NYPD CHAPLAINS

SUMMER 2019
Photo: Msgr. Robert Romano, pastor and NYPD chaplain. CNS Photo/Gregory A. Shemitz

SERVING THOSE WHO SERVE

FR. JOSEPH FRANCO, THE PASTOR OF SACRED HEART PARISH IN THE BRONX, has two sets of work clothes: the clerical suit and Roman collar of the parish priest and the blue jacket and insignia of the New York Police Department. He ministers to parishioners in the Highbridge neighborhood and also to a mega-parish of 35,000 uniformed officers and 15,000 civilian employees of the NYPD.

As an NYPD chaplain, he performs a wide variety of duties: saying invocations at departmental dinners or graduations, presiding at funerals or memorial services, counseling officers and their families about a wide range of problems – and sometimes comforting them in the wake of tragedy. “It’s a big challenge to combine the job of police chaplain with the responsibilities of a pastor,” Fr. Franco says. “Sometimes I get called away and I miss events in the parish. Without the support of the others in my rectory, I would not be able to do it.”

Fr. Franco is one of four Catholic priests in the NYPD Chaplains Unit. Another is Msgr. Robert Romano, assistant chief chaplain and also pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Brooklyn, who has been in the unit for more than 20 years. Msgr. Romano remembers the event that permanently deepened the relationships between NYPD officers and their chaplains.

“Everything changed with 9/11,” he says. “Before, cops would see chaplains at graduation and promotion – and when a police officer was injured or died in the line of duty, the chaplains would go and make the notification to the family. But after 9/11, it was a totally different thing. We lost 23 members, and each of them had a funeral, some had two funerals because maybe they didn’t find the body right away. So 9/11 showed that we were there and that police officers needed a presence in their life, somebody to help them. We said Mass every Sunday down at Ground Zero. When we started there were 13 cops that came; on the last day, when they took the last piece of metal from the site, I said Mass in the middle of Murray and Greenwich, in the street, for thousands of people and cops.”

Now, officers often ask to see a chaplain for deeply personal reasons. “They come to us when they’re sick or maybe someone in their family is sick, or maybe they are in trouble with alcohol or prescription painkillers after an injury,” Msgr. Romano says. “They say ‘Father, could you pray for us?’ And they also come for good things: ‘Could you baptize our baby? Could you marry us?’ They come because they trust us. That’s why we wear the uniform, to let them know that we understand what they do. We know the job.”

Two or three times a month, every chaplain is assigned a “duty day,” during which he is on call for 24 hours. “If a police officer is ever shot or injured in some sort of adversarial action, that has the highest priority, and if it’s your duty day, you have to drop everything and show up. I wish that I could say that hasn’t happened much in the two years since I joined the unit, but it has. Another thing we respond to immediately is any self-inflicted wound by a police officer,” Fr. Franco says. After any tragedy, he adds, “NYPD is amazing about getting chaplains to not only the family but also the officers back at the precinct, to be sure anybody who needs it gets some kind of spiritual support.”

After a crisis or funeral, sometimes a family does not want to see a chaplain for a while. “I go sometimes to the hospital or to the home,” Msgr. Romano says, “and the family doesn’t want to be bothered. Sometimes they’re mad at the PD or they’re mad at God and they’re mad at us because we had to bring the bad news. Over time, 99 percent of them change, because they realize what the PD does: We never forget them.”

For all the challenge of balancing two very demanding jobs – local pastor and NYPD chaplain – Fr. Franco looks forward to doing it for decades to come. “I have always loved the idea of serving those who serve,” he says. “I love working with police officers. Their willingness to give up their life for an unknown neighbor is right out of the Gospel, and anything I can do to support them, I want to do.”