News from the Chaplain

Airport ministry, a matter of ecumenical cooperation.

Airport ministry that provides pastoral care to passengers and employees coming from a wide range of different backgrounds and from all the corners of the earth. It is obvious that this ministry can’t be executed single-handed.

It requires teamwork with many different departments and services.

The ministry offers its service 7 days per week and 24 hours per day. Although the chaplains work according to a rota, the chaplains are more-or-less always on call for emergence cases, such as disasters that are experienced by larger groups.

Alongside the Airport chaplains are the volunteers. They keep an eye on the running of the Meditation Centre and the many people that visit. They offer a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on to many of them. And last but not least, the make sure thet the Meditation Centre is a safe place where they can pray, simultaneously with people form other religions.

Over the last 12 months, the chaplains assisted more than 200 passengers who were bereaved, or faced other adversaries. The nature of pastoral care can be dramatic indeed. Just to mention passengers that come back to the Netherlands, whose partner of friend were violently killed. Or a young mother who was separated from her child. Or victims of trafficking in one way or another.

It takes a lot of effort to keep the chaplains and staff ‘flying’. To support the three chaplains, there are three boards. One Roman Catholic foundation, one Protestant foundation and on Old-Catholic and Anglican foundation. The Old-Catholic and Anglican board came into being at the beginning of the year 2011. Anglicans and Old Catholics share the responsibility in three way: through prayer, through people and through funding.

The Bishop of Haarlem, mgr Dr. Dirk Jan Schoon and the Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe, the Rt. Rev. Dr.Geoffrey Rowell, signed a covenant in which full participation is secured. Totally in line with the longstanding (more than 80 years) cooperation of the two church communities. Among these two churches here in the Netherlands, we are also supported by the British branch of the Willibrord Society,

The three foundations form a ‘trust’ that oversees the operations of the Airport ministry (Dutch: Luchthavenpastoraat)

In a number of situations the volunteers and the chaplains work closely together with the management, the border police, the customs department and of course security officers for the benefit of those in difficult situations.

In Christ

Rev. Joop Albers