c. 2007 Religion News Service

CHICAGO _ Once you’ve seen the brutal face of evil, says the Rev. Robert Barry, you start looking for the tender face of God.

Barry is an Air National Guard chaplain who spends his summers working with injured soldiers at Landstuhl military hospital in southern Germany, where American military personnel are taken after they are wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s also where Barry gets frequent prayer requests from patients and staff. No one at Landstuhl, he said, has ever turned down a prayer.

“Nobody has said, `That’s not necessary,”’ said Barry, who holds the rank of lieutenant colonel in the 183rd Fighter Wing of the Illinois Air National Guard.

Barry, a gray-haired, bespectacled Dominican priest, will serve his third tour at Landstuhl this summer during a break from his duties as campus minister and religious studies professor at Chicago’s St. Xavier University. Landstuhl, he said, is the most challenging ministry of his career.

“I’ve never prayed as hard as we do there,” said Barry, 59.

And it’s getting harder, as a shortage of military chaplains mirrors the shortage of Catholic clergy.

The Army National Guard, for example, is offering a $10,000 signing bonus for chaplains. Major Timothy L. Baer, the chaplain in charge of recruiting, said he has only 340 chaplains to fill 770 authorized positions.

Lt. Col. Ran Dolinger, spokesman for the Army Chief of Chaplains office, said there are about 452 vacancies among 3,000 chaplain slots in the National Guard, Army Reserve and active duty positions. About 300 of those vacancies are in the National Guard branches, he said.

Said Barry, “They don’t have a lot of people who can and want to do this kind of work.”

Chaplains are among the first to greet new patients at Landstuhl after the 2,500-mile journey from Iraq. A team of nine offloads those arriving on stretchers, which can weigh up to 600 pounds with all the critical care equipment.

Some patients may not even know where they are; some arrive with desert sand still in their hair. “You’re in Germany,” Barry tells them. “We’re going to take good care of you.”

Barry can fulfill the simplest request, like getting a toothbrush for someone who hasn’t brushed his teeth in three days. But he is more likely to meet spiritual needs, administering the Catholic sacrament of the sick when requested. “I’ve never anointed so many people in my life,” he said.

Because combat armor protects the trunk of the body, the injuries Barry sees generally involve soldiers’ limbs. He knows what to look for as he enters a patient’s room.

“The first thing you look at are the bedcovers, and you look to see if there are lumps in the covers that should be there and aren’t,” he said. Patients with missing limbs are just beginning to grasp the significance of what has happened to them, an experience of secondary trauma that can be difficult to witness and respond to.

Barry recalls one patient in the intensive care unit, propped up in bed, “looking down, mouth open, both feet below the ankle gone,” he said.

“He gets to all of us,” a nurse told the chaplain afterward.

At St. Xavier, Eileen Doherty, Barry’s campus supervisor, said he is not the type to toot his own horn _ he mentioned the Meritorious Service Medal he received only in passing.

“We know of the work he’s been doing,” she said. “He shares a few things but tends to be fairly private.”

Barry joined the Dominicans in 1967 _ “when religious orders started going into the tank,” he said with a grin _ and got three master’s degrees before earning a doctorate in moral theology. He’s become an expert on Catholic teaching on medical ethics. The National Endowment for the Humanities gave him a grant to study ethics and euthanasia.

During his studies, a fellow Dominican mentioned the armed forces reserves were looking for Catholic priests. Barry joined the Air Force Reserve in 1986, moved to the Air National Guard in 1992, and since 1994 has been called up annually, usually for international work. He worked in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and counseled people at the Pentagon after 9/11.

Barry’s medal is a significant recognition of non-combat work.

“This is very intense ministry,” said Col. Michael Meyer, Barry’s commanding officer from his unit based in Springfield, Ill. “Sometimes in our job it’s difficult, and we can’t run away from what’s in front of us.”

The Rev. Jeff Laible, a chaplain and National Guard colleague who has worked with Barry for 15 years, is familiar with the rigors of the work. “You’re not being shot at physically, but it’s very difficult emotionally because of the sheer volume of wounded you work with,” said Laible, pastor of St. Malachy Catholic Church in Rantoul, Ill.

Barry said he was changed by what he called the “raw, bold courage” of wounded warriors. “Things that were important to me before are less important now,” he said. Climbing the academic ladder is one of them.

He also has greater appreciation of the need of spiritual comfort.

“The word really has power with these people,” he said. “Shrapnel hits the body, but it also hits the soul, and that’s where we come in.“

Editors: To obtain a photo of Barry, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

KRE/LF END NELSON