Father Roach brings God's peace to patients

By Bill Doyle
CFP Correspondent
Chaplains usually anoint the foreheads and hands of the sick with oil while reciting prayers to provide comfort and peace.
Unfortunately, during a pandemic, touching isn’t always possible. 
Father Francis J. Roach, a chaplain at UMass Memorial Medical Center, sees most patients in their rooms and anoints their foreheads and hands, but he must visit COVID patients remotely instead of at their bedsides at the hospital.
“Laying hands on the sick, that’s a biblical prescription,” Father Roach said, “but we can’t touch. We do it virtually. It separates people from people and that makes it more difficult. I think a lot of people do experience a little bit of tension because it’s kind of an artificial arrangement. I think people want to be spontaneous. They want to touch and laugh or cry or whatever.”
Father Roach does the best he can. Sometimes, he converses with a COVID patient on one iPad while talking to the patient’s family on another. As he pointed out, at least an iPad allows a family to take part from Iowa or some other place far away.
“He, like all of us, had to adjust to working in a COVID environment,” Catherine A. Pimley, pastoral care supervisor at UMass Memorial Medical Center, said of Father Roach, “using technology and that kind of thing, which has been a challenge, but he has been adjusting to using that with the support of the nurses and caregivers.”
Fortunately, the number of COVID patients has dropped a great deal.
“It looks as though we’re getting back to normal,” he said.
UMass Memorial Medical Center has 10 chaplains, four of them full time. Father Roach is the only full-time chaplain who is a Catholic priest. He works at both UMass Memorial campuses to offer pastoral support, the sacrament of the sick, and end-of-life care.
When Father Roach, 73, retires as a chaplain at the end of August, he will have completed 34 years in the ministry. He became a chaplain in August of 1987 at Worcester State Hospital and served there for 7½ years. Ever since, he’s considered himself to be a mental health chaplain at heart.
He spent 5½ years at St. Vincent Hospital before moving on to UMass Memorial Medical Center in August of 2000. Last December, he was among the long-time employees whom the hospital honored for their service, but the ceremony had to be conducted online due to the pandemic.
Father Roach, who is in residence at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Worcester, said he may work a couple more years for the diocese after he retires from the hospital.
“It’s just a little bit too much,” he said. “It’s very strenuous and my health is starting to break down a bit so I have to think about looking into something else.”
“He’s been doing this for a very long time,” said Ms. Pimley. “Twenty years in a level 1 trauma center is a long time for anybody, for any chaplain, plus all the years before. You’re dealing with death and intensity and trauma all the time. That’s a long time to be doing this, especially in a level 1 trauma center. It’s different than some of the other hospitals because you’re dealing with the hardest stuff. So he sees a lot of that.”
A chaplain’s life can be challenging.
“What do you tell a mother and a father who have lost their infant?” Father Roach asked. “It’s terrible.”
For most of his time at UMass, Father Roach met nearly every week with Father David Doiron, the pastoral counselor, to help him cope with the sickness and death he saw each day.
“You have to do that because it just builds up,” Father Roach said. “He was very, very good. Always, issues were coming out. Sometimes, I didn’t even realize I had issues and there they were, and I’m glad he was there for it because I was able to pierce a lot of the emotions, kind of burst the bubble, so things would allow me to continue onward. It’s not an easy job by any means.”
He used to meet weekly with other chaplains at St. Vincent to discuss their troubles.
“Sometimes it doesn’t seem as if God is around when we need him so it’s good to have other people to talk to, to get answers to questions,” Father Roach said.
Father Roach grew up in Millbury and his family moved to Worcester when he was 10. He graduated from St. Peter Central Catholic High School; St. Thomas Seminary in Bloomfield, Connecticut; St. Paul’s Seminary in Ottawa, Canada; and the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.
For his first 14 years as a priest, he served as an associate pastor at St. Peter in Worcester, St. Camillus de Lellis in Fitchburg, St. Philip Neri in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada; Sacred Heart in Southbridge, and Our Lady of the Holy Rosary in Gardner.
He said he was approaching a mid-life crisis when a former classmate in seminary school who worked as a Veterans Affairs chaplain in Albany, New York, recommended hospital work. Bishop Harrington supported the move.
Father Roach said working in a parish was like being a part of a family, but a chaplain doesn’t usually get to know patients very well. Nevertheless, some people have sent Father Roach cards and some have recognized him at the grocery store or the post office and thanked him for taking care of a relative.
“I’m glad that I went into hospital work,” he said. “When I look back on it, it’s been sometimes a rocky road, but there have been a lot of good times, a lot of happiness, a lot of joy and a lot of learning, too.”
While a chaplain, he earned masters degrees in counseling psychology at Anna Maria College and in biblical studies at Providence College, as well as earning a doctorate in psychology and clinical studies from Andover Newton Theological School. 
“We’ve had a lot of happy situations where people do get better,” he said, “but the ones that seem to stick in mind are the ones who don’t. That’s unfortunate.”
Ms. Pimley is a lay chaplain who is Catholic so she can distribute Communion. She said she considers Father Roach to be a quiet, gentle soul who is willing to do whatever is needed.
“He’s very gentle with the patients,” she said. “He listens, he engages them. He is a calming presence to the staff and the families – they seem to have great respect for him. That sense of sacramental ministry is a very big part of what he does.”
Father Roach admits he fears getting ill during his hospital work.
“I think everybody does,” he said.
Fortunately, he never tested positive for COVID before getting vaccinated twice.
Despite the challenges, he’d highly recommend chaplaincy.
“I have happy memories,” he said. “I was afraid I would probably look back and see nothing but the bad times, but no, it’s just the opposite. It’s the good times.”
The best times are when patients surprise everyone by recovering and going home.
“There is such a joyous feeling that goes with that,” he said. “The fact that they’ve come through death to life and it’s like a celebration of God’s love, his mercy.”