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St. Matthew Parish sacristan Rick Raffo, far left, is pictured with parochial vicar Father Ben Rosado, Ingrid Pera and pastor Msgr. John Talestore outside the San Mateo church Oct. 4, 2020. Raffo's experience caring for his ailing mother led him to join the first-ever emotional support ministry at the San Mateo parish. (Photo by Dennis Callahan/Catholic San Francisco)
Oct. 4, 2020
Christina Gray
Catholic San Francisco
Rick Raffo knows what it’s like to be “at wit’s end.”
The 71-year-old lifelong St. Matthew parishioner and sacristan was overwhelmed with the crushing emotional duty of caring for his beloved mother who slowly succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease 10 years ago.
“I saw first-hand what happens when people are having a problem like that,” Raffo told Catholic San Francisco Sept. 28. The support he found in a caregivers' support group at a local hospital helped sustain him and know, “I wasn’t alone in this.”
Raffo’s personal experience brought him together with about a half-dozen others at the San Mateo parish in February to begin training to serve on its first-ever mental health ministry team.
St. Matthew and Our Lady of Angels Parish in Burlingame were chosen as sort of beta sites when the archdiocese’s office of pastoral ministry embarked in 2019 upon a plan to respond to the mental health needs of parish communities.
Along with four other California dioceses, the Archdiocese of San Francisco is following a model successfully used in the Diocese of San Diego. It enables parishes to act as an initial resource for discovering professional mental health resources for themselves or family members.
Despite pandemic restrictions that nearly immediately canceled any in-person trainings, teams at the two pilot parishes carried on with Zoom trainings designed by the mental health ministry coordinator, Richard Collyer.
St. Raphael, St. Anselm and St. Hilary parishes in Marin County also completed team trainings this summer.
“I didn’t want to lose the zeal of the people who had come forward,” St. Matthew pastor Msgr. John Talesfore told Catholic San Francisco.
Msgr. Talesfore said the new ministry is intended to help the parish be a source of “spiritual companionship” to community members who are suffering.
He likened parish-based mental health ministry team members to first responders who might apply first aid to a physical injury that might ultimately require a medical professional.
“Someone applying first aid may apply a compress or Band-Aid to eliminate immediate suffering to the injured, but they are not going to be doing surgery any more than this group is going to be doing psychological analysis or counseling,” he said.
Msgr. Talesfore said the ministry is not a mental health practice that provides counseling, he said, nor is it spiritual direction or confession.
“It’s simply someone listening through the ears of faith to someone in the community who is talking about a hardship they are facing right now,” he said.
People whose family members are experiencing mental health issues can feel “isolated and invisible,” but ministers will have resources to offer from inside and outside the context of faith.
Each parish team establishes relationships with local resources and service agencies for possible referral. Each are identified as “responsible, respectful practitioners that honor and respect Catholic teaching on these matters,” Msgr. Talesfore said.
The parish will also incorporate a toolbox of Scripture readings, small verses and other sources of Christian compassion into the ministry.
The parish-based mental health initiative was prompted by the 2018 publication of “Hope and Healing,” a document produced by the Catholic bishops of California asking Catholics and all “people of goodwill” to advocate for mental health support.
Msgr. Talesfore referenced the bishops’ appeal in a May 1 editorial he wrote for the San Mateo Daily Journal for Mental Health Awareness Month. The succeeding four months have only added to the urgency of his message.
“Just about half of Americans say the coronavirus outbreak has taken a toll on their mental health,” he wrote. “Disruption to our plans and daily lives can bring waves of anger, depression, anxiety and grief wrapped up in threats of physical illness and financial insecurity.”
He warned of an “emerging mental health crisis” detailed in a report by the Journal of the American Medical Association that suggested communities and organizations consider training nontraditional groups to provide “psychological first aid.”
While St. Matthew will add a mental health ministry page to its website to direct parishioners, Msgr. Talesfore said the team ultimately functions as “an arm of the pastor’s ministry.”
“It’s all at the discretion of the pastor to provide more than he can,” he said, to those experiencing any kind of emotional pressures.
Msgr. Talesfore said the ministry currently operates primarily through his referral after someone seeks out pastoral counseling.
“If I were speaking to someone in a confessional and it became clear to me that this is something would be helpful, I could refer them to the ministry,” he said, obviously without breaking the seal.
Msgr. Talesfore said the mental health professionals, “unless they are strongly, strongly opposed to religion, which I think is a stereotype,” advise those seeking mental health help to cultivate strong support systems, such as a faith community.
Lara Montoya, a longtime parishioner of Our Lady of Angels Parish, is a member of the parish’s fledgling mental health ministry team.
The religious education teacher and confirmation coordinator is an associate mental health therapist at Peninsula High School in San Bruno, an alternative high school.
“In working with our youth and their families, I have found that those and their caregivers with a strong faith foundation and community are better able to manage the negative symptoms of mental health illnesses,” she said.
The seven-member parish mental health ministry team completed its training and will begin implementation this month led by Capuchin Father Michael Mahoney. Father Mahoney, she said, is a strong proponent of mental health, having studied to be a therapist before finding his vocation as a priest.
Montoya said the parish has expanded the ministry to its youth ministers, working with Chris Mariano, the archdiocesan coordinator of young adults and youth ministry on a youth training to be held this month.
“Everybody is feeling pressure,” said Msgr. Talesfore of the enduring challenges of 2020.
“Without the right spiritual answer made available, there are so many voices out there,” he said. “We’ve got the answer in the church and this is one new portal for people to enter through.”