Cathal BarryMore needs to be done to ensure the spiritual needs of elderly priests and nuns living in non-religious nursing homes are catered for, a member of the Church’s Healthcare Council has warned.
Sr Pat O’Donovan, Executive Secretary of Irish bishops’ Council for Health Care, said that while much of the care provided in such healthcare facilities is “excellent”, the provision of religious and spiritual care is “often minimal”.
Concern has been expressed that many elderly religious, who have worshipped together in community for many decades, are being transferred to nursing homes where there is no routine of prayer in the daily structure.
“There is a need in some way to ensure that there is adequate pastoral care for older religious and older people so that their religious and spiritual needs are catered for,” Sr O’Donovan told The Irish Catholic.
Assessment
However, Fr Tony Byrne CSSp, who has worked with many religious experiencing difficulties, insisted that “whenever there is the question of religious going into non-religious nursing homes there is always a careful assessment of their pastoral needs to ensure that they are met”.
Fr Byrne, an expert in bullying in religious life and ministry, claimed that religious leaders are “reasonable people who are very spiritually orientated and so would be very careful not to send people to a home where they would be spiritually starved”.
“Provincial leadership teams are very careful to ensure the spiritual needs of their members are met when they go into a secular nursing home. They wouldn’t send them there otherwise,” he insisted.
Healthcare Chaplain Margaret Naughton, however, said all chaplains were in agreement that “the one area that needs huge attention would be the nursing homes”.
Awareness
The Bons Secours Tralee-based chaplain said nursing homes needed to “look at the holistic care of each of their residents because if you start at that level and look at holistically there will automatically be then the awareness that are specific emotional and spiritual needs that need tending to”.
“There is the need for the non-sacramental aspects of chaplaincy, the listening ear, the supportive presence the ability to journey with someone at a very difficult time in their life,” she said.