It’s not uncommon for Jesuits to discover their vocation to the Society of Jesus while attending Jesuit-run high schools or universities. But Jesuit scholastic Jason Brauninger’s vocation story is different — he found the Society of Jesus on the Internet.

Brauninger was always curious about a religious vocation, but the diocesan and monastic life didn’t seem to fit him. The more he researched the Society of Jesus, the more he felt called to it, despite having never met a Jesuit. What he learned online made an impact. He was struck by the Jesuit commitment to working in the world and the emphasis on using one’s gifts and talents to serve others.

Born and raised in New Orleans, Brauninger had started training as a junior firefighter at the age of 14 and received a bachelor’s degree in fire science before entering the Society. However, while praying during a 30-day retreat as a Jesuit novice, he felt drawn toward the nursing profession. “It wasn’t quite what I expected to hear,” Brauninger says of the discovery. “But everything has fallen into place and it all happened because of the grace of God.”

Brauninger completed a bachelor’s degree in nursing at Saint Louis University and became a cardiac care nurse. Now Brauninger is at Regis University in Denver, where he lives with the Regis Jesuit Community, works as a trauma nurse at a local hospital and teaches in the school of nursing.

“It is a great privilege to be at Regis. I’m able to continue my formation as a Jesuit, work as a clinician and learn how to be a professor,” Brauninger says. “I love being with the students.”

—Regis University

Fr. Sheehan recently spoke to Boston’s Catholic newspaper, The Pilot, about proposed legalized physician-assisted suicide in Massachusetts, which he considers a failure to meet the needs of the dying.

“I would like to see that people receive an approach that attends to their suffering in all its dimensions from the beginning of a serious illness,” Fr. Sheehan said.  He said those dimensions include attention to spiritual needs as well as mental and physical needs.

A medical educator trained in internal medicine and geriatrics and an expert in palliative care, Fr. Sheehan currently serves as the provincial of the New England Province of the Society of Jesus.

“This is a place where St. Ignatius said, ‘Love needs to be shown in deeds not words.’ The care and our whole way we approach people as they face the end of life is an issue that needs further attention. A distorted way to attend to it is what has come out of this assisted suicide [movement], but the underlying fears, concerns and discomfort about what the end of life might mean is real whether or not you agree or disagree,” Fr. Sheehan said.

Fr. Sheehan believes fear is a large contributor to attitudes that push people to choose to end their own lives, adding that the healthcare system can address these fears, provided caregivers make a sustained effort to maintain high standards of treatment in the system and in society.

“There is a bottom line that we have the fifth commandment ‘Though shalt not kill,’ and the killing of innocent life is considered intrinsically evil, that is, it is always wrong. And so to take the life, or to provide the means for a person to kill himself is considered an intrinsically evil act, because it violates first the life of the person. Second, it is a larger assault against what it means for human dignity,” Fr. Sheehan said.

Read the full story at The Pilot.

Jesuit Father Ken Johnson at the door of one of the hospitals he serves.

Jesuit Father Ken Johnson shares his experiences as a priest and doctor in Zambia and Malawi:

As a young man I had met several priests (Jesuit and non-Jesuit) who inspired me with their lives of generous service, putting their considerable talents wholly at the service of others. But it was a few Jesuits who helped me pray through the Spiritual Exercises that crystallized my desire to enter the Society – largely to grow in the prayerful search for God’s will and to grow in understanding of how I could more fully and more generously cooperate with it. This desire was there for a long time, but it slowly developed as I matured through studies in adolescence and as a young man.

I completed medical studies before I was able to enter the Society and for some time thought I might leave that work behind as a new life developed within the Society. During the years of formation in the Society, my superiors helped me to search for new ways of putting to good use the experiences I had already had – and I became associated briefly with several medical schools for brief periods, moving to different places and meeting different persons as is the custom of a Jesuit scholastic. After ordination I had expected to return to a medical school, but I was given the mandate to go to Zambia. That was in February 1993.

My first assignment in Zambia was at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka – a placement that was very providential since I had the opportunity to meet many fine young doctors with whom I remain friends today and to get acquainted with the expected standards of care in a recognizable but somewhat different environment. For several years afterwards I went to explore work in a Catholic mission hospital so as to understand the distinctive service Catholic hospitals provide. Then I returned to the University Hospital and subsequently to a district general hospital contributing to the teaching of medical students, registrars (residents in training) and clinical officers (physician assistants). In these different settings I was able to help many sick patients. I was also very fortunate to network with sisters, brothers and priests and found that I could assist them and their families. Although I do not celebrate the sacraments in the hospital, I have found many opportunities for ministry in parishes and in retreat work. I have found that I have quite enough leisure to be of help in spiritual direction over these many years.

