After visiting the sick and dying, the Rev. Paul Scaglione was determined "no one should die alone."










LOUISVILLE — It wasn't just one thing that led the Rev. Paul Scaglione to devote so much of his ministry to the terminally and the chronically ill over his 40 years as a Roman Catholic priest.
There was his own near-fatal diabetic coma four decades ago. There was the unexplained paralysis of his mother, for whom he cared for many years. There was his confrontation with a deep betrayal he suffered when abused as a child by a priest.
And then there were the visits to the sick and dying, many of them isolated — and often estranged — from any loved ones. He became determined that "no one should die alone and forgotten."
"Dealing with dying, that's hands-on for me. It's real. It's not theoretical," said Scaglione, pastor of St. Barnabas Church in Louisville, and co-author of the new book The Spiritual Lives of Dying People: Testimonies of Hope and Courage.
The book relates the deaths of 15 people, including his brother's. Some were surrounded by loved ones, while others were seeking spiritual answers or peace over broken relationships. Some told of suffering for years from abuse or shame.
Scaglione, 66, is a gifted preacher and storyteller, with the clipped accent of his upbringing in a close-knit Italian-American Catholic community in New Jersey.
But he spends a lot of time just listening.
"When people tell their story and it's painful — and they're unloading really heavy emotional issues, fractured families, disappointments in life — they need to say it to someone who will listen to it and not dismiss it," Scaglione said, adding that the dying often have no patience for conventional pious words or counsel.
The idea for the book came from the Rev. John Mulder, a Presbyterian minister and author who had come to Scaglione for spiritual counsel and eventually became a friend. Scaglione initially demurred, saying he lacked the energy and patience to write a book, so Mulder suggested that he interview Scaglione and shape his words into written form.
The result is The Spiritual Lives of Dying People, published by Cascade Books(2013), with Mulder as co-author.
The process was "very, very draining," Scaglione said. "There were some sessions when I was totally wiped out."
Mulder said Scaglione's story is remarkable.









"The fact that Paul was abused as a boy by a priest and ends up in the priesthood anyway, and ends up devoting the core of his ministry to people who are dying, who are or have been abused, who have suffered terribly, and have to deal with that in their closing months or weeks or days, is just a wonderful example of God's healing," Mulder said.
Scaglione, who was raised by adoptive parents, came to Kentucky to attend college at Brescia University, a Roman Catholic school in Owensboro, and later went to St. Meinrad School of Theology in Southern Indiana.
Soon after his ordination as a deacon in 1972, he fell into a nearly deadly coma from previously undiagnosed diabetes. He recovered, now surviving on a daily regimen of insulin injections and sugar-level checks.
Scaglione said he and his mother — who had been inexplicably paralyzed by illness in 1966 and for whom he helped care — each gradually shifted from earnestly praying for healing to accepting the limits of their illnesses.
Scaglione worked for several years as a spiritual director at St. Meinrad, immersing himself in the writings of Thomas Merton and earlier Catholic mystics, before returning to New Jersey to work as a parish priest.
There, a parishioner invited him to join in visits to dying church members, many of them alone.


He eventually launched what became known as Gennesaret Retreats — three-day gatherings of terminally and chronically ill patients, tended by a fleet of volunteer medical professionals and others. Nearly 1,000 people have taken part in the retreats in New Jersey and Kentucky.
In the 1990s, a tragedy involving members of his New Jersey parish plunged Scaglione into another crisis. An adopted teenage boy with a history of abuse murdered the 7-year-old daughter of a close family friend.
For Scaglione, it ripped open memories of the abuse he suffered. His abuser had since died, but Scaglione said he experienced many of the frustrations that other survivors of clerical sexual abuse have had in confronting the priest's superiors over what happened.
"That brought me right to the edge of saying, 'I'm leaving' " the priesthood, Scaglione said.
Ultimately, after years of counseling, prayer and talking to his abuser's supervisors and colleagues, he was able to kneel at his abuser's grave and pray that God would forgive him and that he, Scaglione, would be able to as well.
Scaglione stayed with the church, getting a fresh start as he transferred to the Archdiocese of Louisville in 2000. Soon after his arrival, the archdiocese was engulfed by hundreds of lawsuits revealing sexual abuse by priests over the past half-century. Scaglione has for the past decade served on the archdiocese's review board, which advises the archbishop on handling abuse allegations.
"Whatever I'm doing in this process of healing, it's God's work," Scaglione said.
"... I don't want any notoriety about me in the ministry as much as God's using me in some way that's for his purposes beyond my own life.
"If my story helps other people discover how they can be used in that process of healing, then that's great."