"Just another day at the office"
In almost 39 years as a priest,
“I never did an anointing in a hospital while surgery was going on,” says Fr. Al Hirt, OFM
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Fr. Al Hirt, OFM
That changed when Fr. Al got a call from Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati. Told a religious sister was having heart surgery, he was asked to come to the operating room to anoint her. “I’m guessing the doctor was Catholic, and the surgery was not going well,” Fr. Al says. “I was free to go, so I went quickly.”
At the hospital he donned a gown and cap – everything but gloves – to enter the surgical theater. “The ‘charge’ nurse led me in and reminded me to stay 12 inches away from anything that was blue” – anything sterilized. “There must have been a dozen or so people,” obviously in the midst of surgery.
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Fr. Al soon saw the object of their attention. “I’m looking at an open chest with a heart beating. Wow!”
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Approaching the elderly person’s head, “I did a simple anointing, a laying on of hands. It was a rather quick experience; I was in and out.”
Fr. Al assumed the situation was so dire that the patient did not survive. When he called the hospital to find out he was told, “She was in [surgery] for clogged arteries, but the aorta broke. The surgeon was able to stop the bleeding” in time to pull her through.
She’s still hospitalized, “but they can’t do anything for a while; if she gets strong enough, they’ll go back and do the original surgery.”
In the meantime, “Her sisters are saying it’s kind of a miracle” she survived thus far. “Just another day at the office,” Fr. Al says ruefully. “I guess I did all right.”
Fr. Al's story was originally published in the SJB NewsNotes edited by Toni Cashnelli.
Photo: © Fr. Frank Jasper, OFM
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