Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is receiving backlash after it ended its contract for pastoral care and directed a "cease and desist order" to a community of Franciscan Catholic priests and friars at Holy Name College on March 31, days before Holy Week.
The priests had spent the last two decades ministering to U.S. military personnel, veterans, and their beneficiaries at the medical center.
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“It is incomprehensible that essential pastoral care is taken away from the sick and the aged when it was so readily available,” Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, the head of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, said in a statement on Good Friday.
The Archdiocese for the Military Services was created by Pope Saint John Paul II to provide the Catholic Church's full range of pastoral ministries to service members in the U.S. military.
The archdiocese said the medical facility opted to award the contract for Catholic pastoral care to "a secular defense contracting firm that cannot fulfill the statement of work in the contract."
“The refusal to provide adequate pastoral care while awarding a contract for Catholic ministry to a for-profit company that has no way of providing Catholic priests to the medical center is a glaring violation of service members’ and veterans’ Right to the Free Exercise of Religion,” the archdiocese said in a statement.
It added, "Especially, during Holy Week, the lack of adequate Catholic pastoral care causes untold and irreparable harm to Catholics who are hospitalized and therefore a captive population whose religious rights the government has a constitutional duty to provide for and protect."
The Archbishop for the Military Services maintains that while Walter Reed’s chaplain office claims to provide Catholic care during Holy Week, they are still "without Catholic priests present at the medical center and service members and veterans are being denied the constitutional right to practice their religion."
The Archdiocese's attorney Elizabeth A. Tomlin has reached out to the contracting officers at Walter Reed about the Franciscans’ Catholic ministry being reinstated but says the medical center has not responded to their requests.
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Walter Reed said on Saturday in a statement that the pastoral care contract “is under review" and insists their medical center is "a welcoming and healing environment that honors and supports a full range of religious, spiritual, and cultural needs."
"Tomorrow, Catholic Easter Services will be provided to those who wish to attend. Services will include a celebration of Mass and the administration of Confession by an ordained Catholic Priest," the statement said. "For many years, a Catholic ordained priest has been on staff at WRNMMC providing religious sacraments to service members, veterans and their loved ones. There has also been a pastoral care contract in place to supplement those services provided."