Pastoral Care

The most wrenching day in Georgina Minter's pastoral-care ministry came when she thought that the very thing that gave her more empathy than any doctor or nurse would prevent her from visiting a dying friend. Ann Williams lay in a hospital bed, surrounded by pumping, beeping and whooshing machinery. Minter's wheelchair could not maneuver in the narrow room. For a time, she was relegated to the hallway. "I couldn't talk to her. She couldn't give me any signals," Minter said.

He moves about the hospital as unobtrusively as a chameleon. He slips quietly into each room, carefully observing the patient, and in an attempt to establish rapport, he tries to find words to mirror the patient's feelings. The visitor is the Rev. Tom Berlenbach, a pastoral-care chaplain whose mission is to give emotional and spiritual support to the patients he sees each day. But for Mr. Berlenbach, walking in unannounced and uninvited to see people in this most vulnerable state requires a delicate touch.

The prayer request book in the chapel at Memorial Hospital of Burlington County is filled with wishes - from a mother's that her daughter get a lung transplant, to a young boy's that his dying father be appointed his guardian angel. Some writers make bargains: "If he pulls through, I promise to stop doing drugs and drinking. " Others plead for more time: "Please don't take George away from us yet. The boys want him here just a little longer to show them things. " Requests can be straightforward: "Could you please send an angel to my mom in ICU?

New federal regulations designed to ensure the privacy rights of hospital patients are having an unexpected side effect. The changes have brought procedures that many clergy say make it harder to know when congregants are in the hospital, and ultimately to provide spiritual support during their illnesses. "We had a case where the family had called the rabbi from the hospital and the rabbi tried to call back," said Rabbi Elisa Goldberg, director of the Jewish Chaplaincy and Healing Program of the Jewish Family and Children's Service of Greater Philadelphia.

The Rev. Pascal A. Monteleone, 58, chaplain at Chestnut Hill College, who was instrumental in establishing the school's new training program for pastoral care professionals, died of a heart attack Wednesday at his home in Norristown. Father Monteleone served as coordinator of the college's holistic spirituality and health-care program, leading the school's efforts to train medical professionals to consider a patient's faith life during medical treatment. As coordinator, Father Monteleone marketed the program and recruited the first class of students who are practicing doctors and nurses.

Esther W. Moore Fowlie, 79, a longtime kindergarten teacher, died Tuesday at her son's home in Belle Mead, Somerset County. Born in Mount Holly, where she was a longtime resident, Mrs. Fowlie was a graduate of Mount Holly High School and was named Miss Mount Holly in 1935 as part the Miss America Pageant. After graduating from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, she became a second-generation teacher. She started teaching kindergarten in Mount Holly in 1963 at the Folwell School.

The Rev. John Freed's decision to go back to school can be traced to freshly picked violets and the shadowy presence of a stranger. The Mennonite clergyman had awakened in a hospital bed after he was stricken with a severe kidney attack. Alone and scared, he scanned the room, soon focusing on two blurred images - a vase of flowers and a figure standing nearby. The man was a hospital chaplain who had picked a bouquet of violets for the bedridden minister. "No words, just his presence," Mr. Freed said.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. today for the Rev. Paul W. Hoon, 90, of the Pennswood Village retirement community in Bucks County. The service for the Methodist pastor and author will be at Pennswood Village, Langhorne-Newtown Road (Route 413) in Middletown Township. He died last Thursday at his home. Dr. Hoon, a son and grandson of clergymen, was a professor of pastoral theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York for 40 years before his 1975 retirement.

While the medical staff at Memorial Hospital of Burlington County in Mount Holly is working to heal patients physically, the Rev. Ellie Cowherd is tending to them spiritually. In what Ms. Cowherd terms a "new bend toward the holistic approach" to healing, she operates the hospital's pastoral care department. The department offers patients of all denominations and their families opportunities for prayer and spiritual guidance. "We never get in the way of medicine," said Ms. Cowherd, who was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1965.

Envision a place where an ecumenical mix of counselors and therapists replenish spirits and nurture lives in transition. That's what the Rev. Margaret Anne Fohl, associate pastor for pastoral care at the Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, and congregant Ruthanne Scharbaum of Villanova pictured five years ago. With a broad base of church support, their vision has become reality at the Middleton Center for Pastoral Care and Counseling. It opened in September 1999 and was named months later in memory of Herbert H. Middleton Jr., a member of the congregation who died in 1998.

The Rev. Leslie E. Evans, 64, of Bristol Township, a nurse, Episcopal priest, and college and prison chaplain, died of encephalopathy on Tuesday, Nov. 2, at Lower Bucks Hospital in Bristol Township. The Rev. Evans was rector at Grace Church and the Incarnation in Port Richmond from 1994 to 2003 and rector at St. Andrew's Church in Allentown from 2003 until she retired in 2007. Over the years, her husband, VanKirk Wilson, said, she also served as an associate chaplain in the St. Dismas Episcopal ministry at Graterford prison in Montgomery County.

