Animal chaplains offer spiritual care for every species

(RNS) — Sarah Bowen says she’s been doing the work of an animal chaplain since she was 6 years old.

Raised in the Midwest as a Presbyterian preacher’s kid, she was often hauled to hospice facilities and funeral homes but noticed that the chipmunks and other animals crumpled by the side of the road weren’t treated with the same compassion shown to people.

“At a very young age, I began picking up those little animals, putting them in my lunchbox, and giving them burials in the way my father did when he was working with humans,” said Bowen, who recalls saying “May the force be with you!” after the burials.

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In this image provided by Sarah Bown, animal chaplain Sarah Bowen, author photo for "Sacred Sendoffs: An Animal Chaplain's Advice for Surviving Animal Loss, Making Life Meaningful, and Healing the Planet," poses in 2022. (Francesco Mastalia/Sarah Bowen via AP)

Today, Bowen is an interfaith animal chaplain with credentials from Chicago Theological Seminary, One Spirit Interfaith Seminary and Emerson Theological Institute, and she continues to create rituals that both dignify the death of animals and empower those grieving that death, whether it’s the loss of a loyal golden retriever or the untimely death of a “feisty, beloved goat.”

“That’s one of the more powerful things I think I’ve ever witnessed in my life,” Bowen said. “That goat was originally intended for a dinner plate.”

Bowen remembers getting the call from the animal sanctuary in 2022, reporting a favorite goat had been fatally wounded in a vehicle accident. Bowen led sanctuary staff and volunteers in a ritual that involved writing letters to the goat on dissolvable paper, then dropping them in a bowl of water, “representing all of the tears that were being shed or the tears that people felt they could not shed,” said Bowen. She also held a “furry wake,” where humans gathered alongside other goats and sheep to share stories about the goat’s antics. Bowen left the group with a wind chime placed where the accident happened.

The field of animal chaplaincy — including pet and veterinary chaplaincy — is nascent but growing and involves ministering to animals, pet owners, animal care providers and entire communities affected by wildlife conflicts.

This image provided by Sarah Bown, shows the burial following an animal funeral for "Buddy" the cat in May, 2021. (Sarah Bowen via AP)

“The scale can really vary widely, but any place where there is a relationship between some number of humans and some number of animals, that is where an animal chaplain is going to work,” said Michael Skaggs, director of programs for the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab.

What started as a few individuals offering ad hoc support for people grieving pets has become an informal network of professionals, both paid and unpaid, providing spiritual support everywhere from veterinary clinics to animal shelters. Animal chaplain training programs are reporting increased enrollment year over year, as well as a growing recognition that the work they do is no joke.

“This is beyond animal blessings and pet funerals,” said Bowen. “What we’re talking about are deep systemic and existential questions about our relationships with other species.”

The definitions of animal, veterinary and pet chaplains aren’t universally agreed upon. Most often, animal chaplaincy is used as an umbrella term, and while veterinary chaplains may work in a veterinary clinic, some also use the term interchangeably with animal chaplains. Rob Gierka, who founded the Pet Chaplain organization in 2004, owns the registered trademark for the phrase “pet chaplain” and says the term refers specifically to his organization.

Though not always overt, faith is central to many animal chaplains’ practices. Some provide spiritual care for animals themselves, holding animal blessing events, praying for pets or being a grounding presence during euthanasia.

In this image provided by Valerie Richards, Valerie Richards holds a Northern Saw-Whet Owl named "Thor" during a Pasadena Audubon Society docent training program on Oct. 5, 2023, at Peck Road Water Conservation Park in Arcadia, Calif. (Courtesy Valerie Richards via AP)

It’s not just pets and their owners who require spiritual support. Veterinarians are more likely than the general population to die by suicide, and many in animal care fields grapple with moral injury and compassion fatigue.

“Some shelter workers euthanize 100 cats a day as part of their job. So attending to loss in the community is important,” said Bowen.

Scott Campbell, a veterinary chaplain at the Washington State University College of Veterinary Medicine, said it was seeing the toll of the veterinary field up close that drew him to becoming a veterinary chaplain.

“I became aware of the suicide statistics in the veterinary profession. I’ve been around the veterinary profession for, like, 45 years now,” said Campbell, whose father-in-law and wife both worked in the field. “I realized that that’s an area that really needed help.”

About every 10 days, Campbell said, he wanders throughout the teaching hospital, offering a listening ear to everyone from the veterinarians to folks working in shipping and receiving.

For many animal chaplains, their vocational path stems from personal loss. That was true for Valerie Richards, a cradle Catholic and longtime social worker now enrolled at a Buddhist seminary, and for Delores Hines-Kaalund, who completed a training program through Pet Chaplain in 2021.

