Priest to be rehired as chaplain after discrimination found in firing

Published: 2007-03-02

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- A Jesuit priest is to be reinstated as a chaplain at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center after a federal board ruled that he was fired because of religious discrimination. Father Henry Heffernan, 76, was ordered to be reinstated at the NIH clinic in Bethesda, Md., by the Merit Systems Protection Board, a federal agency that hears personnel disputes. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled in January that Father Heffernan was wrongly suspended and fired in 2004. The merit systems board, a quasi-judicial entity, upheld the decision in a Feb. 23 order. The EEOC found that Father Heffernan was suspended and fired because of concerns he raised with the way the spiritual ministry director at the center insisted upon a multifaith chaplaincy that Father Heffernan believed did not accommodate the spiritual concerns of Catholic patients. Among Father Heffernan's objections to the multifaith approach advocated by the office were that non-Catholic chaplains would not approach topics such as death and dying from a Catholic perspective and that they could not immediately provide sacraments to patients.

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