Palliative care physician and academic Natasha Michael has reminded guests at a fundraising event in Melbourne of the importance of seminarians in pastoral care. Source: Melbourne Catholic.
“Remember that every seminarian that you support walks into a hospital. Every seminarian you support will provide the sacraments to someone who’s dying. Every seminarian you support provides respite to those of us who are working for the sick and the ill,” Dr Michael told the almost 500 guests who gathered on August 30 at Moonee Valley Racecourse for this year’s Archbishop’s Dinner.
Dr Michael, a palliative care physician, academic and Associate Professor at the University of Notre Dame Australia, was the guest speaker at the flagship event of the Knights of the Southern Cross Victoria, which raises funds for the education of seminarians at Corpus Christi College, and for those studying to be chaplains for the Australian Defence Force.
This year, $88,000 was raised for the seminary, a record for the annual event, which has now raised more than $1.6 million over its 24 years.
Encouraging guests to give generously in support of seminarians, Dr Michael observed that “it takes longer to be a priest than it takes to be a doctor” and said that in her 20 years as a palliative care doctor, “I’ve called on many, many priests, religious people, spiritual care providers to care for my patients when they’re anguished or as they approach death”.
In a moving speech that shared images and stories from her long and distinguished career in palliative medicine, she paid tribute to all those who accompany the sick and dying, supporting and comforting them not only in their physical pain but also in their psychological and existential distress.
In recent years, she said, the greatest challenge in palliative care has been the introduction of voluntary assisted dying. With Professor David Kassan, she has produced the first Australian study seeking to understand why people seek VAD.
“You think that it’s pain,” she said, “but actually … they suffer existentially more than they suffer physically … It’s this psycho-existential distress of helplessness, pointlessness, hopelessness that drives a desire for death.”
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Palliative care in spotlight as ‘night of knights’ raises record $88K for seminarians (Melbourne Catholic)
