Opportunities for sharing, exchanging experiences and mutual learning in Pastoral Counselling of the sick
Opportunities for sharing, exchanging experiences and mutual learning in Pastoral Counselling of the sick

Summary/Abstract: The Romanian Orthodox Church was excluded from the public space during thecommunist period and all its religious assistance was restricted to the internal spaceof the Church (rituals and religious ceremonies). After 1989, the Church tried todevelop its religious assistance, but after a long period of communism it was quitedifficult to change the mentality of people and their opinion that the Church shouldnot be present in the life of society.The management of the present problems (secularization, the lack of the meaning oflife, spiritual crisis, isolation, depression, addictions) is very difficult and it becamenecessary to look for people who could advise those who are in existential crisis.It is important for Christians to seek the meaning of life in Christian spirituality tobe able to overcome the problems and the challenges of the contemporary world.This requires the help of experienced people who possess skills of psychology andreligion.In this context, Pastoral counselling is very important because it is a unique form ofcounselling which uses spiritual and psychological resources for healing the wholeperson: mind, body and soul. Pastoral counselling is necessary for the existentialsearches and for finding possible solutions in order to acquire the balance of life, inrelation with God, with other people and with the social environment. I decided to choose the Pastoral counselling of the sick because of the experience Ihad during my period of internship at the Ecumenical Chaplaincy of CHUV (Hospital of Lausanne), deeply impressed by all the activities gearing towards the spiritualcare of patients.My interest was to find out what the Romanian Orthodox Church could learn fromthe other Churches in Lausanne (Switzerland), who had already worked out a detailed Pastoral counselling program for the sick in order to offer religious assistanceto the people.I analyzed the services of the Ecumenical Chaplaincy of CHUV for the spiritual careof the patients and I compared this with the services of the chaplains for the Pastoralcounselling of the sick in the Religious Assistance Service of the hospitals in theRomanian Orthodox Church.The main conclusion of the paper is that in the Romanian Orthodox Church it isimportant to develop a new perspective of ecumenical cooperation between confessions recognized by the Romanian Government, that can provide some uniqueopportunities for sharing and exchanging experiences and for mutual learning in thePastoral counselling of the sick.

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