During the last 10 years of work in a district general hospital, I was able to source some funds to effect major improvements of the equipment of the hospital for the surgical theatre, for the ablution blocks and for the laundry. By some unexpected providential meetings, I began hosting a series of international students who came to get a month’s sense of medical work in an African setting.

In these last years I was feeling more and more settled into what had become a familiar environment of work and prayer. I enjoyed my work in the district general hospital, and I enjoyed living with the Jesuit community in a minor secondary school the Society had been running on behalf of several dioceses. Eventually the minor seminary was handed over to the local diocese and the Jesuit community was reassigned. I was wondering if the Spirit was going to help me grow in the same place or if there might be something new for me as well. Things were changing in the Jesuit Province –  and eventually the winds of change blew into my life.

Fr. Johnson relies on the truck provided him by stateside donations.

The Jesuit Province here includes both Zambia and Malawi. Jesuits have had a much longer tradition of works in Zambia, but there have been desires to expand our efforts in Malawi. And there are several new ventures which are quite exciting. We had been given a parish in Kasungu about 10 years ago – where the parish priests have been able to help the Catholic community grow (the parish has about 90 – yes ninety – outstations). Some of the development efforts have included re-building about 13 primary schools, and the province has committed to beginning a new Jesuit secondary school (coeducational, boarding and day scholars). The province is also beginning a new social apostolate center in Lilongwe. The Jesuit Refugee Service is active in Dzaleka near Lilongwe and runs educational programs for the camp – including a new venture in on-line distance education (a project supported by the American Jesuit universities). I was asked to join the Jesuit community there and see where I might contribute to medical services. I would still say I miss my old friends, but I am happy to be part of a new Jesuit effort.

Much to my surprise I found after my arrival in Malawi that its Ministry of Health preferred me to move to Blantyre and pick up work at the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital where the University of Malawi College of Medicine is situated. At the end of this first year, I continue the same work of clinical care for a ward of surgical patients and teaching of the medical students, interns, registrars and clinical officers. This academic environment is a big switch for me from my recent community general hospital, but it is familiar enough from previous experiences. It is quite a privilege to be able to help the young students develop and get ready to assume the leadership of medical care in their country.

I am assigned for now to live in a diocesan parish – one parish priest and the auxiliary bishop are residents there. I am invited to participate in the liturgies of the parish and I find it a very good and prayerful environment. Our parish has received many benefactions from the Friends of Medjugorje, and we have an outdoor Way of the Cross and Way of the Rosary which are frequented by several visiting pilgrimage groups. It is a diocese where many diocesan priests visit our house, and I enjoy gradually getting acquainted with many of them. Jesuits are not well known in this diocese, and I am happy to be one sent to contribute a little bit to the diocese.

I entered the Society because I was captivated by Ignatius’ confidence in praying to know the will of God and to work to more generously fulfill it. I find that through these many years I have been able to adapt to changing assignments because my fellow Jesuits have been there for me to help me pray and keep searching for the interior freedom to move with changing circumstances and to keep searching for God’s will. I have been able to share my own journey with others in the province and to be part of others’ journeys within the Jesuit Province here in Zambia and Malawi. I hadn’t expected the assignment to go to Zambia several years ago, but today I say thanks very much for it – God has worked many things for good. [New Orleans Province]

Fr. Medina celebrated his first Mass as a newly ordained priest in the hospital chapel.

“I think it will be a rich experience to be a priest and to serve patients in any way I can,” said Medina, who is familiar with the hospital, as he served there as a Eucharistic minister when he was studying at Loyola University Chicago.

Medina, who is fluent in English and Spanish, said he is looking forward to working with the diversity of people who serve as employees and volunteers at the hospital.

For more on this story, visit the Chicago-Detroit Province website.

After years working in health care, the 56-year-old has traded his scrubs for the collar of a Jesuit priest.

“I was interested in serving people,” Medina said. “I felt the call to do that by serving as a priest.”

Medina started his career in health care at age 19, working as a nursing assistant. He went on to become a registered nurse  and earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Wayne State University in Detroit. He then worked about 16 years off and on at the University of Michigan hospital.