In this image provided by WSU College of Veterinary Medicine, Scott Campbell, left, the veterinary chaplain at Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine, visits with Olivia and Phinehas Lampman, center, owners of Goose, a Husky mix dog, as Phinehas' mother and WSU Honors College Associate Professor Annie Lampman, right, looks on, Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2024, in the lobby of the Veterinary Teaching Hospital in Pullman, Wash. (Ted S. Warren/WSU College of Veterinary Medicine via AP)

Both lost longtime pets — Richards, a cat named Ellington; and Hines-Kaalund, her Chihuahua, Taz — and were taken aback by the intensity of their grief.

“It left such an impact on me, in terms of grief or bereavement. It was far beyond what I’d experienced with a human loved one,” said Hines-Kaalund, who describes herself as a “charismatic and nondenominational” Christian. She integrates her pet chaplaincy training into her full-time work as a hospice chaplain, helping patient families make decisions about the pets of their dying loved ones while also supporting people grieving dying pets.

A few years after Ellington died of cancer, Richards attended a Chaplaincy Innovation Lab webinar on animal chaplaincy hosted by Bowen, when something clicked. “I was like, I have to do this,” said Richards, who enrolled in Bowen’s online course on animal chaplaincy, hosted through the Compassion Consortium, in September 2023. She hopes to become a full-time animal chaplain supporting others struggling with pet loss and illness.

“People are often really surprised by how intensely they grieve. We hear it all the time, people saying they’re ashamed to say this, but they grieved more for their pet than when their mother died,” said Karen Duke, who, along with her partner Gierka, runs the Pet Chaplain organization where Hines-Kaalund was trained.

In this image provided by WSU College of Veterinary Medicine, Scott Campbell, the Veterinary Chaplain at Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine, speaks during a "Celebration of Life & Remembrance for Our Companion Animals" event on Saturday, July 15, 2023, in Pullman. Wash. At right are ribbons honoring pets that have passed away that were hung as part of the Garland Ceremony, and now are displayed next to a bench at the entrance to the Veterinary Teaching Hospital. (Ted S. Warren/WSU College of Veterinary Medicine via AP)

Gierka added that, unlike other chaplaincy fields, animal chaplains often support people whose grief is minimized by family, employers and faith leaders.

Animal loss can also trigger existential questions about God’s existence and character, or whether animals are in the afterlife. Trained chaplains aren’t there to provide answers but are familiar with a range of religious and spiritual worldviews and can help people make meaning from their circumstances.

Campbell recalled one man he met with at a veterinary clinic who seemed to be in good spirits as his dog received chemotherapy.

“I was preparing to close, and the client stopped, was quiet for a moment, looked at me and said, ‘You know, I have the exact same kind of cancer my dog has. And so I’m seeing my future laid out before my eyes,’” said Campbell. “All of a sudden, that turned into a completely different kind of conversation.”

In this image provided by WSU College of Veterinary Medicine, Scott Campbell, the veterinary chaplain at Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine, poses for a photo outside the Veterinary Teaching Hospital in Pullman, Wash., Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2024. Next to Campbell is a string of ribbons from the "Garland Ceremony" he leads during "Celebration of Life & Remembrance" services held three times since the summer of 2023 that give community members a chance to come together for healing and grief. (Ted S. Warren/WSU College of Veterinary Medicine via AP)

Because veterinary and animal chaplaincy are still emerging fields, there’s little consistency around training and credentials. According to Skaggs, ordination is common for non-animal chaplains who work in highly institutionalized settings, like hospitals or the military, but it’s rarely a requirement for animal chaplains. Financial compensation is also inconsistent, with some animal chaplains charging hourly rates or being paid by an institution and others working on a volunteer basis and accepting donations.

Gierka and Duke are passionate about empowering lay people to be animal chaplains and did so for years through their online Introduction to Pet Chaplaincy course. What started two decades ago as a six-week course with six people became a 15-week course with more than 30 people a semester. In 2022, the pair paused the course to translate it into a book series, which is expected out later this year.

“We’re seeing, after 20 years, now we’re at a tipping point,” said Duke. “There’s definitely a need.”

Campbell is hoping to help animal and veterinary chaplains connect through the American Association of Veterinary Chaplains, a professional membership organization he recently founded he hopes will eventually certify veterinary chaplains.

And Bowen launched an online animal chaplain training program in 2022 and told RNS that more than 50 people are completing the nine-month program each year. Her students include ministers, rabbis, veterinarians and animal activists. While there’s not a professional board for animal chaplains, Bowen is currently completing a Ph.D. program where she’s developing guidelines for the field.

