“As Catholic chaplains we are concerned that the needs of Catholics in the hospitals of England and Wales remain unanswered”. The denunciation is contained in a statement issued by thirty British Catholic hospital chaplains at the end of a conference in which the Archbishop of Birmingham Vincent Nichols also participated. “We ask hospitals to enable us to perform our ministry by making available to us the information we need”. The legislation on the protection of information of 1998 prohibits hospitals in the UK from divulging the religion of patients; the consequence is that patients themselves must ask in an explicit way that they would like to meet a priest. According to Tom Williams, auxiliary bishop of Liverpool and spokesman of Catholic chaplains, the new law has given rise to a situation of confusion. “If a patient arrives in hospital he is forced to contact the chaplain in advance to be able to meet him. If the patient is in a state of coma or unconsciousness, he is obviously unable to do so, and we priests can only hope that he has with him a document that says he’s a Catholic”.
