Read

Priests Visiting the Sick are ‘Saints Next Door’

Published:
May 20, 2024
April 18, 2020
Read why priests are visiting the sick during a global pandemic.|Read why priests are visiting the sick during a global pandemic.

Front-line emergency personnel such as EMTs, nurses, doctors are doing heroic work to fight the coronavirus and the danger it poses to us all. But when medicine has reached a limit for what it can offer a patient whose life is in danger from COVID-19, what happens next?

Another set of heroes is stepping forward in this pandemic: priests.

News stories are starting to paint a picture of how priests are also gearing up and stepping into harm’s way to accompany people in the most difficult moment of their lives. That exposure puts them in danger — Pope Francis has called them “the saints next door, priests who gave their lives in service.”

The stories began in Italy, where more than 60 priests died of COVID-19 because they were attending to the sick in hospital ministry. “You choose this life to be useful to others,” Father Giovanni Paolini told The New York Times. “Staying home is the right thing to do… But I am a priest and sometimes it is necessary to bend the law to meet people’s needs.”

As the pandemic has spread to the U.S., the Church has begun to respond. The Archdiocese of Chicago, for example, created a 24-priest response team to visit the critically sick in hospitals. The team is comprised of healthy priests younger than 60 who cover their typical black clerical attire and collar with a sterile jumpsuit and other protective equipment to offer the anointing of the sick to those in danger of death.

Father Matt O’Donnell told The Chicago Tribune that the effort reflects the Church’s “commitment to making sure that to people who are in a very vulnerable state of their life that they can be shown that they are not alone.

“I think that the risk has been explained to us, but all of us realize this is what our priesthood is meant to be about,” he said. “It’s to bring Christ to people and to bring a sense of hope to people might otherwise be in a place of despair.”

The effects of the pandemic have been felt deeply in New York, and a group of Dominican friars there have been also pulled into the fight. Since the 1940s, this community has been ministering to people in nursing homes and hospitals, and when the coronavirus arrived, they didn’t back down from the danger — or from the people they serve who are dying from it.

“I started to think about, maybe I could get this. Maybe it could kill me,” said Father John Devaney, OP. “What gives me hope is that in the Catholic funeral liturgy, it says, life hasn’t ended, it has changed. So for me the hope is that there is a supernatural reality we can’t see, that there is eternal life, life in eternity. And that death doesn’t have the final word.”

The pandemic is asking a lot of all of us, and we should rightly honor those who are giving more — often everything they have — to serve those who are suffering from the illness. Those heroes include medical personnel who attend the sick bodies, essential workers who keep us fed and safe, and also Catholic priests who are extending hope and consolation to the dying and fearful.

Creators:
Grotto Shares
Published:
May 20, 2024
April 18, 2020
On a related note...
5 Tips for Overcoming Perfectionism

5 Tips for Overcoming Perfectionism

Josie Kuhlman

The Community Meal That Changed My Life

The Community Meal That Changed My Life

Shannon Evans

How a Photography Influencer Built Her Business

How a Photography Influencer Built Her Business

Josie Kuhlman

What the **** Lord? And Other Prayers

What the **** Lord? And Other Prayers

Ricky McRoskey

Love in the Making: Frybread

Love in the Making: Frybread

Alli Bobzien

I Was Bullied, and That’s How I Met God

I Was Bullied, and That’s How I Met God

Matthew Flynn

Voices of Synod 2018 | Gonzalo Martinez

Voices of Synod 2018 | Gonzalo Martinez

Grotto

4 Ways I Reclaim Control of a Crazy Busy Week

4 Ways I Reclaim Control of a Crazy Busy Week

Emily Mae Mentock

Moving to Chicago, I Needed a Place that Felt Like Home

Moving to Chicago, I Needed a Place that Felt Like Home

Javi Zubizarreta

6 Tips to Get Over Your Fear of Confession

6 Tips to Get Over Your Fear of Confession

Grotto

Voices of Synod 2018 | Christina DiSalvo

Voices of Synod 2018 | Christina DiSalvo

Grotto

Share Your Thoughts Directly with Pope Francis | #TellItToFrancis

Share Your Thoughts Directly with Pope Francis | #TellItToFrancis

Grotto

How to Be an Ally in the Fight for Racial Justice

How to Be an Ally in the Fight for Racial Justice

Kayla August

You Can Help the Homeless by Giving Your Time — and a Listening Ear

You Can Help the Homeless by Giving Your Time — and a Listening Ear

Mary Grace Mangano

Losing Patience With This Pandemic? Take Up These Habits

Losing Patience With This Pandemic? Take Up These Habits

Katie Faley

Remembering Stephen Hawking

Remembering Stephen Hawking

Grotto Shares

What Organized Sports Have to Offer in 2019

What Organized Sports Have to Offer in 2019

John Acquaviva, PhD

BBQ 101 for a Successful Summer Cookout

BBQ 101 for a Successful Summer Cookout

Ken Hallenius

How to Help Someone Who Has Lost a Loved One

How to Help Someone Who Has Lost a Loved One

Dan Masterton

Forgiving When It Feels Impossible

Forgiving When It Feels Impossible

Megan Ulrich

newsletter

We’d love to be pals.

Sign up for our newsletter, and we’ll meet you in your inbox each week.