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Health Care Chaplaincy in SpainReligious Support Services
in Spain Hospitals are of great importance in the field of pastoral health care and, right from the beginning, pastoral work in this field has devoted its effort, imagination and time to carrying out a restructuring of these services in hospitals. An example of the importance of hospitals is embodied in the "Framework agreement on Catholic religious support in public hospitals" between the Spanish government and the Spanish Bishops’ Conference, dated 24 July 1985, and on which the agreements with the individual Autonomous Communities are based. This regulation has established the legal foundations of religious support for public sector hospitals, thereby facilitating the provision of said support in favourable conditions. In order to bring this legal grounding to life and to ensure uniformity a document entitled "Religious support in hospitals. Pastoral guidelines" was published in 1987. This document is a compulsory reference document for pastoral work in hospitals. Hospital chaplains have been the driving force behind the reorganisation of pastoral health care in the health field in the Spanish Church and in our individual churches. There are currently 950 chaplains providing religious assistance in Spanish hospitals: 650 as full-time chaplains and 300 working part-time. This group contains some that connect with their task and have managed to integrate into the hospital environment. Others – not a small number – find themselves lost, ignored, hemmed in, or maybe even adjusted to the situation but not content, in a world that turns out to be hostile to them, without any coordination with all the other chaplains. Currently, no special training is required to work as a hospital chaplain, though the Bishops’ Conference does continuously organise training courses and refresher courses. The average age of chaplains is very high, which can, on occasions, hinder adaptation to the rapidly changing medical world. Of note here, is the appointment of competent lay-persons to perform the same tasks as hospital chaplains. Improving the Church’s evangelisation work in hospitals seems to me to be an important and urgent task. I don’t know if it forms part of the perspective, but it would be good to raise the awareness of and instruct seminarists to promote the idea of using competent lay-persons, to provide hospitals with people possessing a vocation and capable of working in the hospital environment, with the enthusiasm to feel that they are to be shepherds of the hospital community, ministers of the Word and the sacraments and providers of counsel and the peace of the Lord (RU no. 57). Let this European meeting of chaplains vocalize a song of hope to those
like us that provide pastoral care in these cathedrals of suffering. Miguel Angel Cruz Fernández [May 2006] |
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