The Most Reverend Bishop Earl K. Fernandes, Diocese of Columbus, Ohio & Fr. Charles Sikorsky, LC

0:15This is father Charles Sikorsky, president of Divine Mercy University, and I have the pleasure and blessing to be here with bishop Earl Fernandez of the Diocese of Columbus, Ohio, who has hosted the twenty twenty six Vocus Seat Conference. I just wanna congratulate you for such a great event, and thank you for all you're doing. Oh, it's great to have so many young people. We have about sixteen, seventeen thousand here in Columbus, and we're gonna host again next year. So we're looking forward to it. Very good. So, you know, bishop Earl, we've known each other for several years, real quick probably more than several years now. Our mission at DMU is to form Catholic counselors and psychotherapists, and now we have spiritual directors as well.

0:57Tell me from your perspective as bishop, why is mental health important to the church? Well, mental health right now well, because we we are temples of the holy spirit. We're we believe that we're a unity of body, spirit, and soul, and we wanna treat the whole person, help the whole person to achieve wholeness and holiness. And what we're seeing in The United States is a pandemic, really, of mental illness. People are alone, people are depressed. In many areas of the country, there are almost no mental health resources. In some counties within the Diocese of Columbus, the only mental health resources are within, the are at prisons and jails. And so there's a real shortage of mental health services, and I think Divine Mercy University would offer is also though is a spiritual component.

1:45We often have people come to us when I was a priest in Cincinnati, it was then the Institute for Psychological Sciences and, then became Divine Mercy University, well, I think, when I was in Washington DC. And what they do is we we priests, we need a place to which we can refer, and counselors whom we trust, our parishioners. And one of the things that Divine Mercy University offers is a Catholic Christian understanding of the human person made in God's image and likeness as unity of body and soul. And so, we need to be able to refer people who are struggling with gender dysphoria, with depression and so on, to people whom we know respect the gift of human life and respect the integrity of the body.

2:29And, unfortunately, there are not that many Catholic or even Christian counselors and many of the secular universities, so to speak, have already adopted a type of gender ideology or been infected with gender ideology and yet, mental illness is real. When I did my doctoral dissertation years ago, I studied the question of the transmission of HIV AIDS amongst married couples and what was the church's response to it and what was the response of political and scientific communities. At that time, a lot of my, friends from especially the African Continent, priests and religious, they had a phrase, you're either infected or affected. And mental health issues, either you have them or you know someone who has them and it it it's like a a tornado that comes through your whole family's life.

3:17And we want people to be able to have a healthy family life, families as a whole as well as individuals, to kind of be able to continue their their their walk through this world until we get to the next. Infected or I felt good. That's a great way to say it. Yeah. Because you We often forget. Right? But the the toll does takes on our families, you know, in marriages and and just when there's a family member themselves. Right. Like, you know, parents have a child with mental illness and it affects their own relationship in addition to that of the siblings. Or someone has a mental illness but it's not diagnosed, so there's still even though the stigma is less today than it was, there still is for some families and some cultures this this stigma.

3:55And so there isn't any treatment, but it's it's causing damage to the other members of the family as well. And so it's it's really, a a grave crisis. Yeah. When you think about the word psychology, psyche, right, comes from your Greek, the stole. Yeah. So science is study of the soul of man's inner life. And what to be more the phobias or sufficient and pathways together? Well We should be the experts, though. We should be the experts. And in fact, I would say people at Divine Mercy University are the experts in this, whether it's in in psychotherapy or, or in spiritual direction, right, the church has her wisdom, right? Unfortunately, a lot of things when I studied medicine before I entered the seminary, everything, and this was also true when I was doing my doctoral dissertation, everything was a pharmacological approach rather than a holistic approach.

4:50And so, I think one of the things in for for good medicine, for good therapy, you need to have trust in a relationship like the doctor patient relationship, the client counselor relationship. It's very important, the degree of transparency, leads to better outcomes. And I think when you have the relationship of trust, when you have someone of a common faith or a common starting point in terms of background and understanding of the person, it really does help to get better treatment. On and, you know, the you mentioned a relationship with with the therapy itself. Research is proving that that's one of the most important factors about the effect with which, of Therabody. And so if someone aligns with your values and your worldview and your belief system, it's just a much easier way to build it more, you know, to get that person.

5:39Right. And then I think one of the things is is that the approach taken by those who are graduates of Divine Mercy University is to meet a person where he or she is at, but also to do so the way Jesus would have encountered a person. Right? Sees the person who is hurting, who is wounded, who is in need of healing, both phys sometimes physical healing, but sometimes deep interior healing. And then there can be a, kind of a, an approach to say, why is this person here? What does this person need? What are they really looking for? And what is the proper remedy to bring about deep interior healing, their actual physical and mental healing that they need to help them continue their journey, their ongoing conversion.

6:24And one of the reasons we changed the name of Divine Mercy University was to remind us, we're not just here to be good technical experts. Right? We need to form the heart and bring God's love and mercy into the equation, both for the clients, but also for our students, who are gonna be learning that we get to form their hearts as well to go out and do that work. Well, I think in a professional way, they're clients. But I used to have a I knew a priest once who would keep an hours only nine to five and he would speak to us about pastoral ministry and speak of parishioners as clients. The clients will come only between nine and five and it's very important to preserve your your own time, but when you meet a person who is in need, medicine is essentially an encounter between a person who has the power to heal, if you will, and the and the skill set to bring about the healing that this other person, with equal dignity, needs.

