Honouring the dead and comforting the living: the vital work of military chaplains

Army chaplain Fr Joel Vergara hears the echo of Easter on Anzac Day, seeing Australia’s most solemn secular date as a kind of bookend to Christianity’s Holy season.

‘It reconnects us to our Easter faith, that it’s not the end, but that there’s an eternal life that we believe in for our members who died in war,’ Fr Joel says.

Anzac Day is very important for chaplains, he says, and they are always there to provide prayers at services wherever they are held. In fact, chaplains in the Australian Defence Force are there to provide a ‘ministry of presence’—in-person and empathetic pastoral care—all year round.

Chaplains have been attached to Australian military contingents for 140 years. The first was believed to be with a small force sent to help the British empire in the Sudan War of 1885. A painting held by the Australian War Memorial (AWM) by Arthur Collingridge, pictured below, shows his brother Charles, a Roman Catholic chaplain, embracing the artist’s wife and son before the contingent departed Sydney’s Circular Quay.

The first official, post-federation Australian army chaplains came just ahead of World War I, when Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist representatives and a top-level general established the Australian Army Chaplains Department in 1913. Each denomination has a chaplain attached to each infantry and lighthorse brigade, plus a senior chaplain from each state and a chaplain general. A ‘roving’ Jewish chaplain served during the First World War, becoming an official position during the Second World War.

Together, they were responsible for conducting many thousands of burials, recording the details of the dead and their place of burial, and often contacting families to break the news of their loved one’s death. They also conducted religious services and organised activities to boost morale.

The AWM is full of stories of the chaplains who served in wartime, a sign of their importance in supporting service men and women at the most difficult and dangerous times of their lives.

The first chaplain ashore at Gallipoli, having disregarded an order to stay on the ship, was Fr John Fahey. The Catholic padre (as they are affectionately called in the Australian armed forces) survived and went on to serve in Egypt and France in 1916, becoming the longest-serving frontline chaplain.

There was the ‘barefoot’ Discalced Carmelite priest Elzear Basil Phillips, known as Fr Joe, whom the AWM describes as ‘quiet and pious with an interest in horseracing’. He served during World War II in Africa, Palestine and Syria, then—as the war came to Australia’s doorstep—in New Guinea and Borneo. He also served in the 1950–53 Korean War. Fr Joe was awarded an MBE for ‘fearless devotion to duty’, which included working with other padres as stretcher-bearers on the front line.

Things are different now. Warfare has changed; religion is not as central to people’s lives anymore, and there is a different understanding among the top echelons of the defence force about the psychological impact of military life on serving members. Fr Joel has been working in this environment for more than a decade. In this era, chaplains are arguably more important than ever. But there is also a shortage, with only five Catholic chaplains in the whole Australian army, and a small number in the navy and air force.

A chaplain supports Defence members and their families, Fr Joel explains. A Catholic chaplain provides ministry and makes sacraments available to Catholic members. They will celebrate Mass.

‘[However,] we are chaplains for all those people with faith, and no faith’ he says. ‘We provide religious support and spiritual support. Pastoral care is one of our roles, and we visit members who are in hospital or sick, or their family members who need support.’

They also provide ‘character-formation training’ like teaching values and ethics classes. According to Fr Joel, Australian Defence Force values—which include accountability, collaboration, selflessness and trust—are rooted in Christian values.

‘Our Australian army is a very secular organisation, so we have to be very careful. But it’s important to have the Christian, the Catholic presence in this organisation.’

‘We develop a rapport with members,’ he says. ‘It’s a ministry of presence, and whatever members say to the chaplain is confidential. We value the trust between members and soldiers, but also there’s some limit with the confidentiality.’

The limit Fr Joel is referring to is if someone declares thoughts of suicide or self-harm, which although it happens at lower rates in serving men and women than in the general population, does jump substantially among those who have left.

The Australian Defence Force now acknowledges that complex psychological and psychiatric conditions can arise in its members. Fr Joel says there is also recognition of moral injury, a term likely coined in the 1990s for trauma people may experience in situations that violate their conscience or moral positions.

Recognition of this syndrome ‘validates the importance of chaplaincy’ he says, ‘because again, our role is support, spiritual ministry, but also looking after the mental health of our members.’

Fr Joel comes from a military family in the Philippines and says his first childhood ambition was to become a soldier. But he had a religious calling and went into the seminary instead. While he was studying there, a visiting military bishop explained about military chaplaincy. That reignited his childhood dreams, which he felt could be fulfilled by becoming a chaplain.

After working in a parish in the Archdiocese of Melbourne for several years, Fr Joel sought permission from then-Archbishop Denis Hart to join the Australian army. Under the system, a priest is seconded to the Catholic Diocese of the Australian Military Services, or military ordinariate, to work as a chaplain.

Fr Joel says it is a unique role for a priest but can also be very challenging. ‘As a chaplain, we move every two years. So I don’t have that community like a priest in the parish. We go where soldiers are in training and exercise and deployment. I’ve been to Afghanistan in 2012, and training exercises overseas in the Pacific.’

He is seeing an increasingly multicultural defence force mirrored in the military chaplaincy.

‘We’ve got more Christian denomination chaplains now, and we have Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic chaplains as well. So you have this multicultural and interfaith unity in Defence.’

Marking Anzac Day in Australia is also an increasingly multicultural experience, as understanding deepens that those who served, and serve today, are not just white Anglo-Saxons but from every background that makes up the Australian community.

‘On Anzac Day, you always see the important role of the chaplain,’ Fr Joel says. ‘We don’t glorify war, but we pray for peace and unity. The chaplains’ role is to honour the dead and to comfort those who are so sorrowful.’