He said his habit before the coronavirus outbreak was to go from room to room, trying to see every patient every day. But because of increased security measures, “we cannot enter the rooms like we usually do,” he said.
“In this moment, the work is above all this: to try to get people to pray.”
“We are also trying to find other ways to be close to the sick and to people in general,” he said.
Under current circumstances, Pluchinotta and his fellow chaplain must wait for a request from a patient before visiting.
When they receive a request for confession, anointing of the sick, or the Eucharist, they dress in protective gear and masks. For communion, they are only allowed to enter the anterooms of the isolation chambers. They bring the Eucharist and leave it in the anteroom before exiting. They then wait on the outside for the patient to enter the anteroom, where the chaplains may pray and speak with them through a glass partition.
Pluchinotta said the number of requests depends on the day.
Like any hospital chaplain, he said his work does not have the same consistency or rhythm as ministering in a parish.
“In pastoral work in a hospital, maybe one week you have so much work you don’t even have time to sleep, because so many people want to go to confession, want to speak, want comfort; and then maybe another week you find that no one wants a chaplain,” he said.
“People who enter the hospital this week exit the next,” he explained. “It is ministry in an environment where the people change all the time.”
A more consistent form of ministry in the hospital, he said, is his contact with doctors and nurses. He offers Mass in the chapel and has a prayer group for nurses. There were plans for Lenten prayer groups and to offer a catechism course for staff at the hospital, but all that has changed.
“Right now, that it is not permitted to meet, [the nurses’ prayer group is] communicating only through Whatsapp or over the internet,” he said.
“We send prayers, encouraging messages. We are trying to bring them hope, strength, courage during these days.”
(Story continues below)
Subscribe to our daily newsletter
At Catholic News Agency, our team is committed to reporting the truth with courage, integrity, and fidelity to our faith. We provide news about the Church and the world, as seen through the teachings of the Catholic Church. When you subscribe to the CNA UPDATE, we'll send you a daily email with links to the news you need and, occasionally, breaking news.
As part of this free service you may receive occasional offers from us at EWTN News and EWTN. We won't rent or sell your information, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Pluchinotta said doctors have asked the priests for prayers and said they are trusting in them. “We have multiplied the prayers during these days. Prayer gives us a lot of strength.”
“Our [active] ministry has been replaced with much prayer, with intercession, which we priests believe in strongly,” Pluchinotta stressed. “We believe God will help us a lot through prayer and drawing close to those cases… in the ways safety protocols will allow.”
“We will continue to give the sacraments to the people who want them, who ask for them.”
He said in his four and a half years as a hospital chaplain, first at a hospital for cancer patients, whenever he brought the sacraments to those who were ill, suffering, or in the last stages of life, he could visibly see the peace they brought.
Pluchinotta added that in a parish, priests see great life conversions much less frequently, maybe once per year, but in a hospital, a priest might see one or more per week.
“People have in front of them the understanding that they are at the end” and some return to the sacraments after many years away, he said.