That all ended nine years ago, when Medina applied to be a Jesuit and entered The Society of Jesus at Chicago-Detroit Province’s Novitiate at Loyola House in Berkley, Mich.

Friends and family said they weren’t surprised by the decision.

“We always knew (the priesthood) is where he’d end up,” said Medina’s sister, Linda Berkemeier. “He was sensitive and interested in theology. We were just waiting for him to do it.”

Read more about Fr. Joel Medina at mlive.com.

After years working in health care, the 56-year-old has traded his scrubs for the collar of a Jesuit priest.

“I was interested in serving people,” Medina said. “I felt the call to do that by serving as a priest.”

Medina started his career in health care at age 19, working as a nursing assistant. He went on to become a registered nurse  and earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Wayne State University in Detroit. He then worked about 16 years off and on at the University of Michigan hospital.

That all ended nine years ago, when Medina applied to be a Jesuit and entered The Society of Jesus at Chicago-Detroit Province’s Novitiate at Loyola House in Berkley, Mich.

Friends and family said they weren’t surprised by the decision.

“We always knew (the priesthood) is where he’d end up,” said Medina’s sister, Linda Berkemeier. “He was sensitive and interested in theology. We were just waiting for him to do it.”

Read more about Fr. Joel Medina at mlive.com.

Jesuit Father Myles Sheehan, Provincial of the New England Province of the Society of Jesus, recently appeared on CatholicTV to discuss his role as provincial and his vocation as a doctor with the hosts of This is the Day show. His interview begins at 15:09 in the video below.

Jesuit Father Bill Johnson was in the Dominican Republic when the earthquake struck Haiti on January 12. Fr. Johnson is the director for pastoral care at the Institute of Latin American Concern (ILAC) of Creighton University located just outside of Santiago. ILAC is a Catholic, Ignatian-inspired, collaborative health care and educational organization offering service-learning and immersion experience opportunities in dental, medical, nursing, pharmacy, law, physical therapy and occupational therapy for undergraduate and high school students, and also to faculty-led groups, medical/surgical teams and other colleges in the rural Dominican Republic.

When the call went out for help in the days after the earthquake, Johnson answered it by offering his services as a translator and as a helper to the Creighton medical team assembled to come to Haiti to provide emergency medical care to the wounded and critically injured.

Jesuit Fr. Bill Johnson (center) poses with Jim Jalovec (right) and John Ward (left) in front of Jalovec's helicopter as they deliver supplies during relief efforts in Haiti.

Johnson experienced another tragedy in the days that followed the earthquake when his good friend, Jim Jalovec, was killed while providing help during the Haiti relief efforts. Jalovec had phoned Johnson immediately after the earthquake in Haiti to offer the services of his helicopter in the relief efforts. Good Samaritan Hospital in Jimaní, Dominican Republic, where Johnson and Creighton University’s medical teams were working, invited Jalovec and his pilot, John Ward, to come and fly doctors and medicine into Haiti. Three days into their rescue efforts, they died when their helicopter hit a mountain on the foggy night of Feb. 4. Johnson presided at Jalovec’s funeral in Chicago and Ward’s in Ft. Myers, Fla.

In memory of Jalovec, ILAC is selling “Show Your Goodness” t-shirts to help the ongoing relief efforts in Haiti. All profits will be sent to the Jesuit Refugee Service in Haiti to help children suffering from the earthquake. The shirts can be purchased by visiting the showyourgoodness.com website.

Johnson shared his reflections with nationaljesuitnews.com on his time helping at Good Samaritan hospital in the days following the earthquake. You can read his reflections and see his photos by clicking below.

Padre, did you feel it?” asked the neighbor lady as I made my way around the running path at our grounds in the Dominican Republic that evening.

“Feel what?” I asked.

“The wave in the ground. And were you shaking the barbed wire fence?”she inquired.

I stopped my run and headed back into the Institute for Latin American Concern (ILAC) center where I was told the lights hanging from the ceiling in the entrance had been swaying considerably.

Then the news hit: a major earthquake had battered our neighbors in Haiti. It was Tuesday, Jan. 12, and preliminary reports said there were possibly thousands dead or dying and many more homeless. I was in disbelief. How could this happen less than 200 miles away in Port-au-Prince and we had no damage or people hurt in the Dominican Republic? It didn’t seem right or fair. But what could any of us do about it?

