Chaplaincy in a Multicultural Hospital St. Alexius Medical Center en
Hoffman Estates, Illinois, U.S.A.
Maria Noemi da Silva, mscs
At this time in the United States of America, migration reform has become a
huge issue as Congress seriously considers opening its doors to comprehensive
reform. We are also faced with Obama Care, were Health Care Institutions are
called to tighten their belts and provide health care regardless of Health Care
Institutions religious morals and values. There are “75 million foreign born
people and their children in the United States.” Pope John Paul II stated: The…
migrant comes before us like that ‘stranger’ in whom Jesus asks to be
recognized. To welcome them and to show them solidarity is a duty of
hospitality and fidelity to Christian identity itself (World Day of Migration,
1996). His message reminds us that Immigration Reform is well needed in this
great nation more than ever before, for regardless of where you come from,
documented or not, this is an opportunity for each of us to exercise our
Christian faith by serving our migrate sisters and brothers in a health care
institution with dignity and seek justice on their behalf in this land that we
called the United States of America Land of the free and liberty for All.
Working in a hospital sitting brings me in direct contact with migrants whether
legal or not, authorized or not, gives me the opportunity to practice my
Christian duty as a Scalabrinian Missionary Sister to be hospitable and faithful
to my Christian identity upon welcoming the stranger among us. A true
Scalabrinian virtue practiced and lived out in full in a foreign land. In such a
sitting, my ministry as a staff chaplain working in a Catholic healthcare system
gives me the opportunity to provide each person with pastoral support and
spiritual care based upon their religious beliefs.
Catholic healthcare sees
spiritual care as an integral and important dimension of health care. Chaplains
are professionally trained individuals, uniquely prepared to provide spiritual
care.
Those to whom I have been given the grace to journey with during their
complex illness, I feel that I am walking on holy ground as each individual
shares her or his struggles in life especially as a foreigner in a new land without
proper legalization or health insurance and at times this brings them to
question their own faith in a new land. As a Scalabrinian Missionary Sister and
staff chaplain working in a Catholic healthcare Institution there is high respect
for all life from conception until natural death regardless of a person’s religious
belief, nationality or legal status
One of my strengths in this delicate ministry is the knowledge of speaking three
languages: English, Portuguese and Spanish and when I am not able to speak a
language the hospital I work for has a translation line where patients or family
members can communicate with their health care provider. Chaplains’ act as an
ethical resource on a diverse set of issues to help patients, family members and
staff, make good ethical decisions.
Having the heart of a chaplain – means a deep respect for and compassion
toward people in pain, distress, fear, agony, frustration, anger, anxiety, chaos,
and grief. Chaplains offer spiritual hope to the hopeless, courage to the fearful,
peace to those in pain, and calm to the chaotic, angry and anxious. Attending
to migrants in a health care sitting who come from Africa, Brazil, China, India,
Italy, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Poland are only a few to mention helps me be in
contact with the world of migration in the United States of America where there
is diversity of cultures. In other words chaplains are a healing presence of God’s
grace in the Health Care System.