Ensure Pastors Can Visit the Sick During a Pandemic

Tomorrow, January 26, a Senate subcommittee will take up SB 1356, sponsored by Senator Jennifer Kiggans (R-Virginia Beach), that will ensure that ministers, pastors and other clergy have access to hospitals and other health care facilities during a health emergency to provide spiritual support to members of their congregation. This bill is very much needed after too many people have been denied the ability to have their pastor or priest visit them over the past year when they were sick or even dying.

Click HERE to contact your Senator and urge them to vote YES on SB 1356.

Specifically, SB 1356 would require the Boards of Health and Social Services to include in its regulations a requirement that each hospital, nursing home, certified nursing facility, hospice, and assisted living facility allow patients or residents to receive visits from a rabbi, priest, minister, or clergyman of any religious denomination or sect upon request during a declared public health emergency.

Visiting people in hospitals and health care is the cornerstone of pastoral care.  As one pastor stated in a PBS special, “faith leaders are like family to their congregants, and allowing minister visits provides comfort and healing to patients… I felt like I was not being allowed to practice my calling as a shepherd, as a spiritual pastor of people. I felt like I was being hindered and prohibited from doing that.”

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has even announced a resolution of two complaints ensuring that clergy have access to patients for religious purposes during the COVID-19 pandemic at a Mary Washington Healthcare (MWHC) facility in Virginia.

During critical times, it’s important that clergy are still able to provide necessary and desired spiritual care to their parishioners.     

Click HERE to contact your Senator and urge them to vote YES on SB 1356.