7:16And we see a a fellow human being really trying suffering and all of Jesus healing ministry could be seen within the context of the coming and the in breaking of the kingdom of God. And I think that's what part of what this type of ministry really is. It's an extension of Christ's own ministry and the proclamation of the kingdom. So you mentioned scarcity as one of the big needs for the the diocese and the church. What are some others some areas where you see a real need today, for counselors and and therapists? Well, I'll I'll let me talk first about spiritual directors because our you know, there's a priest shortage nationally and the number of priests available to do spiritual direction is diminishing.

7:53I'm sure deacons can do it, but we also have a lot of lay people who are getting some training in spiritual direction and that can be very helpful for those maybe who don't have, kind of mental illness or mental health issues and so there's that dimension. Then there's a crossover between mental health issues and spiritual issues. Sometimes you also see this in the ministry, of exorcism, for example. You have to be very discerning. We see this, you have a lot of people who can clinically treat or with with, you know, psychotherapeutic drugs treat mental illness and depression and so on and so forth, but are they considering the the the, spiritual needs of the person? Addictive behaviors, there are a lot of programs that deal with addiction, but that, again, don't account for the spiritual component to help people to be successful.

8:39We see that, we have, like, Open Doors Ministry here in Columbus, for example, that exists to provide spiritual accompaniment and so there's this personal accompaniment. But, here in the city of Columbus, for example, Columbus is one of the fastest growing is the fastest growing city in The United States. It's between depending on who you ask, it's between the eleventh and fourteenth largest city in The United States. In the city, we have plenty of resources. Maybe even with the Ohio State University, not all of them follow a Catholic Christian anthropology or an approach. But what about the rural areas? I've got some rural areas like one Catholic hospital that serves six counties. If that hospital goes away, those people are without medical care, but mental health resources are even more scarce.

9:20So we know, for example, that a lot of a lot of people, as well as things, are slipping through the cracks. Some time ago, maybe this early in 2025, we had a mental health summit where we gathered everyone from different parishes and other ministries in the diocese together who are addressing the issues, of mental health. They have a summit just to listen, to understand better what are the issues, where are the scarcity of resources, what are parishes actually doing, and now we're beginning to look for someone who can coordinate the efforts for the diocese. Because it's not that nothing is happening, but too little is happening to meet the great demands that, that, that parents and family members are and individuals are facing.

10:03And where do I refer them? I still don't have a good answer in my diocese and that's why I'm looking to, places like Divine Mercy University. This came up with Bishop Barron and Archbishop Gutziak, at the USCCB meeting, a year and a half or so ago, and there's this huge shortage. Again, Bishop John Dolan of Phoenix has also talked about this. There was just a story last week in the Vatican news. He's had three siblings, unfortunately, who have lost their lives to suicide and some people feel so desperate, feel like that there's no way out and all that's from the devil. I mean, we we, the church, have to be more ever more present. We can't just say what's somebody else's job or a therapist's job.

10:42It's the whole church's job and it's not the diocese's job to replace what's there, but to support. How can we best support what exists, and and then how can we enhance? And so I I like to think too, this also helps evangelization. Right? We have a forming an army of mental health apostles, so to speak, and spiritual directors who can go out and connect with people and and on a deeper level. Well, it's it's it does. And that's that's one thing. But the second is if we don't do it, the church was not there for my family, was not there for me in my time of need, but if we do do it, the church was ever present. They saw me in my woundedness and the church, the loving mother, tended to her sick child and nursed her back to health.

11:26I think that's also a very powerful narrative. Like, we're not inattentive, we're not just a bureaucracy, we're actually present in the lives, we're making a difference. And so, I think we can't always live in the world of ideas, but actually have to say, this is the reality that is afflicting our families, and how can we bring about the presence of Christ in the human reality and bring his healing power to bear? Bishop, we're gonna do everything we can to to help form a pipeline of people who can help serve you in the diocese. And I'll tell you, I have a a young priest who's two years ordained, started your online program. I have another priest in the military archdiocese who's taken some classes, and I'm trying to encourage them finish their degrees because there's a great, great need.

12:07And there's a great need also in seminaries. Some some seminaries have, you know, residential counselors, others have nothing. You have to send them out to to to whomever. So I think that's also a need in the area of seminary formation or I, as a bishop, also see a lot of my clergy who didn't get proper formation or who because of the stress of the job are are depressed or developing mental illness or unhealthy behaviors, and I need someone who understands their way of life and their vocation and who respects it. Yeah. Priestly formation and ongoing formation and even priestly self care so that they can actually do what they have been called to do And in a hostile environment. So much goes into it, and they make such great sacrifices.

12:52And yet these human factors can, you know, make sometimes it's a surprise. Yeah. But we end up with with problems. And, and so, yeah, it's just so important for per for priestly person formation and perseverance. Exactly. Exactly. So Throughout the lifetime. And I think that's where, you know, Catholic mental health professionals can be a great resource to people like me who are bishops, who have my you know, one of my primary jobs is to be is to care for my priest, to be a spiritual father to them, to nurture the vocation of the men who are in the seminary, and to basically help them to learn how to empathize and to accompany families as well, and for them to be able to know. I'm not maybe not a mental health expert or a counselor, but I know whom I can trust, and the I can refer these parishioners of mine to these good Catholic counselors.

13:40Amen. Amen. Bishop, thank you so much. And, I know you're you gotta run, but it's really great. No. Thank you for all you're doing, for all Divine Mercy University is doing for the church in The United States. Well, God bless you, and thank you. Alright. God bless you. Thanks.