‘Someone Call a Priest’: Sacraments at Time of Crisis Are Not Administered as Often as They Used to Be

The Register contacted pastors across the country asking the question whether emergency personnel call them to life-threatening situations. For the most part, the answer is No.

When a multi-ton pile of clay covered a steam-shovel fireman in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in early December 1952, a 40-year-old Catholic priest had himself lowered upside down into a hole workers had dug to try to save the man.

“Only the tips of the priest’s heels were visible as his murmured prayers were heard above,” The Boston Globe reported the next day. Only a portion of the man’s leg was visible when the priest first got near him, and by the time workers freed the rest of Elpidio Baia, a 55-year-old father of three, the accident victim had died. But Father John Tierney’s efforts to bring him the last rites of the Church are an example of what used to be common — police and firefighters calling a priest to an accident so he can administer sacraments to the critically injured.

Priests still frequently offer confession, Eucharist and anointing of the sick at hospitals, of course, but not so much at the scenes of accidents. The words “priest called to the scene” and similar phrases appeared in many news stories in the United States during the last century until the late 1960s, when they started tapering off, according to searches of online databases conducted by the Register.

It’s not common anymore.

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