October 15, 2021
When Hope Fried received the text from the primary pediatric staff chaplain at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City last spring, she burst into tears. She was on call, working the overnight shift during the residency year of her training as a chaplain. Pacing her Manhattan apartment, her mind was racing.
The message came in at around nine in the evening explaining that a Catholic, Spanish-speaking mother in the labor and delivery unit was preparing to give birth to a baby who would either be stillborn or expected to die soon after birth. She was asking for her child to be baptized.
But 32-year old Ms. Fried is Jewish.
Source: When a Jewish hospital chaplain was asked to perform a Catholic baptism