I had arrived in the Dominican Republic at the end of August to be director of pastoral care at Creighton University’s ILAC center in Santiago de los Caballeros, the country’s second largest city, situated in the middle of the Cibao Valley between two mountain ranges that traverse the island.

Because ILAC has been providing basic health care to the poor of the Dominican Republic since 1977, Creighton University Medical Center was in a unique position to respond to the tremendous needs of the earthquake victims. The next morning I received a phone call from Creighton’s Dr. Brian Loggie, professor of surgery, and, with the amazing cooperation and generosity of many individuals and institutions in Omaha, we had a well-supplied, nine-member health care team on the ground here at the ILAC center in Santiago.By Saturday evening we were preparing for the seven-hour bus ride to Good Samaritan Hospital on the Haitian frontier in the town of Jimaní, in the southwest corner of the Dominican Republic.

We arrived at Good Samaritan by mid-afternoon on Sunday and our team of surgeons, anesthetists, nurses and a pediatrician went right to work at the triage center where over 400 patients were lying everywhere waiting for care, most for broken bones and crushed limbs. Most operations those first days were amputations. Anesthesia, antibiotics and other medicines and supplies had been almost non-existent before we arrived. Indeed, amputations had been done without anesthesia before our arrival.

Our Creighton team tried to bring some order to what looked like the chaos of a war zone, even as
more patients arrived in the back of pick-ups, flatbed trucks, ambulances and cars. Most had come from in and around Port-au-Prince, some 40 miles to the west.

Monday morning began a week of 12-hour shifts and non-stop work. By mid-day Dr. Loggie had become in charge of the surgical area where our operating teams worked while the rest of our team selected the most critical patients for surgery and cared for wounds in the triage center on the other end of the grounds. Because of my fluency in Spanish and French, I was put in charge of the front doors of the surgical center to allow only those with clearance to enter. At times I was called in to the operating rooms to help communicate between the surgical teams and the patients. The Haitians were amazingly patient and appreciative. Often their cooperative spirit and even smiles showed their tremendous resilience and amazing dignity.

Each day brought new duties and special moments for me. I can still feel my guts wrench when on Monday afternoon a nurse approached me at the front door carrying a large black plastic bag and asked me where the morgue was. I’d seen some caskets on the side of the building and asked what was in the bag. He told me it was the arm of the man I’d just translated for. Later, a huge man who I’d helped communicate with by telling his lovely young wife that the doctors would have to amputate his leg, died during the operation. I was away from my post at the entrance to the operatory when he died but was asked to comfort the distraught wife when I returned.

I tried to pray with her in French but it didn’t come easily. The Creole the Haitians speak is quite different from Parisian French. However, a Haitian woman joined us and began singing religious songs in Creole as we held the wife. It was amazing how her breathing eased and body relaxed at the songs and caresses. The next morning I prayed with her again before she left to return to Haiti.

By mid-afternoon on Tuesday I stopped and realized that in the midst of the terrible suffering all around me I felt consolation. I had the thought that I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. I was where I was meant to be: serving God’s suffering people. I was not happy but I was full of joy to be there. Service of God’s people is joy. I shared that with other members of the team after dinner that night and most felt the same joyful sense of meaning and purpose in their service. Indeed, we all lamented that it took such a tremendous human tragedy to get so many good people together to do such good work. People laughed when someone remarked that they’d normally be bickering among themselves at their jobs back in Omaha.

The remainder of the week was full of blessings and challenges. We were all deeply touched by the suffering
of the kids; so beautiful, eyes full of light, smiles that melt your heart, some orphaned. By Wednesday, we were able to arrange for our first helicopter evacuations of patients in need of special care. Over the following days and weeks many more patients were evacuated, many in helicopters from the U.S.S. Comfort, a thousand-bed hospital ship off the coast of Port au Prince, through the intervention of Creighton administrators and Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

By Thursday, Good Samaritan was running efficiently and more than 80 operations were performed. Health teams from many other nations came and went, but our Creighton team, and several more that followed us, were stalwarts of the staffing. I was very proud of Creighton and of our country for such generous responses.

By Sunday, Jan. 24, we decided it was time for us to leave. We’d put in a tremendous week of service and helped the hospital get up and running. A new team had arrived from Creighton and other health professionals and supplies were showing up daily. We would leave after Mass at noon. The Scripture readings fit perfectly: “Today is holy to the Lord your God. Do not be sad, and do not weep” (Nehemiah 8:9). “As the body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ” (1 Cor. 12). “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing” (Lk. 1:21). I preached having lived the readings that week with God’s people, Haitian and American and many others. We had lived the words. We experienced joy.

