FRANCE : Sr Pascale

Sent to a chaplaincy team in a hospital in the Paris region.

The evolution of society with the presence of economic migrants or political refugees, the breaking up of families, the overcrowding of urban areas, professional pressure, tiredness, geographical distance. All this means that families find it difficult to visit their sick relatives. In addition sick migrants live in great loneliness. 

The profile of the patient we visit has changed. We meet people from all religions or none, people who recognize themselves as having a Christian culture but no longer practice, or even believe. Meeting with the Chaplaincy is often the discovery of another face of the Church where it is no longer the person who goes to the Church but the Church comes to him or her.

We meet new human situations and where there is suffering and a call we have to reply, « present », welcoming each person where she is in the human and family reality in which she finds herself. « Who am I to judge ? » said Pope Francis on the plane as he returned from Rio de Janeiro. True life is often very complex and yet it is in the context and in the welcome lived that « encounter »  with Christ is experienced. Today would the Christ of St Matthew not say « I was sick, in prison, I had a medically assisted procreation with a donor oocyte, I had IMG (abortion) I am homosexual  married, divorced and remarried, I am a migrant without any papers, homeless… and you visited me »?

 And if I sometimes arrive at the hospital preoccupied, and having doubts, or tired, the encounter with the sick person energizes me and transforms me. « It is Christ whom we have met in his fragility and he comes to bring Life!»

In collaboration with the hospital staff, the chaplaincy is like a « driving belt » at the heart of the establishment of health between the family, the medical personnel and the associations and parishes… Sharing these encounters in our hospital visits is a grace for living for the team of chaplains because our mission is not lived alone but as members of the team, in the Church..

Monthly meetings enable us to share the Word of God, to place our mission into the Father’s hands in the Eucharist and live a time of evaluation and relaxation. All this reinforces the unity and solidarity at the heart of the team!

Sr Pascale, in charge in a Hospital Chaplaincy team