Hospital nuns go online with God
Published: April 10, 2007
When Sister Chaminade Kelley needs to make a prayer request, she can now do it with the click of a mouse.
Kelley, who works in the adult psychiatric unit at St. Mary’s Hospital, is a frequent user of the Hospital Sisters of St. Francis prayer request Web site. She submits prayer requests she receives at the hospital online.
“I feel it’s an opportunity to do a holistic mission for health care,” said Kelley, 79.
She also is gradually informing others about the Web site.
“They can click on the site, put in their prayer request and don’t even have to put in a name. All the information is anonymous,” she said. “If someone is suffering from cancer, they don’t have to use their name because God knows who they are.”
The motherhouse of the American Province of the Hospital Sisters of St. Francis in Springfield set up a prayer request feature on its Web site, www.hospitalsisters.org, Dec. 8.
Brian Blasco, director of communications, said it was started on that particular day because of the Roman Catholic Church’s observance of the Feast of Immaculate Conception, which is a holy day to commemorate the conception of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The sisters not only pay homage to her but devote their prayer life to her.
Blasco said anyone can post a prayer online simply by clicking on the prayer request icon on the Web page. A box pops up to enter information. When they submit it, they get an automatic response saying, “The Sisters will keep you in their prayers.”
A secretary at the St. Francis motherhouse retrieves all the prayer request messages and prints them on a list to be posted on a board outside the chapel where the sisters pray.
“The prayer request online is just an addition of what the sisters have been doing for years. People have always called the convent with their prayer requests,” Blasco said. “But we found in the age of computer technology, it’s almost therapeutic for them to get whatever it is off their mind. A person may be going through a crisis, and this gives them an opportunity to respond to someone.”
He added that Sister Angelus Gardiner, 95, at the motherhouse is completely deaf, and computers are her only means of communicating with others.
Employees at St. John’s Hospital in Springfield were always sending their prayer requests online to Gardiner. So in a way, she was already leading the online revolution of praying for others.
Internet prayer circles have grown over the past decade, ever since the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado and the death of Princess Diana, according to an article on Crosswalk.com, a Christ-centered corporation that puts out biblical-based content online.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans go online for faith-related reasons, according to Pew Internet and American Life Project. And based on a survey, about 7 percent of the nation’s 128 million Internet surfers have responded to online prayer requests.
Blasco said the Hospital Sisters of St. Francis’ Web site has received 850 prayer requests since it began in December.
As for Kelley, entering online prayer requests has made her more composed behind the computer, something she didn’t like to deal with before.
“It’s a wonderful resource,” she said. “At first, I thought it was cold and an impersonal way of doing it (prayer requests). But it’s new technology and the age we live in.”
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