Praise God!

Jesuit Brother Jim Boynton holds an IV while firefighter/EMT Jeff Lang assists a little girl with crushed toes in the background.

National Jesuit News is urging people to give to the Jesuit organization Jesuit Refugee Service to help those in Haiti.

To support JRS/USA’s humanitarian response to the emergency needs of the Haitian people, please click here to be directed to their secure website and choose “Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund.”

Or you may send a check to:

Jesuit Refugee Service/USA
1016 16th Street NW Suite 500
Washington, DC 20036

Checks should be made payable to “Jesuit Refugee Service/USA.”
Please clearly note “Haiti Earthquake Relief” in the memo field on the check. 

Members of Team Rubicon on the ruins of the Jesuit Novitiate in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti

Jesuit Brother Jim Boynton, recently assigned to Haiti to work at a school, is now apart of the rapid response team of Jesuits and U.S. Marine veterans assembled to quickly get medical personnel and supplies into Port au Prince. Named “Team Rubicon”, the operation is privately funded and includes former servicemen from Iraq and Afghanistan who can can operate both as security personnel and as medics.

On Team Rubicon’s blog, Br. Boynton writes of his recent experiences in Haiti and dealing with the devastating aftermath. National Jesuit News is reaching out to Br. Boynton to continue to get updates from him in Haiti.

“He descended into Hell”….  I have said these words every time I have prayed the Creed at Sunday mass, or the rosary.  I have prayed these words often, but have never understood them until now.  The smell of stale death is something that until now I have only experienced in roadkill in Northern Michigan roads.  Usually a raccoon or a skunk, but never a person, and never many persons.  In the past 6 years I have had the honor to serve on numerous medical brigades to the garbage dumps of Guatemala and Honduras, but nothing I have ever seen or done prepared me for the sights of the last few days.  I am new to Haiti, and only arrived on November 1st to work in a school.  To be honest I was nervous about that, but a school in Haiti now seems no more daunting than a classroom at University of Detroit Jesuit High School, or St. Ignatius Cleveland, where I taught history for years.  What is daunting now is Haiti itself.  “Haiti cherie”, or “dear Haiti”, as this country is called by those who love her, is suffering.  The news may report that help is being sent from all over the world, but today we are 6 days past the quake, yet at our location we were the first foreign aid to arrive.  Most is bottlenecked in the airport.  The only other non-Haitians I saw today were reporters from Caritas, Germany.  One left his team to help us secure transportation for the wounded and in the end for ourselves.

“He rose from the dead”… is another part of the Creed so often prayed.  There is hope, there is a resurrection.  Good is stronger than bad.  Today the Haitians triaged themselves in an orderly fashion, the most wounded getting to see a doctor first, something that is difficult to attain in any American hospital on any given night.  The amount of gratitude on part of the wounded, their families, and strangers is overwhelming.  Today 4 times I flagged a car off the street to take vital cases to the nearest operation room.  Gas is over $25 a gallon, if available, but each time strangers said yes.  Our return transportation failed to arrive.  Strangers loaded us into two trucks to drive us to the other side of town, regardless of curfew, and regardless of looters.

“To give and not to count the cost”…. is from the prayer of St. Ignatius, the founder of my religious order.  Somehow through a strange course of events, I have found myself with a group of men who are living these words to their fullest.  In spite of the difficulties, the struggle for organization, and lack of everything medical, the team I am with is making an incredible difference.  After today’s work many will lose limbs, some may not walk, but others had the first chance at life in 6 days.

The motivations for each of us on this team is different.  I am here because of my faith in Jesus Christ.  If you share my faith, I would ask that you pray for the people of Haiti, and pray for the men I am with.  Please make both a prayer of thanksgiving, for the people of Haiti are beautiful, and the team is as well.

Brother Jim Boynton, S.J.

National Jesuit News is urging people to give to the Jesuit organization Jesuit Refugee Service to help those in Haiti.

To support JRS/USA’s humanitarian response to the emergency needs of the Haitian people, please click here to be directed to their secure website and choose “Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund.”

Or you may send a check to:

Jesuit Refugee Service/USA
1016 16th Street NW Suite 500
Washington, DC 20036

Checks should be made payable to “Jesuit Refugee Service/USA.”
Please clearly note “Haiti Earthquake Relief” in the memo field on the check.