By Joe Pisani

BRIDGEPORT—Twenty-five years ago, when Deacon Tim Bolton’s wife was beginning treatment for cancer, he got a call from his pastor at St. James Parish.

“Do you want to talk to Mary Ellen?” he asked.

“I called to talk to you,” Father Tom Lynch replied.

The memory of that moment has stayed with him throughout the years.

“I was kind of dumbfounded. Like nobody talked to me,” Deacon Bolton recalled. “And he said words that influenced my vocation: ‘I just want you to know that whatever happens, I’ll walk with you.’”

Looking back, Deacon Bolton says, “He accompanied me through her death and funeral and continued to check up on me. Nobody calls a widower, and yet Father Tom would just show up.”

That compassion and personal concern led him to an appreciation of the importance of “accompaniment”—walking with another person, which is best exemplified by Jesus, who walked with two dejected disciples on the Road to Emmaus after the crucifixion.

Today, Deacon Bolton, the diocesan director of accompaniment, is developing programs that will form “pastoral companions” in parishes to help those who are hurting and in need of someone to walk with them—people who may have suffered the loss of a loved one or a job, people who are sick, people who are homebound, and perhaps struggling single mothers. 

The ministry, which he also describes as “spiritual friendship,” is one of many supported by Bishop Frank J. Caggiano and the 2026 One in Christ Bishop’s Appeal. 

Deacon Bolton, who served as manager of pastoral care at St. Vincent’s Medical Center of Hartford HealthCare for 15 years, has also created a clinical pastoral accompaniment program, which six seminarians are engaged in this summer at the hospital.

“The bishop wanted people to minister to the sick and to ‘be present’ to the people they were visiting,” he said, “whether they’re in a skilled nursing facility, long-term care or their homes.”

Deacon Bolton has a degree in theology from Sacred Heart University and is a board-certified chaplain and a spiritual director certified by the Murphy Center for Ignatian Spirituality. 

“I guess I’ve been practicing this accompaniment thing a long time,” he says. “It’s just this big word that kind of fits everywhere. But it’s not a new invention. It’s what the Church has practiced since its inception.”

This summer at St. Vincent’s Medical Center, the seminarians are learning to be present to people in times of distress by providing “a calm, steady presence that will listen without judging, that won’t attempt to fix them but will allow them to be seen by another person who listens.”

The first seminarian to work with him at the hospital several years ago was Father Christopher Ford, director of seminarians, who encouraged the six men to spend the summer at the hospital—Bill Izuazu, Maximilian Lock, Joseph Perrotta, Brendan Gleeson, Pradeep Devasagayam and Pierre Doumbouya.

Several weeks into the program, Izuazu said, “I’m learning in hospital ministry that it is OK not to have all the answers, which is good news, because the people I may meet may ask questions that weren’t on any of my exams. Pastoral care is less about fixing people and more about accompanying them with compassion, presence, and hope, trusting that Christ is already present in those moments.”

Gleeson said that hospital chaplaincy is a ministry that extends beyond the physical walls of the patient’s room, a ministry that “finds itself staring into the darkest parts of our human frailty, where wounds or illnesses affect a person’s body or mind.”

He said one must look even further into a person, “where there is a crying out from sufferings more piercing to one’s ears than that of physical pain. This silent cry can be found in the reclused caverns of someone’s heart and soul, where the light has yet to reach—the foundational parts of a person that cannot be seen or touched by human medicine.”  

Chaplaincy requires seeing Christ in others, and Gleeson compared it to going into Jesus’ prison cell: “If you were asked or had the opportunity, would you sit in Jesus’ prison cell with him the night before his Passion? To suffer with him? Unable to fix, or change the situation, yet instead of leaving him alone, sit down with him on the cold stone and be chained together, leaning on each other in silence, only speaking the language of love. That’s what chaplaincy is: to see Christ in others and to go into the prison cell of suffering to be with the beloved.”

For the seminarians, it is an immersive experience. 

“These guys are really eager to learn, and they’re eager to grow in their understanding of the sick,” Deacon Bolton says. “What I’m doing now with them is also going to be transferable to the program I’m working on for lay people.”

In the pastoral companions’ program, lay people will receive formation so they can visit the sick as representatives of the parish. In addition to accompanying people during a time of crisis, he believes, there will be another benefit. 

“If we can encourage a generation of fired-up lay people to visit the sick, that will reverberate, and we will be touching their families,” he says. “If we’re reaching into homes, where Mom and Dad are alone a lot of the time, and the kids are working or don’t live there, we will be providing their parents with spiritual friendship. And some of these kids who have walked away from the faith might take a different look at the Church, if somebody from the parish is visiting their parents.”

Pamela S. Rittman, director of development and the Bishop’s Appeal, said ministries supported by the Appeal focus on the themes of “Accompanying our neighbor,” “Fostering works of goodness” and “Celebrating the Truth in Jesus Christ.” 

In announcing the Appeal, Bishop Caggiano said: “The Holy Spirit is working powerfully in our midst, and we are beginning to see the fruits of our efforts, and those fruits are growing. Over the last few years, you have heard me say that we are in the work of renewal—of bringing new life, both individually to our own discipleship and collectively to our common life as a Church.”

(To make a gift to the One in Christ Bishop’s Appeal, visit www.2026BishopsAppeal.org  or call 203.416.1470.)               n