The Portuguese Church is planning to introduce next February an innovative post-graduate course for those who work in hospital pastoral care. The venture, which will be started up simultaneously in Porto and Lisbon, can count on the support of the UCP (Faculty of Theology and Institute of Sciences of Health), of the National Commission of the Pastoral Care of Health and of the Brothers and Sisters belonging to the Hospital Order. The national coordinator of hospital chaplains, Father José Nuno, explains that the course will be aimed at “chaplains, spiritual assistants, animators of medical personnel, but will also be open to others”. Recalling that of the Law on Religious Liberty, in art. 13, provides for “the right to assistance and to the practice of religious acts in hospitals and in other healthcare establishments”, Father Nuno said that “religious assistance would need to be regulated in our time”, and announced that “the Ministry of Health is also working on this problem and changes could be announced in the near future”. In the meantime, the National Assembly of Chaplaincies will be held on 27 November, with the participation of the Secretary of State for Health, Carmen Pignatelli. It is intended to be a “forum” for reflection and enunciation of the Church’s position on the question. Father Nuno thinks pastoral workers will have the chance to review the implications and opportunities that the changes envisaged in the National Health System will have for the service they perform, emphasizing how important it is for “spiritual assistance to enact the humanitarian component of healthcare that”, in his view, “plays an ever-more profound and essential role”.
