term care facilities, correctional services, mental health systems and many other places where hurting souls are found.

As a Catholic health system, Saint Joseph’s has a commitment to Gospel values and believes in the reverence for human life and health from conception until death. The organization respects each individual as a person and ensures this respect by applying the Gospel values and the ethical and moral teachings of the church.

Saint Joseph’s strives for social justice in both internal functions and relationships and external relationships with the community it serves. Mercy Care Services offers an array of programs for medically underserved persons including primary care, primary dental care, social services and health education to homeless persons, the uninsured and the growing immigrant population, particularly Spanish-speaking immigrants.