Catholic Medical Quarterly Volume 67(3) August 2017
Faith in Medicine
The Importance of Spiritual Care in Hospital:
Taking Patients to
Mass
“I remember when I first qualified as a doctor taking a couple of people to Mass on Sunday at a time when there was a Mass in the hospital. A few days before a lady had collapsed unconscious with a cardiac arrest. Happily she survived, though she was very ill. Seeing me taking others to Mass she asked if I could take her too. I told her, “No” because she was too ill. She was still there the following Sunday and she called me over to ask if I would take her this week. At the end of Mass she burst into tears and told us that she had not been to Mass in 40 years. Her mother in law had made her promise not to go as condition of her marriage. It was a beautiful afternoon!”