The Rev. George S. Hewitt, 86, of Havertown, a Methodist minister, died Saturday of heart failure at Delaware County Memorial Hospital, where he had been chaplain and founding director of the pastoral care unit. In 1984, Dr. Hewitt left his position as pastor at Drexel Hill Methodist Church to become chaplain at the hospital and to direct its pastoral care program. In 1994 he told a reporter that he visited every new patient and informed clergy from the 110 congregations that the hospital area serves when one of their members was hospitalized.

You know traffic is bad if the pope is popping off about it. Benedict XVI rides in style in a chauffeur-driven popemobile, but the view from his room is all gridlock and road rage. Hence, the Vatican's "Ten Commandments for Drivers," issued early yesterday afternoon, in time to make the late-night talk show monologues. God may frown on mocking such a noble effort, but that's a risk I'll have to take. Commandment No. 5: Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination.

New federal regulations designed to ensure the privacy rights of hospital patients are having an unexpected side effect. The changes have brought procedures that many clergy say make it harder to know when congregants are in the hospital, and ultimately to provide spiritual support during their illnesses. "We had a case where the family had called the rabbi from the hospital and the rabbi tried to call back," said Rabbi Elisa Goldberg, director of the Jewish Chaplaincy and Healing Program of the Jewish Family and Children's Service of Greater Philadelphia.

Wind whips the bright-white coats of the medical students as they hurry across the parking lot at 10th and Vine and into a beige brick building whose tiny rooms and tight hallways once housed a community of nuns. Soon, it will fill with people describing aches and pains in a cacophony of Asian dialects, jury-rigged English and pantomime. It is Thursday night, just north of the jigsaw of eateries, markets and pottery shops that is Chinatown, and although the free weekly medical clinic at Holy Redeemer Catholic Church and School won't open for 25 minutes, patients are waiting when the students arrive.

The Rev. Pascal A. Monteleone, 58, chaplain at Chestnut Hill College, who was instrumental in establishing the school's new training program for pastoral care professionals, died of a heart attack Wednesday at his home in Norristown. Father Monteleone served as coordinator of the college's holistic spirituality and health-care program, leading the school's efforts to train medical professionals to consider a patient's faith life during medical treatment. As coordinator, Father Monteleone marketed the program and recruited the first class of students who are practicing doctors and nurses.

Lorraine McGlinn loves to dance. Her face brightens just talking about it. Now that she's retiring, she's ready to learn ballroom dancing. For those who don't know McGlinn, this may seem an impossible dream for someone who was paralyzed from the waist down after a car crash in 1980. But those who know McGlinn aren't surprised. Here's a woman who for 15 years headed a volunteer group devoted to improving accessibility for those with disabilities in Delaware County. McGlinn, 68, who is retiring from Barrier Awareness of Delaware County, the group that she founded, is "a person who puts the needs of persons with physical disabilities in front of everything else," said Anthony Venuto, chief operating officer of Inglis Housing Corp.

After their April meeting with Pope John Paul II in Rome about the clerical sex-abuse scandals, U.S. and Vatican cardinals came up with two strategies, both aimed at gays rather than at abusers. One is hard-line antigay rhetoric. The second is a drive to screen gays out of the priesthood. Both are disturbing. And both prove the clergy aren't listening to the laity. In the post-meeting communiqu?, the cardinals did disconnect celibacy from pedophilia, writing that a "link between" them "cannot be scientifically maintained.

Bishop Frederick H. Borsch, a New Testament scholar, will present a weekend of stories and conversation beginning Feb. 22 at the Church of the Redeemer, Pennswood and New Gulph Road, Bryn Mawr. The Lent Event 2002, titled "Spiritual Autobiography: The Stories of Our Lives," is designed to help participants answer the question of how we "grow" spiritually. Mr. Borsch will give a talk titled "Spiritual Autobiography" at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 22. His talk will follow Evensong at 6 p.m. and a reception and supper at 6:30 p.m. On Feb. 23, he will open a day of workshops at 9 a.m. with a talk titled "The Stories of Our Lives.

The most wrenching day in Georgina Minter's pastoral-care ministry came when she thought that the very thing that gave her more empathy than any doctor or nurse would prevent her from visiting a dying friend. Ann Williams lay in a hospital bed, surrounded by pumping, beeping and whooshing machinery. Minter's wheelchair could not maneuver in the narrow room. For a time, she was relegated to the hallway. "I couldn't talk to her. She couldn't give me any signals," Minter said.