In this image provided by WSU College of Veterinary Medicine, Scott Campbell, right, Veterinary Chaplain at Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine, looks on as people tie ribbons honoring pets that have passed away during the Garland Ceremony, that was part of a "Celebration of Life & Remembrance for Our Companion Animals" event on Saturday, July 15, 2023, in Pullman, Wash. (Ted S. Warren/WSU College of Veterinary Medicine via AP)

“What I would say is, the field is gathering,” Bowen said. “This field started around pet bereavement. This field has grown to encompass so much more than that.”

LYPIVKA, Ukraine (AP) — This Orthodox Easter season, an extraordinary new church is bringing spiritual comfort to war-weary residents of the Ukrainian village of Lypivka. Two years ago, it also provided physical refuge from the horrors outside.

Almost 100 residents sheltered in a basement chapel at the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary while Russian troops occupied the village in March 2022 as they closed in on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, 40 miles (60 kilometers) to the east.

“The fighting was right here,” the Rev. Hennadii Kharkivskyi said. He pointed to the churchyard, where a memorial stone commemorates six Ukrainian soldiers killed in the battle for Lypivka.

“They were injured and then the Russians came and shot each one, finished them off,” he said.

The two-week Russian occupation left the village shattered and the church itself — a modern replacement for an older structure — damaged while still under construction. It’s one of 129 war-damaged Ukrainian religious sites recorded by UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural organization.

“It’s solid concrete,” the priest said. “But it was pierced easily” by Russian shells, which blasted holes in the church and left a wall inside pockmarked with shrapnel scars. At the bottom of the basement staircase, a black scorch mark shows where a grenade was lobbed down.

But within weeks, workers were starting to repair the damage and work to finish the solid building topped by red domes that towers over the village, with its scarred and damaged buildings, blooming fruit trees and fields that the Russians left littered with land mines.

For many of those involved — including a tenacious priest, a wealthy philanthropist, a famous artist and a team of craftspeople — rebuilding this church plays a part in Ukraine's struggle for culture, identity and its very existence. The building, a striking fusion of the ancient and the modern, reflects a country determined to express its soul even in wartime.

The building's austere exterior masks a blaze of color inside. The vibrant red, blue, orange and gold panels decorating walls and ceiling are the work of Anatoliy Kryvolap, an artist whose bold, modernist images of saints and angels make this church unique in Ukraine.

The 77-year-old Kryvolap, whose abstract paintings sell for tens of thousands of dollars at auction, said that he wanted to eschew the severe-looking icons he’d seen in many Orthodox churches.

“It seems to me that going to church to meet God should be a celebration,” he said.

There has been a church on this site for more than 300 years. An earlier building was destroyed by shelling during World War II. The small wooden church that replaced it was put to more workaday uses in Soviet times, when religion was suppressed.

Kharkivskyi reopened the parish in 1992 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and set about rebuilding the church, spiritually and physically, with funding from Bohdan Batrukh, a Ukrainian film producer and distributor.

Work stopped when Russian troops launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Moscow's forces reached the fringes of Kyiv before being driven back. Lypivka was liberated by the start of April.

Since then, fighting has been concentrated in the east and south of Ukraine, though aerial attacks with rockets, missiles and drones are a constant threat across the country.

By May 2022, workers had resumed work on the church. It has been slow going. Millions of Ukrainians fled the country when war erupted, including builders and craftspeople. Hundreds of thousands of others have joined the military.

Inside the church, a tower of wooden scaffolding climbs up to the dome, where a red and gold image of Christ raises a hand in blessing

For now, services take place in the smaller basement, where the priest, in white and gold robes, recently conducted a service for a couple of dozen parishioners as the smell of incense wafted through the candlelit room.

He is expecting a large crowd for Easter, which falls on Sunday. Eastern Orthodox Christians usually celebrate Easter later than Catholic and Protestant churches, because they use a different method of calculating the date for the holy day that marks Christ’s resurrection.

A majority of Ukrainians identify as Orthodox Christians, though the church is divided. Many belong to the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine, with which the Lypivka church is affiliated. The rival Ukrainian Orthodox Church was loyal to the patriarch in Moscow until splitting from Russia after the 2022 invasion and is viewed with suspicion by many Ukrainians.

Kharkivskyi says the size of his congregation has remained stable even though the population of the village has shrunk dramatically since the war began. In tough times, he says, people turn to religion.

“Like people say: ‘Air raid alert — go see God,’” the priest said wryly.

