Michael Gelfant’s worst call came just after 10 p.m. on a Friday in March of 2012. Gelfant, a Catholic priest at Blessed Trinity Parish in sout

Why Chaplains Are in High Demand in an Increasingly Secular America

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2021-06-14 20:30:03

Michael Gelfant’s worst call came just after 10 p.m. on a Friday in March of 2012. Gelfant, a Catholic priest at Blessed Trinity Parish in southern Queens, New York, put on his collar and black vestments, got in his car and drove toward the Bedford Avenue subway stop, cursing the traffic that was slowing him down. When he arrived, he saw a young man pinned from the stomach down by a train to the side of the platform, still alive but badly injured.  

News outlets would later report that the man had gotten into a fight with an unknown attacker and fallen onto the tracks, where an L train struck him as it pulled into the station. All Gelfant, a volunteer chaplain for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, knew was that there had been a 12-9, a human-train collision. 

A team of six firefighters was racing against time to extract the man, inflating stacks of heavy-duty airbags underneath the train in an attempt to push it on its side. As soon as it was lifted, the man would bleed out. Catching a glimpse of a rosary dangling from the man’s wrist, Gelfant took it upon himself to perform one of the Catholic last rites. As the man was being pulled from the tracks and loaded onto a stretcher, Gelfant, reciting a prayer, reached out and dabbed a drop of oil onto his hand. 

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