Ministry of Hope is an uplifting and compelling new series, sharing moments of joy, exhilaration and crisis with the men and women whose job it is to bring faith, hope and love to strangers in three very different Irish institutions.
This powerful and inspiring observational series follows three Irish chaplains over a whole year, as they reach out to people at their moments of greatest vulnerability, to counsel, inspire and care for them.
Margaret Sleator was one of the first lay chaplains in Dublin’s Mater Misericordiae University Hospital when she started 15 years ago. Catherine Black is the new chaplain in Shelton Abbey Open Prison in Arklow, Co. Wicklow. And Philip McKinley is the Church of Ireland member of a new multi-denominational chaplaincy team, serving 17,000 students from all over the world at Dublin City University.
Their jobs are to give guidance, support and inspiration: to patients facing illness and death; to prisoners seeking redemption; and to students struggling with campus life. Their vocations are all steeped in deep faith. But, in an increasingly secular Ireland, why do we still rely on religious chaplains to shepherd us through life’s challenges?
Series 1, episode 3
In the third and last episode of Ministry of Hope, having set up the DCU Gospel Choir as a way of bringing students together, Philip McKinley prepares them for the performance of a life time – in front of former President Mary McAleese at Dublin’s Helix venue. In Shelton Abbey Open Prison, Catherine Black helps an inmate who’s about to become a father. And in the Mater Hospital, Margaret Sleator supports a mother of two young children, diagnosed with cancer and clinging hard to her Christian faith.
For Margaret Sleator in the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, “The essence of a good chaplain is to become a good listener. You can’t assume that people want you there either. You have to know when you’re needed and when you’re not needed.”
This week, Margaret is supporting Indian born Sumithra Devi, who has recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. She converted from Hinduism to Christianity as an adult, and her faith is giving her hope. “The doctor said my cancer is not curable,” says 41-year-old
Sumithra. “I said to the consultant, ‘Jesus is there, he will heal me, I trust him.’ I’m praying, because I have to live for my kids…This is not the end for me.”
For Margaret, it’s a moving encounter. “I have mixed feelings,” she says. “I felt she’s in denial, and that broke my heart a little bit. But who am I (…) to take that away from her. She has to hold on to that. And then we have to believe that higher power is there as well.”
It can be hard for Margaret to deal with so many traumatic and emotional stories every day. “You’d like to do more, and you can’t. In all the years that I’m here, you’d like to be able to say that you could harden to situations. But you can’t, because the day you harden, you close shop. I have my little areas in the hospital where I go for the little cry, and the make-up is in the bag, and then off I go again.’
We also follow Margaret as she travels back home to Ballycullane in Co Wexford, to visit the place where she had her own brush with death, in a car accident 30 years ago. “I thought I was dying really. You could call it a conversion or an awakening moment. I remember saying, ‘I’ve got a second chance.’ But I never regretted that happening to me. It took the following ten years to begin the journey to what I’m doing today.”
Catherine Black worked as a University chaplain for four years, before she got the job in Shelton Abbey Open Prison in Co Wicklow. “It’s not that different to being in the university. They all have the same super-confidence, but lack of confidence. The guys here, maybe, have made the wrong choices … and ended up in Shelton Abbey as opposed to University.”
This week, Catherine supports an inmate who’s worried about his pregnant girlfriend, while another prisoner is not allowed to go to the funeral of a close friend. “A lot of the men see you as the nice person who can get you things, and very quickly you have to dispel that,” she says. “I haven’t waved a magic wand, but the fact that they can talk about it, they can be heard, helps.”
“I do think the general population have a mistrust of those who are in prison,” she says, “because all they hear in the media is the horrible piece, the crime. I can be as horrified as anybody, and absolutely disgusted… But when the chaplain meets those people who are caught, their offence is only a small bit of who they are. And I really enjoy helping them cope with doing their sentence, and doing it well.”
There are 16 full- and part-time chaplains working across all the Irish Prison Service’s 12 detention centres. Many of the inmates in Shelton have received help and support from other chaplains before they meet Catherine as they approach the end of their sentence. One prisoner says, “I’ve met some chaplains in my time in prison. They’ve helped me through bad times, they’ve brought me back. They mean a lot to me. I don’t get visits in this place. Without that [the support of chaplains like Margaret], I’d be totally lost.”
Catherine feel that “…Especially for those serving a life sentence…they really appreciate the chaplain coming in for a cup of tea. It might be the only time they have a conversation with another human being.”
In Dublin City University, the Church of Ireland lay chaplain, Philp McKinley, has been instrumental in setting up a new gospel choir, to give a group of disparate, sometimes lonely students a common purpose and project… and an activity where they can have fun and do something to be proud of. It reflects his wider approach to his role: “Part of chaplaincy is encouraging. Can I help a Muslim become a good Muslim, a Hindu become a good Hindu? We want… all boats to rise. Everyone to feel… they are equipped to be who they are called to be.”
One of the students in the new gospel choir is final year Chemistry student, Udi Omo. A regular at the DCU Interfaith Centre, she says, “People don’t understand how difficult it is to be a student. There’s so much stress going on, exams and lectures. Sometimes you’re lost… and feel really down. But it’s great to have somewhere that you can just come and release everything and be absorbed in the positive vibe.”
For Philip, himself only in his mid-30s, “the transition from 18-22 is a hugely transformative time. It’s incredible seeing someone in September, and then, come May, they’ve just developed a new personality, more rounded; [and] developed their own resilience.”
Udi came to Ireland as an asylum seeker when she was 11 years old. “It was a big deal if you didn’t have your residency to stay, ’cause you’re panicking: ‘Are they going to send me back home?’ I used to feel so ashamed as an asylum seeker, ’cause it’s this brand over you.” There’s no sign of shame, though, only joy and talent, as Udi and the rest of the choir get to perform in front of the former President, Mary McAleese, in one of Ireland’s most significant music venues, The Helix.