Liudmyla Havryliuk, who has a summer home in Lypivka, found herself drawn back to the village and its church even before the fighting stopped. When Russia invaded, she drove to Poland with her daughters, then 16 and 18 years old. But within weeks she came back to the village she loves, still besieged by the Russians.

The family hunkered down in their home, cooking on firewood, drawing water from a well, sometimes under Russian fire. Havryliuk said that when they saw Russian helicopters, they held hands and prayed.

“Not prayer in strict order, like in the book,” she said. “It was from my heart, from my soul, about what should we do? How can I save myself and especially my daughters?”

She goes to Lypivka’s church regularly, saying it’s a “place you can shelter mentally, within yourself.”

As Ukraine marks its third Easter at war, the church is nearing completion. Only a few of Kryvolap’s interior panels remain to be installed. He said that the shell holes will be left unrepaired as a reminder to future generations.

“(It’s) so that they will know what kind of ‘brothers’ we have, that these are just fascists,” he said, referring to the Russians.

“We are Orthodox, just like them, but destroying churches is something inhumane.”

Vasilisa Stepanenko and Yehor Konovalov contributed to this story.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Flowers and a helmet rest at the memorial stone that commemorates the death of six Ukrainian soldiers killed by Russians, in the yard of the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in, Lypivka, near Lviv, Ukraine, Sunday, April 28, 2024. This Orthodox Easter season, an extraordinary new church is bringing spiritual comfort to war-weary residents of the Ukrainian village of Lypivka. Two years ago it also provided physical refuge from horrors outside. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Christian Orthodox priest Hennadii Kharkivskyi leads a service at the chapel basement of the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in, Lypivka, near Lviv, Ukraine, Sunday, April 28, 2024. This Orthodox Easter season, an extraordinary new church is bringing spiritual comfort to war-weary residents of the Ukrainian village of Lypivka. Two years ago it also provided physical refuge from horrors outside. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

A builder works at the new Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary under construction in, Lypivka, near Lviv, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 30, 2024. This Orthodox Easter season, an extraordinary new church is bringing spiritual comfort to war-weary residents of the Ukrainian village of Lypivka. Two years ago it also provided physical refuge from horrors outside. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

A builder works at the new Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary under construction in, Lypivka, near Lviv, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 30, 2024. This Orthodox Easter season, an extraordinary new church is bringing spiritual comfort to war-weary residents of the Ukrainian village of Lypivka. Two years ago it also provided physical refuge from horrors outside. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Local resident Liudmyla Havryliuk stands next to a memorial stone that commemorates six Ukrainian soldiers killed by Russians, in the yard of the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in, Lypivka, near Lviv, Ukraine, Sunday, April 28, 2024. This Orthodox Easter season, an extraordinary new church is bringing spiritual comfort to war-weary residents of the Ukrainian village of Lypivka. Two years ago it also provided physical refuge from horrors outside. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Christian Orthodox priest Hennadii Kharkivskyi leads a service at the chapel basement of the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in, Lypivka, near Lviv, Ukraine, Sunday, April 28, 2024. This Orthodox Easter season, an extraordinary new church is bringing spiritual comfort to war-weary residents of the Ukrainian village of Lypivka. Two years ago it also provided physical refuge from horrors outside. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

A black scorch mark shows where a grenade was lobbed down at the entrance of the chapel basement of the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in, Lypivka, near Lviv, Ukraine, Sunday, April 28, 2024. This Orthodox Easter season, an extraordinary new church is bringing spiritual comfort to war-weary residents of the Ukrainian village of Lypivka. Two years ago it also provided physical refuge from horrors outside. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

A Christian Orthodox woman attends a service at the chapel basement of the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in, Lypivka, near Lviv, Ukraine, Sunday, April 28, 2024. This Orthodox Easter season, an extraordinary new church is bringing spiritual comfort to war-weary residents of the Ukrainian village of Lypivka. Two years ago it also provided physical refuge from horrors outside. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Christian Orthodox priest Hennadii Kharkivskyi leads a service at the chapel basement of the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in, Lypivka, near Lviv, Ukraine, Sunday, April 28, 2024. This Orthodox Easter season, an extraordinary new church is bringing spiritual comfort to war-weary residents of the Ukrainian village of Lypivka. Two years ago it also provided physical refuge from horrors outside. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Christian Orthodox worshippers leave the chapel basement after attending a service at the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in, Lypivka, near Lviv, Ukraine, Sunday, April 28, 2024. This Orthodox Easter season, an extraordinary new church is bringing spiritual comfort to war-weary residents of the Ukrainian village of Lypivka. Two years ago it also provided physical refuge from horrors outside. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)