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Serving the servants: Chaplains lead public servants to better frame of mind
By Ambria Hammel, The Catholic Sun
November 15, 2007
Police officers, firefighters and other public safety personnel risk their lives helping others.
When that trauma takes a toll on their spirits, they can turn to their chaplain for help. Chaplains minister to these public servants as counselors, friends and prayer partners. They stand by the officers in the line of duty, around the office or at home.
“My charism probably is crises,” said Fr. Joe O’Donnell, head chaplain for the Arizona Department of Public Safety.
Fr. O’Donnell is on-call to meet officers at accident scenes. He finds himself in the field at least once a week, but may spend as much as 20-30 hours a week on the job. That’s because he ensures a chaplain is present at the scene of most serious accidents in the state.
“The traffic scenes are ugly,” Fr. O’Donnell said.
He remembers one freeway accident recently when a car was rear-ended. The impact caused the first vehicle carrying a family to explode. No one survived.
“Several of the officers went home that night, woke up their kids and then just held them on the couch and cried,” he said. Officers will contact their kids after handling a case involving the death of a juvenile, the chaplain said.
“And I encourage them to do that,” Fr. O’Donnell said.
His job is to be there for the officers with practical and spiritual support. That may mean going with them on a next-of kin notification call one day and helping them begin the grieving process or confront post-traumatic stress the next.
“We as police officers are big, bad and tough,” said Sgt. Tim Mason, public information officer for Arizona’s Department of Public Safety. “We have to be a little shut off and just get the job done.”
At some point, their experiences can take a toll and they have to work through suppressed feelings.
Jesuit Father Edward Reese spends a lot of time as chaplain for the Phoenix Police Department helping officers address psychological issues from the past.
If a person was shot or killed, Fr. Reese said the officers often see an image of that person weeks later sitting on their couch. Chaplains help officers confront such images and resume normal lives.
Notifying next-of-kin
When the case involves death and next-of-kin notification, Fr. O’Donnell offers to go with the officer. He’s done more than 200 such calls in his nine years with Arizona’s public safety personnel.
“It’s probably the most difficult thing they do,” Fr. O’Donnell said, and they get little training.
The chaplain created a presentation to guide the officers through the process. He encourages the officers to “do for them what you’d like them to do for you.”
The officer and the chaplain tell the news simply and straightforwardly and then they wait for a response. Fr. O’Donnell has waited as little as 10 minutes and as long as four hours. He said everyone’s reaction to death is different.
“If there’s guilt involved, you hear every bit of it,” Fr. O’Donnell said. “You just let them get it all out.”
He then directs them toward their own priest, minister or rabbi to see them through the grieving process. Fr. O’Donnell extends the same service to the officers.
Sgt. Mason finds the interfaith aspect one of the biggest benefits to the department’s chaplaincy. Even though the officers practice different faiths or no faith, he said they share a spiritual bond.
The chaplains are respectful of all faiths, but can specialize in their own faith background if an officer requests it.
“If I can’t fill their needs, I find the person who can,” Fr. O’Donnell said.
Arizona’s Department of Public Safety has 14 chaplains representing eight faiths.
Mason, a St. Bernadette parishioner, has often found the Catholic chaplain to be a great source of comfort and understanding. He has approached Fr. O’Donnell for prayer or just to talk about work or family stresses.
Connecting with family
That understanding allows the officers to improve their relationship with their family.
“Our ministry is to the sworn officers and the civilian employees first of all and by extension, their families,” Fr. O’Donnell said.
Chaplains work with families to help them understand workplace pressures. They talk about how adrenaline often carries the officers through their jobs. Family members should let officers unwind when they get home.
Whenever an officer is injured on the job, chaplains offer emotional support to both the officer and the family. Mason remembers Fr. O’Donnell visiting him following a bad accident a few years ago.
“He walked into the hospital and instantly made me feel better,” Mason said.
Fr. Reese offers to sit with an officer’s wife by his hospital bed and has even sat there with relatives and other officers who just want to be with the body.
“All of them are deeply affected” by the loss, Fr. Reese said.
A chaplain’s job sometimes involves offering funerals, something the police chaplain said he has had to do too many times in the last couple of years.
They also get invited to oversee baptisms and weddings.
“I see it as a way of paying back the officers and their families for what they do for us,” Fr. Reese said of his service to the chaplaincy. “We could have four or five more priests and be busy.”
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