Hong Kong (Fides Service) – Responding to an appeal made by the Bishop of Hong Kong Joseph Zen, the diocesan commission for Hospital Pastoral Care organised special collections for quarantined victims of SARS Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and hospital personnel.
The appeal was met with great efforts in all 34 of Hong Kong’s parishes. Generous offerings came in from Catholic schools, religious institutes, families making up a final sum of 584,000 HK dollars (about 70,000 US dollars). The chairman of the diocesan commission for Hospital Pastoral Care, Mrs Agnes Wong Fung Yuk Tong, says the money has already been donated to six hospitals in dire need of sterile clothing for doctors and nurses. Mrs Agnes Wong says that Hong Kong diocese has made available all of its human and spiritual resources in the combat against SARS and that numerous local Catholics work inside hospitals with patients and staff. She delivered a letter to the HK hospital authorities in which the chancellor of the diocesan curia Father Don Lawrence Lee Len assures Hong Kong society of the spiritual and material solidarity of the local Catholic community.
In the meantime as agreed with the local civil authorities a priest has been assigned to enter hospitals to offer SARS patients the comfort of the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. Moreover special internal telephones lines offering counselling for quarantined patients and staff in spiritual and medical/material matters have been installed in hospitals, as well as counselling teams who visit the wards. (Fides Service 15/5/2003 EM lines 22 Words: 265)