We invite readers to send short stories about the ways in which their lives have been personally blessed by the life and work of priests and religious in our diocese.

By Karina Fabian

If you’ve ever had a medical emergency or have had to take someone you love to the hospital for a serious injury or illness, you probably know how reassuring it is to have someone on staff who can devote time to being with you – giving you information, praying with you, or just being a calming presence. That is the job of pastoral care workers like Sister Joy Duff.

Sister Duff left a nursing career to join the Sisters of Charity, Leavenworth, in 1969. She continued work as a nurse at St. John’s in Santa Monica, Calif., then St. James in Butte, in home health in Cheyenne, Wyo., until 1985; caring for the infirm sisters at the motherhouse in Leavenworth, Kan.; then for nine years with low-income clinics in Leavenworth, Kan.

After that, she took a course in pastoral/spiritual care, and was asked by St. James in Butte to come serve in pastoral care there. “Pastoral care,” she said, “is simply being with the person and ministering to their needs, not in a technical nursing part, but in the listening – being a comforting presence.”

It’s been a good change for her, she said, because while she still likes to learn more about her chosen field of nursing, it has become increasingly technical – and she’s glad to leave the hands-on work behind. “I’ve got some good muscles left, but I’m 71!” she joked.

She often works in the emergency room, where she sometimes acts as a go-between for families and those caring for a patient in crisis. It can be difficult, particularly when the patient isn’t doing well. She strives for a balance between honesty and hope without giving false hopes. Other times, however, she just waits with a family, and that can be hard, too. “I feel like a stick, here, but it’s amazing how afterward, so many thank me just for my presence.”

She works with patients, too, of all faiths – or none. The key is to be responsive to their needs, and if they are open, letting God work through her to bring them closer to him. She remembered one terminally ill patient who had no faith, and whom the nurses asked her to visit because he was not doing well.

“We chatted for awhile, and I asked him if he’d like to pray. He told me, ‘I never put God in my life,’ and I told him, ‘Let’s put the past behind you and pray now.’ We did and it changed his life.”

Sister Joy believes that spiritual care is an essential part of health care and encourages health care professionals to remember the importance of pastoral care. “We’re part of the team,” she said.


Published in The Montana Catholic, Vol. 20, No. 3, March 19, 2004.