Published: 12.04.08

MIAMI | It’s lunchtime, and Daniel Dooling is sitting in the chapel at Miami International Airport, reading his Bible. A few seats away, Vera Philoctete fingers a rosary.

Philoctete works in Miami-Dade Aviation’s protocol department. Dooling is a property manager in the commercial operations division.

They are praying in a place most travelers cannot find very easily: The airport’s nondenominational chapel – also known as a meditation room – on the fourth floor of Concourse B, next to the bank and the post office.

“It is a bastion for us who want to get away during lunch and be in the presence of God, to find peace in our day,” said Dooling. “Because it does get hectic out there.”

The bustling terminals of Miami International see an average of nearly 34 million passengers a year – between 90,000 and 100,000 daily – and employ more than 35,000 people.

It is the third-busiest U.S. airport in both numbers of international passengers and total freight – “a city unto itself,” according to Deacon Dennis Jordan, a retired state employee who has served as chaplain at Miami International since 1999.

Although travelers might think airport chapels and chaplains are there for them, they are actually there to serve the employees “who work such odd hours,” Deacon Jordan said. “The idea is to serve this airport community with the fringe benefit of serving the general public at the same time. And when there’s loss, sorrow, we’re there.”

Deacon Jordan and his counterpart at Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport, Deacon Chandy Luka, are part of a Catholic Civil Aviation Apostolate that began at Boston’s Logan Airport in 1950. Today, according to the group, more than 100 airport chapels in 50 nations offer pastoral care to employees and travelers, including 31 in the United States.

In Florida, in addition to Miami and Fort Lauderdale, chapels exist at Orlando International, Jacksonville and Sarasota Bradenton airports. Catholic chaplains are available at all of them – if not on site, at least on call. Both Deacons Luka and Jordan serve on a volunteer basis.

The Vatican is working to strengthen the ministry, and in 2005 hosted an international seminar for Catholic civil aviation chaplains which Deacons Jordan and Luka attended.

In the U.S., the ministry of airport chaplains is often hampered by issues related to location, church-state separation and airport security restrictions. The sheer distance between airport terminals often makes it impossible for people to get to the chapels. Many are located before the security screening, making it difficult for passengers waiting for flights to use them. Some airports limit users to private prayer rather than group religious services such as Mass.

That is not a problem in Miami, where Deacon Jordan offered a liturgical Communion service once a week and invited a Protestant minister to give Bible classes at night. That ended a few months ago, however, when airport construction made it too dangerous even for employees to reach the chapel. For the same reason, the chapel is now open only during the day and not 24 hours a day.

“All the airports are constantly under construction. That also complicates things,” said Deacon Jordan, who is hoping that eventually the chapel will be moved to a more accessible site at the center of the airport, in Concourse D.

In Fort Lauderdale, Deacon Luka led adoration with the Blessed Sacrament every Saturday for eight months. But the meditation room, which was located in terminal 3, closed earlier this year when the lease expired. In a letter, airport officials said they also were trying “to resolve some security concerns.”

Deacon Luka said it will probably be up to the Broward County Commission to decide whether to grant a lease to the Archdiocese of Miami. The airport serves 21 million passengers a year and has 16,000 employees, making it Broward County’s largest employer.

“As Catholics, we don’t mind leasing it for $1 a year and sharing it with other denominations,” said Deacon Luka, who began serving as chaplain in 2005. But “I don’t think that it’s going to be resolved soon.”

He pointed out that at Orlando International a private company has leased a space where a priest comes regularly to celebrate Mass. Deacon Jordan said he dreams of the day when Miami International will have a similar arrangement, “an exclusively Catholic chapel with the Blessed Sacrament and a priest.”

Deacon Luka is unique among Catholic airport chaplains because he actually works at the airport, as director of materials for a commercial airline. He is not normally visible to the public, but airport workers know him and he usually strolls through the terminals on Saturdays.

“When a chaplain appears there in the midst of all this, with a collar or a Bible in his hand, people smile,” he said, pointing out that not all travel is done for business or pleasure. Sometimes, people are going to visit gravely ill relatives or returning from funerals. Once, a grief-stricken traveler stopped Deacon Luka to ask, “Is my mother going to heaven?”

Deacon Jordan describes airport chaplaincy as a “ministry of the moment” – intense, one-time encounters with people he will never see again, such as a traveling salesman who had locked himself inside his airport hotel room and was afraid to come out.

“He hadn’t slept, washed or eaten in a couple of days,” said Deacon Jordan, who was called to the airport from his satellite office at Blessed Trinity Parish in Miami Springs, the church closest to Miami International. “After a couple of hours I talked him into leaving the room and getting something to eat. We were also successful in getting him on a flight home the next day.”

 

Return to Florida Catholic Online Home Page

Advertisement

Advertisement